Mila: The Godfather (Unholy Trinity Book 7)

RIAGAN

“She painted my world. It is no longer black.” — R

When I was a young lad, my grandfather would always remind me that with leadership comes great responsibility and that, to remain on top, you had to have the respect of your followers more than their fear. A man who fears their leader might grow to resent them and will most likely turn rat out of bitterness and desperation. While a man who respects their leader and trusts him will not falter. They won’t bite the hand that feeds them.

I tried to maintain a balance when keeping my men in line by treating them like my brothers, between gaining their respect and trust and putting the fear of what would happen to them if they crossed me. I always made an example out of the rats, but I guess I was too soft on the twins.

They had a shitty start in life, but whereas Maeve didn’t let her past keep her down, Conor allowed it to cloud his judgment and feed his need for more.

Both twins have abnormally high IQs, but Conor’s was something more. He always kept to himself and did what he was told without complaining. Just kept his head down. I didn’t notice he was straying until it was too late.

I had no choice.

He was—

“Riagan…” The voice of an angel whispers soothingly, pulling me out of the shadows. It’s dark here. Cold, too. “Riagan, please open your eyes.” The angel with the sweet voice pleads.

Mila.

My butterfly.

Slowly coming to consciousness, I open my eyes to find the eyes of the woman I love so fucking much filled with tears and anguish. Mila hovers over me while I’m lying on the couch, and before she has a chance to say anything, I quickly rise to my full height, not caring that it fucking hurts everywhere when I move.

“Are you hurt?” I hold her slightly away from me and inspect her quickly. She does not appear to be harmed besides her red eyes. She’s been crying. Fuck. This shouldn’t have happened. Not to her and not in a place where she should always feel safe.

“No. Maeve protected me until you came for me.” She raises her hand, places it on my chest, and taps it repeatedly. She’s trying to comfort me.

You came for me. I hear nothing else. I press a kiss on the crown of her head. Then, her forehead, and because I cannot stand one more minute without reassuring myself she is alive and well, I capture her mouth and sweep my tongue inside. She responds instantly, molding her body to mine, and kisses me back. We break away, panting from the intense kiss.

“I will always come for you, butterfly. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, and there’s not a single man I wouldn’t destroy if they stood in the way of me getting to you. Never doubt that.” My busted-up fingers brush over her tear-wet skin. “And your weeping destroys me,” he says in a soft voice and kisses my cheeks. “No more crying. You’re safe. I’m here now.”

She smiles weakly at me, and then her eyes leave me and focus on something or someone behind me. “Riagan there’s something you need to know.” My wife whispers.

Turning to look at my surroundings, I find some of my men looking grief-stricken and others angry. That’s when all that occurred in the past hour flashed through my mind. The ambush.

The mercenary who, in the end, turned out to be one of my men who betrayed me, Conor.

Then the look of fear on Mila’s face when a gun went off.

The pain in my chest from a bullet grazing my skin.

Whoever shot me didn’t intend to kill me.

A shot from that close should’ve killed me, but it didn’t.

“Where’s Da?” I search around the room with my goddamn heart in my throat. No one speaks up, angering me further. “Where the fuck is my–”

“I’m right here, a sheòid.”

I won’t ever admit, but at this moment, I could fall to my fucking knees and weep with gratitude that no one got to him. That my wife is safe and here with me. My men – all of them risked their lives for me. For my wife and my father. “Who then?” I ask, turning to look at which of my men is missing, and that’s when I don’t see Maeve. The twins?

The sound of a throat clearing pulls us apart. Turning with Mila in my arms, I watch as Kadra Parisi strides inside the living room area that looks like a battle zone with just one of her soldiers in tow. Her right-hand man. Crow.

The Parisi boss is dressed to the nines in a heavy leather coat and nine-inch red heels. I don’t miss the look of disapproval she gives me before her eyes turn to my wife. Her youngest sister.

“How did you find out I had her?” I hold tightly to Mila’s hand, now facing her sister. If she’s here to take her from me, she’ll have to do so over my dead body. The fact that she came with just one of her soldiers makes me think she’s not looking for a war.

