Chapter 14

FREYA

If I’d been drinking, I would have spit juice all over him.

“The mafia? Like… the ~mafia~ mafia?”

I glared at him. “How?” I asked.

“Well, I was born into it. I’m the heir to the Conti crime family, the largest mafia family in New York.”

“You’re the heir? But Matteo called you Don. Doesn’t that mean leader?” I asked.

He nodded. “Pretty and smart. Yes, I wasn’t supposed to take over until I was older, but my parents passed away when I was young. So, control of the family passed to me when I was sixteen. Thus, I’m the Don.”

“So, if you’re in the ~biggest~ crime family, does that mean there are other ones?”

He gave me a questioning look. “~Other~ ones?”

“Yeah, like in The Godfather there are other families they fight with?”

His eyes darkened a bit.

“Yes, unfortunately. The worst are the Rossis. They’re our biggest rivals, and real pieces of work. Last I heard, they were working on some kind of mind control serum to try to control their enemies. Crazy bastards.”

For a moment, I started to think about the implications of this. If he was telling the truth, I was sitting in bed with the leader of one of the most dangerous crime families in New York City. And he also just so happened to have a super sketchy alter ego. Oh, and he was also obsessed with me. Great!

I think Luca saw I was feeling nervous, because he reached over and brushed my hair out of my eyes, a look of concern on his face.

I grabbed his hand and moved it away. I pointed to where he was sitting.

“Your side,” I reminded him.

He grumbled something quietly under his breath but followed my orders, not looking happy about it.

I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the next question I was about to ask.

“Why am I here? What do you want from me?”

He sighed. “Freya…” He leaned forward, and I could tell that he desperately wanted to touch me. He glared down at the pillows before looking at me once more. “You’re my ~destino~.”

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned that. But what does that mean?” I said stubbornly.

He looked hesitant to tell me as he fidgeted where he sat. Then, finally, he started to explain.

“Ever since mafia families first came to the United States, they’ve been fighting with each other. It finally got so bad, they risked actually dying out. Until my great grandfather and the Dons of the rival families of his day finally got together and came up with a plan.

“In order to stop the bloodshed, they agreed to interweave their families through arranged marriage. But they didn’t want to risk the possibility that these marriages would lead to hatred and bloodshed. I mean, you’ve seen The Godfather. Doesn’t end well.

“So, they created the ~Destino~ ~System~. Each time a family birthed an heir, they would send out a notice to all the families in the city. One of the other families would then present the youngest child in their ranks, whom they would present to the new parents as the heir’s ~destino~.

“But, to make sure the two actually love each other, the scent of each ~destino~ would be placed in the crib of the other from birth and reapplied every time it started to fade.

“So, whenever the ~destinos~ slept, they would breathe in each other’s scents, bonding them for life. So when they finally met for the first time as adults, during the bonding, they would do so not only willingly, but eagerly.”

I stared at him for a few seconds. I didn’t think I comprehended what he’d said. “I’m sorry?” I asked. “I was born in Queens. My mom walked out when I was a kid, but my dad was certainly not in the mafia. I think you’ve got the wrong girl.”

Luca stared deep into my eyes and I felt as if he could see straight into my soul. “Do you really think so?,” he asked. “Are you saying you don’t feel drawn to me? Are you saying my scent doesn’t attract you like nothing else?”

Shit. He had a point. I did feel like his scent was more heavenly than anything I’d ever smelled. And I felt oddly drawn to him as a result.

“What do you mean? That doesn’t make any sense. I’m not mafia,” I said, my brow furrowing.

“That’s one thing I can’t tell you,” he said thoughtfully. “I never met you when we were children, that’s a key rule in the mafia. But I heard you were the child of some small family connected to the Maricopas. We would call your family ~spalatore di merda~, shit shovellers. I didn’t know anything else about you.

“But then, a little before your sixth birthday, you disappeared. Nobody knew where you’d gone. Your father, too. You’d completely vanished from the mafia, even from our spies.

“I had all but given up on ever finding you. I’d accepted that I’d be forced to live as a ~destino-less~ Don. But then we bumped into each other on the plane and somehow… somehow everything just fell into place.”

My mind was reeling. Could it really be true that I was born into the mafia to be the wife of this man? It was insane, and went against everything I knew about myself. And yet…

There was truth to what Luca was saying. We clearly did share a connection.

“When you say we’re destined to be together,” I began, asking the one question still tugging at my mind. “Do you mean like… like…”—I hesitated with my next word—“romantically?”

He smiled. “You’re adorable.”

I blushed deeply, and he chuckled.

“Yes, I mean romantically. Like husbands and wives in normal terms. Just more like husband and wife at first sight because we’re chosen for each other from birth and therefore, we know we’re meant to be together right away.”

I scooched away from him and his eyes narrowed. I was feeling extremely conflicted. It was like half of me wanted to jump into his arms and never leave, and the other half wanted to run for the hills.

Could it be that he was just making this all up? If this were true, my entire childhood had been a lie.

Could my father have been in on this whole thing? Surely my mother didn’t know anything about the mafia community.

She ran away to Italy with her new douchebag of a husband when I was just a toddler. So it must have been my father then. I imagined him when I was a baby, sprinkling Luca’s scent all over my crib to brainwash his child into making me fall in love with him.

It completely changed everything I knew about my father and my life.

I shook my head. I couldn’t think like that. There was enough going on in my life right now that I couldn’t start questioning my father, my one rock.

