MIA REGINA hit 1 million a few days ago!!! WOOT WOOT!!! 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻 And Amore Mio is at 100k 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻

We did it guys! This couldn't have been possible without any of you. I can't thank you guys enough for the love and support you've shown the books and even me. I really appreciate your kindness more than you realize, so thank you ❤️❤️❤️ We are all in this together. Every milestone the books hit, we've done it together. I love you guys so much ❤️❤️❤️

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(Leo's POV)

The pain pills I had swallowed left me nauseous, but my need to find my love overpowered everything. Arie's locket was tightly fisted in my palm which provided me with a minuscule sense of comfort. My eyes had been glued to the screen that showed the location of the tracker I had slipped into Arie's mouth. The signal was still bouncing everywhere; from the edge of Bulgaria to different parts of the Black Sea.

          Frustration had my muscles tensed and skin prickling with sweat. I loosened a couple of buttons of my dress shirt and shrugged off my suit jacket before leaning back in the leather seat of the jet we were flying in. Mike sat across from me, his calculating gaze intact. He pushed a bottle of water in my direction that I chugged down at once. My throat was parched due to the pills.

          Mike gave our guards a look which made them excuse us and walk to the front of the jet and out of earshot. "Man, you look deathly sick." Mike turned to me, pointing out the obvious and offering me a handkerchief. "You're pale. The sweat on your face looks like fucking oil. You should've rested. I could take care of this myself."

          Taking the handkerchief from his grasp, I wipe the beads of sweat from my forehead and breathe in slowly. "Arie is my priority."

          "I get that. I'd give my everything to bring her home and you know that." Mike shook his head at my condition helplessly. "You're gonna work yourself to death."

          "This is the price I pay for being the leader. It's nothing new, and you know that."

          "I do, but—"

          My fist came down with a rattling clank on the polished table that separated us. "Arie isn't a want for me, Mike. She isn't just a bloody desire," I spat, pain flaring up in my body with the sudden anger that surged through my veins. "She is a need. She's a necessity that I cannot live without. I don't give a fuck about my injuries or how busted up I look right now. I need her by my side and I will get her back no matter the price I pay. If I lose a limb or two in the process, so be it, but God better fucking help those who stand in my way for I will rip their heads clean off their shoulders and gift them to the tigers to play with, and that'd be mercy on my end. You know that as well as I do. Keep trying to talk me out of this and you'll be their first meal."

He held my gaze for a few moments and bit back his tongue. With a defeated sigh, his shoulders slouched a little. "As your right-hand man, it's my job to advise you. I'm your consigliere for a reason. Not your brothers or cousins but me. Your word is law at the end of the day, but as your best mate, I just want you to know that you're one fucked up asshole. Losing you in this battle will be the downfall for us all."

"The empire won't fall over this. I've handled worse shit."

"I've sworn my loyalty to you with my blood, Leo. Literally. You're not one to sit back and let your soldiers fight your battles. I'll ride into any war with you, but it does me no good if the king I follow isn't well enough to pick up a sword." He regarded me with frustration. "And it definitely isn't good if I have to bury that king."

          "Once I have Arie and her safety is ensured, I will let myself recuperate from the injuries and deal with the traitors. I'm not dying anytime soon."

          Mike huffed and shook his head. "We better get our hands on her today so that you can get your ass to bed. I don't want to deal with Belle and Lina when they see you like this. They'll hunt me down because I'm supposed to talk sense into you."

          I hummed, ignoring his words. "I've sent your girl underground with Lucian. Lina and Heaven are with them. They won't be coming back until I've settled this."

"It's for the best." He rubbed his eyes tirelessly. "We already know they want the heir, but Mariana will be caught up in the crossfire since Arie is her legal guardian and I'm her father. Just don't tell me where she is. As long as she's safe, I don't need to know."

"Don't worry. I wasn't going to tell you in the first place."