“I’m ashamed to admit it took me this long.” She then throws something at my feet. A Joker’s card. “This was sent to one of my hotels.”

“If you came to take her from me, it won’t be so easy,” I warn.

Kadra arrogantly raises a gloved hand and turns to look at her sister, dismissing me.

That woman leaves a bad taste in my mouth. She’s cold and calculating. There’s just something off about her. There’s no light in her eyes. They’re empty. Never have I met anyone who gave me the chills whenever they entered a room, but when this woman enters a room, the atmosphere changes. It suddenly becomes darker and cold. I wonder, at times, just how much evil she has seen. How much more than her sisters she had to endure to end up like this.

“Sirius.” My wife gently squeezes my hand before releasing it and walking towards her sister. We all watch as Mila throws herself at Kadra, crying silently. This was not how I wanted her to see her sister again. It takes a moment, but Kadra wraps her arms around her little sister, hugging her close.

She gives nothing away, though. Not a smile, not a tear. Nothing.

Both sisters break apart, looking at each other. “You’re here. I missed you.” My sweet wife whispers to her sister.

 “Are you hurt? Did this animal hurt you in any way?” Kadra asks my wife in a monotone voice, but there’s a tenderness in her eyes that wasn’t there before. I guess not even the cold woman is immune to Mila’s sweetness.

“Never. Riagan would never hurt me.” My wife whispers, looking back at me. I wink at her, and then she turns to her sister. “H-he’s my one day, Sirius. I-I know this all might seem crazy, but I feel free when I’m with him. I feel like I don’t have to hide, and I can be me.”

Thud fucking thud.

Her words make my heartbeat race.

I look at her while she stands tall, facing her big sister, who looks like Satan’s bride against my fairy-like wife.

“I must confess I came here with every intention of taking you home with me and gutting him with my favorite knife.” Kadra’s bottomless eyes meet mine for a second before she dismisses me again and goes back to staring at Mila. “Until I walked in and realized I had already lost you.”

“You could never lose me, Kadra. Never.” Mila grabs her sister’s gloved hand.

“But I did lose you long before he got to you. Didn’t I?” Kadra raises her other hand and pushes Mila’s curls back. “I never thought I would have to let you go, stelina.” The Parisi boss looks at her little sister as if she’s seeing her as a woman for the first time instead of her defenseless baby sister. “I guess I held on so tightly, trying to keep you from the horrors I—” Kadra stopped herself from saying whatever the hell she was about to say and cleared her throat. “I tried to keep you safe and, in a bubble, thinking it was best for you that I didn’t realize how badly I was hurting you.”

I watch as Mila shakes her head vehemently. “No! You never–”

The Parisi boss does something, something I never thought I would witness. She shows her human side. The side that loves her little sister. She leans forward and kisses Mila’s head before pulling away. “You’ll always have me, Mila. I’m never too far away.”

For the first time, I think I see the Parisi boss’s human side. The sister who went through hell more times than a child should ever go through just to keep the flames from touching the people she holds dear to her heart or whatever she has inside her chest. Once, I would have thought she had a rock for a damn heart but I see it now. The pain behind all that darkness. I only ever saw that look once, and that’s on a man most people call the unfeeling. “If this man is what you want, then I won’t get in your way. Just know that if he ever hurts you.” The Parisi boss looks my way now and then looks every man in the room in the eye. “If you ever hurt my sister, not even your city could keep me from coming after you.”

“Noted,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Crow.” She motions her soldier forward and extends her gloved hand his way. We all watch as the man hands her a small plant. A cactus.

That must be the famous —-

“Mr. Prickles.” My wife gasps, finishing my thought.

“Now you have so much more to care for than a plant.” The older sister says, reminding me that at one-point, Mila didn’t have what she has now. Friends who understood her. A family who would go to war for her.

A man who would go against God and Satan for her if need be.

She had her sisters, yes, but no one she could protect and care for like she did her plants.