I decided, right then and there, not to think about my shaky past anymore. All that mattered was that I was here. It didn’t matter how.

“Freya,” Luca said, interrupting my spiraling thoughts, “I know you know what I’m talking about. You’ve felt sparks with me, haven’t you?”

I licked my lips. “Um…I don’t, I don’t know…”

He held up his hand. “Touch me.”

I looked at him skeptically. “I already told you, I’m not—”

“I will not do anything, Freya,” Luca interrupted. “Just touch my hand.”

His voice brooked no argument, so I slowly lifted my hand and placed it gently against his.

Tingles immediately appeared in my hand, traveling up my arm and down to my toes. I gasped.

“You feel them?” he asked as he threaded our fingers together.

I nodded, amazed at how good the sparks felt. As crazy as it sounded, there was something definitely magical about his touch, and what he was telling me kind of made sense.

He smiled widely as he looked at our intertwined fingers. His smile took my breath away.

“This is all born from my scent. Your body recognizes that you’re close to the one you’ve grown up smelling whenever you feel the most safe, the one who feels like home.

“You can tell that our ~destino~ bond is strong based on how intense the sparks are. And by your reaction to when I touch you.”

His smile turned into a smirk.

I immediately dropped my hand from his. “My reaction to your touch? I have no reaction to your touch!”

He raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t it you who said only minutes ago that you couldn’t think when I touched you?”

My cheeks turned bright red. ~I did say that, didn’t I?~

Luca laughed. “It’s okay, gorgeous. I feel the same way about your touch.”

My eyes snapped up to meet his. “You do?”

His eyes softened.

“Of course I do. In fact, I know that my feelings are even stronger toward you than yours are toward me.”

I was a little intimidated as he looked at me. I’d already felt like he could squash me like a bug, but now that I knew he was superhumanly powerful and assigned to me at birth, I felt even more scared of him.

Luca sighed. “You have nothing to worry about, ~bella mia~. I would never hurt you.”

I still wasn’t sure if I trusted him, not after that strange show I’d gotten earlier today. “So Bruzzatore,” I began. “He’s something to do with the mafia, too?”

Luca chuckled, and I nearly physically swooned at the sound. “No, ~bella mia~. Not every don has an alter-ego like that. It all started when I was a child. Showing emotion was entirely banned in my family. But I was always full of anger and passion.

“So I pretended there was another boy in my head, an angry and passionate one. Whenever I felt a strong emotion, I gave it to Bruzzatore. Soon, he had so many of my emotions that we started developing his own thoughts and feelings in my mind.

“I started letting him out at night in my room, to rant about whatever made him upset that day.

“But the more I allowed him out and the more of my emotions I gave to him, the more real he became. Now he holds as much space inside my brain as I do.

I just gawked at him. Picturing a man like Luca as a scared little boy shoving all of his emotions into an alter ego was almost laughable.

“And he’s been dead useful, too.” Luca said thoughtfully. “As he got more real, he’d take control of my body at times. At first, kids made fun of me. But, when I was sixteen, my parents died. I had to take over the family, and it was so much pressure.

“So I started letting Bruzzatore out to do all the things I couldn’t. It was even he who found my Destra, Adelaide.”

“What’s a Destra?” I asked, my brow creasing.

“Oh, right. It’s like a second in command to the Don. It means right-hand man, or woman in this case,” he responded.

“So Matteo,” I asked, “he’s not your Destro?” It had seemed like he was about as much Luca’s right-hand man as it was possible to be. Luca shook his head.

“No, he’s my Atteso. More like a third in command. If my Destro is out of commission, he’ll step up.”

“And why was he calling me ‘Donna’?” I asked.

“That’s because you are the ~destino~ to the don, and the name for that is ~donna~. He wouldn’t ever call you anything else.”

“So it’s like calling someone ‘king’ or ‘queen?’ It’s to show someone’s hierarchy?” I asked.

He smiled and nodded, “Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like. You are my queen.”

I tried to ignore the intense look in his eyes and how badly my instincts were telling me to touch him, but it was getting harder and harder. The brand on my neck was hurting.

It reminded me of another question I had: “Why did you stab me with a syringe? And what is this thing you burned on my neck?”

He ran his hand through his hair. “Yes, I knew that would come up.” He sighed. “I’m sorry about that. But now that you’ve been claimed as my Donna, rival families will come after you. You see, some of the families are happy to work with the rest of us. But others despise us, and they’re willing to kill you to prove it. Remember the Rossis I told you about? Their Don is willing to work with us, but there’s another faction of the family that refuses the ~Destino~ ~System~ and wants to see the whole mafia destroyed, and reassembled with themselves at the helm. I can only imagine what they’d do if they found out I’d met my ~destino~.

“So I need to be able to know where you are at all times, so they cannot hurt you. I implanted a tracker in your neck. That’s why it hurts when you step away from me.”

I tried to summon the urge to be angry with him. But the truth was that I understood why he’d put a tracker in me. It was all coming together.

“And then you put the brand on top of the tracker? Why?”

I saw Bruzzatore flash briefly across Luca’s face as he leaned in towards me, his lips coming within inches of mine.

“Because, ~bella mia~, you are mine and the whole world must know it. I branded you with the crest of the Conti family.”

His gaze roamed up and down my body slowly, and he smirked.

“You were already mine, of course. But the brand just solidified that fact and let others around us know of it as well.”

I swallowed hard. I took in a deep breath, preparing myself for my next question.

“Are you ever going to let me go?”