Scary enough.
I flinched when the light shut off. A door opened and closed, footsteps neared my door.
This was it.
I knew it was only a matter of time before he saw what every other man did when he looked at me.
An opportunity.
I prayed and bit down onto my fist to keep from screaming when the door cracked open.
Please, God no more. No more.
My bruises had healed on the outside — but on the inside, I might as well be bruised, beaten, bloody beyond all recognition.
My emotional bleeding wouldn’t stop until my heart stopped beating, and some days, I wished it would.
Just.
Stop.
The door clicked shut again.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Safe.
But for how long?
How long until I had to somehow earn my keep? Like I did with Xavier Petrov? How long before they started beating me like he did? How long before they saw my pretty face and body and decided that I needed to show my own loyalty to the same family I ran away from?
My alarm sounded next to my bed sending me sailing to the floor in a giant heap of blankets.
I yelped.
The door burst open.
Dante gave me one look and sneered. “Can you try to keep it down? Some of us have to be up earlier than others.”
I didn’t respond.
But I did flip him off in my head and say a whole bunch of other things that would probably get me beaten if I whispered them out loud.
He slammed the door behind him.
And I relaxed as much as I possibly could against the cold wood floor while I stared out at the early Chicago sunrise.
They’d freed me from a prison.
Only to put me in another.
Because no matter how pretty the walls were.
They were still made to hold me in.
When all I wanted, all I’d ever wanted. Was to be free.
CHAPTER THREE
Dante
IF LIVING WITH the Italian Mafia was Hell.
Being forced to attend Eagle Elite University — was the seventh circle.
My purgatory.
My punishment for being born in the right family at the wrong time.
When I’d first moved to Chicago to train with the five families, when I made the promise to my dead father Luca Nicolasi that I’d try — that I’d see how I fit in this world, I never imagined it would hurt so damn much.
Or that it would feed my hate beyond recognition, blinding me to the person I saw in my own reflection.
The Dante Nicolasi that got off the plane six months ago was gone.
And a part of me hated them for that, hated them for squashing that final piece of innocence I’d held on to with a deathlike grip.
Every one of the bosses were brutal, each of them with their own expertise and dealings, each of them with their own shiny houses, shiny wives, cars, and money.
They owned the world.
And the world knew it.
I stared down at the iron gates.
Eagle Elite University.
Owned by the Abandonatos.
Run by.
No one.
That was the catch.
Italian royalty no longer needed to attend the school. The only reason for it in the beginning had been to gain intel on other families and now that all the families were playing nice, it wasn’t necessary.
Until I showed up.
Until it was very apparent that since the five families had withdrawn themselves from the school — that new people were forced to rise up, to lead.
It didn’t matter that the money was still coming from the same place.
What mattered was that the presence.
The figurehead.
Was gone.
The Elect, or so they were called — were gone.
And that left.
Me.
Fuck.
I ran my hands through my hair, blood still caked my knuckles. I was showing up on the first day of school looking like I’d literally been run over by a truck.
Maybe that was why Chase had been so relentless.
He wanted people to know I was a scary son of a bitch.
He wanted people to know that even though I was blood — they wouldn’t hesitate in killing me.
Beating me.
Shooting at me.
I was fucking limping by the time I made it through the second iron gate. It slammed behind me with such finality that I almost puked.
Prison.
I was in prison.
My life was not my own.
It never was.
The chess master had moved his piece.
“Remember,” Chase said before he landed another blow to my left cheek. “Peace is always more dangerous than war.”
I dodged his punch and side-stepped him, bringing my elbow down on his back as he collapsed onto the cement floor. “Nice shot.”
“Thanks.” I kicked him in the ribs.
He grabbed my leg and tripped me against the concrete, then pulled me to my side, trapping me in an arm bar. “In war you know your enemy.”
I jerked against him.
“In peace.” He released me before my arm snapped out of its socket. “You know absolute shit.” He stood and offered me his hand. “It could be a teacher, a hot girl, a friend, the janitor for shit’s sake.” I grabbed the outstretched towel. “And in my experience, it’s usually all of the above, the ones closest to you are the ones that you need to worry about, so when people ask to be your friend, you offer to gut them — when a teacher gives you an odd look you stare him back down, you answer to no one, got it?”
“Got it,” I snapped.
“And Dante?”
“What?” Blood poured from my nose from his sucker punch as my eyes started to water, a burning sensation pulsed between my eyes… “Son of a bitch!”
“Always watch your back.” He grinned.
My nose still ached every time I tried to take a soothing breath.
The guys joked that I was too good looking — that it would do me good to get roughed up a bit.
“Show no weakness,” I mumbled to myself as I forced my body to walk in a normal slow cadence that didn’t reveal a hint of a limp. I held my head high.
My gait slow, steady.
As I made it past the final gate and looked up at the sign.
“Welcome new students!”
“I’m going to set that sign on fire,” I muttered under my breath.
“Get in line,” a deep voice said behind me.
I rolled my eyes and turned. “Still creepy as always, Sergio.”
He held out his hand. I hesitated than shook it. I hated him for taking my sister from me, for making her his wife, for making the perfect family.
For getting her pregnant.
For making life in the mafia look normal when it took my father away from me before I ever really knew him.
When it made me into the monster I always knew I was.
“Did you need something?” My voice was on edge just like my body.
Sergio gave me a cruel smile that didn’t reach his eyes, his gaze swept over me once, twice before he held out a backpack. “You forgot your lunch.”
I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess, peanut butter and jelly?” I jerked the black backpack away from him and glared.
He smirked. “Thought you were allergic to peanut butter.”
“Exactly.”
His smile fell as he stepped toward me. “If I wanted you dead — you’d be dead.”
“So far, best first day of school… ever,” I said in a mocking tone. “Will that be all… Dad? Or did you need something else?”