“You and Arianna were enough for me.” The pain in my butterfly’s voice cuts me deep, hurting me more than my fresh wounds.

“But we both know you deserve more.”

She sure as fuck does.

She knows it.

We all know it.

My wife is too damn nice to say it, but deep down, she knows it too. Her sisters will always have a place of their own in her heart, but now she has more people in her corner. More people who care for her and love her.

She has me.

My chest tightens when I see Mila hug her sister as if she’s afraid to let go because, deep down, she knows the moment she does let go, things won’t ever be as they once were, back when she only had Kadra and Arianna. When they were all each other had.

She hugs Kadra tightly, and I have to look away when her body starts to shake while she cries silently.

Those damn tears of hers are like daggers to my heart.

“I love you, Sirius.” Mila sniffles, crying a bit louder now.

It takes her a moment, but Kadra says it back. “I love you, my little star.”

That just makes my wife cry harder.

“Is it over?” Mila pulls back and looks at her sister. “Did you deal with the bad men who wish to hurt you? Hurt us?”

“It’s not over, but it will be,” Kadra whispers to her sister. I see something my wife most likely doesn’t. A dark look crosses Kadra’s eyes. A look that promises pain to her enemies. “Until then, I’ll have to stay away.”

Mila starts to protest, but her sister cuts her off. “You and Arianna had a different vision for your ’one day’ than I did. My ’one day’ doesn’t have a happy ending.”

Both sisters hug one more time before Kadra Parisi turns to me. “A word.”

Shit.

Here I thought this would be easy.

I should’ve known nothing with this woman could ever be easy.

“I should kill you for what you did,” Kadra mutters as we both watch her right-hand man get on his bike and leave with only a nod of his head to his boss.

“You should, but you won’t.” I say in a bored tone.

“You’re so sure?” I feel her icy stare on me now. Turning my head away from the entrance of the mansion, I look down at her. Unlike my wife, Kadra is tall. Much taller than both Arianna and Mila. “You revealed your cards there. There’s no chance you will ever hurt your sister’s heart, and like it or not, I’m in her heart. Hurting me will be hurting your sister.”

“Pretty cowardly of you to hide behind my sister,” she says darkly with an eyebrow raised.

“Not hiding. Just stating a fact. She’s mine, and she’s not going anywhere. You threatening me, is just unnecessary bullshit. Now go on. What do you want?” I want to get to my wife and reassure her that, from now, on it’ll all be fine. There’s still a lot of shit I need to deal with and come to terms with, but for now, all that matters is that she’s alive. We’re all alive.

“Cocky asshole.” I watch as she strides toward her parked glossy black Ducati and straddles it. “I opened the gates of hell. Now, I need you to keep her away from the flames and from Detroit. It’s going to get ugly from here on out, and as much as I hoped she would end up with someone so much better… I know she’ll be safe with you. They’re both safe now. It’s time.”

“Time for what?”

She puts her helmet on, still looking at me. “Time for all of them to pay. It won’t be pretty.” She smiles as if she’s looking forward to the chaos she just released in her city. “And O’Sullivan.”

Crossing my arms, I shout over the noise of her bike. “What?”

“Thank you.”

The fuck?

“For what?”

“You know, both of my sisters had a dream of one day finding happily ever after.” She actually smiles before a dark look takes over. “My definition of one day is very different from theirs.”

“How so?” I ask, a sinking feeling in my gut.

“My story doesn’t end on a happy note, and I made my peace with it.”

What the fuck do I say to that?

The three sisters went through hell, but something tells me Kadra’s hell was much worse.

You just have to look at her empty and, at times, soulless eyes to know the light was snuffed out of her.

“Kadra.”

She arches a thin brown. “Yes?”

Come out of this war that you started alive. For my wife’s sake. I want to say, but I don’t. Instead, I tell her, “Be careful.”

But she says nothing. I don’t even think what I heard was right. Kadra lowers the visor, kicks the bike stand, and speeds out of the mansion, only leaving smoke behind.