I turned my attention back to the screen with Arie's tracker that had been laying on the small table between us. The signal had stopped bouncing and started moving in a straight line.

"I think she's off the island. They're bringing her to the mainland." Mike turned the screen to get a better look. "There are two seaports they can dock at. My guess is that they'll go for this one. It isn't as crowded as the other one. Fewer chances of being seen."

          The area he pointed to was roughly ten minutes from where we were going to land. If my calculations were correct, we'd touch the ground at the same time as when they'd reach the docks, so we'd only be ten minutes apart. In order to get to Arie, we had to speed down the streets before they got any further.

          "I'll get the scouts to stop the search in the sea and head to the shores too." Mike pulled out his phone, sparing me a quick glance. "We'll get her."

Once the plane landed, we got into the vehicle that was waiting for us and sped out of the airport. My eyes were glued to the screen anxiously. The tracker had stopped moving on the street by the docks. It remained still for two minutes before she signal went out.

          Fuck!

My pulse sped up, heart hammering against my ribs itself. They must've found the tracker on her.

          "Fuck! Drive faster!" Mike yelled at the driver who pressed down on the accelerator. The roads were mostly empty at this time of the night, so we'd have no trouble behind cars.

I retrieved my guns from my holsters and kept my eyes on the road ahead eagerly. Two cars behind us carried my men who were ready to take down anyone. Small businesses and houses stormed past us like the breeze. Once we turned onto a different road, I saw the calm sea stretching along the edge of the land. At a distance, I could see the numerous boats at a standstill by the docks. We were finally there.

Our car tore through the road and came to a shrieking halt by the few men who were gathered in a cluster. A couple of dead bodies already littered the floor. In an alarmed state, the culprits whipped out their guns and began firing at our vehicles. We all climbed out the other side and took cover. Some of my men sneaked around and took a shot at them. When the firing on their end began to simmer down a little—possibly to reload their weapons—I rose from my crouched position and injured one man with a bullet to his gun-wielding hand and killed the other one. The rest were taken down by my men. We all sheathed our guns.

The man whose hand I shot was making a run for it as if he could escape. What made this fucker believe he could? Why did they always make it hard for themselves?

One of my men chased the idiot down and dragged him back to me by his hair. The injured man struggled to break free, but the others moved forward and made sure he couldn't do so.

There was no sign of Arie here. Only blood from the men we shot dead and the bodies that had already been the target for someone else made puddles on the ground. Those bodies had huge slashes from what I assumed to only be a machete. One of them had his face split open.

Did Arie do this? I wouldn't put it past her at this point.

The man cried and begged for mercy in Bulgarian which I understood well. As the business grew even more in the last few years, I had to expand my plethora of languages too.

"He seems like a stooge. Would he even have any information?" Mike inspected the mess of a man.

"I-I have information," the man immediately whined in English. "Don't kill. I tell you everything. Whatever you need to know, I tell."

His English was broken, but it was good enough to understand well.

"Tell me where the girl was taken." I stepped forth and grabbed a handful of his dark hair. "Now!"

"That way." He pointed down the road. "They took her minutes ago."

"Some of you go that way. Follow any mysterious car," Mike ordered the men who immediately hopped into one of the busted up cars and raced down the road.

Jerking the man's head by his hair, I forced his teary eyes to meet mine. "It better not be a lie."

"No lie!" He shook his head. "I swear. No lie."

"Give me the name of the person who took her."

"Luca."

I breathed out a harsh breath, my blood beginning to bubble at that name. My grip on the man's hair tightened which ripped some of his strands from their follicles.

"Luca Lumov?" I gritted my teeth.

"Yes!" He shrieked in pain. "Everything I know, you know. It is all true. No lie. He was going to meet boss tomorrow to give money, but boss is dead now."

"Where was this exchange going to happen and at what time?"

"The Golden Cage in Dobrich. It is a strip club. It happens at midnight."

"What does he look like?"

"Don't know. He covered his face."

"You're going to take me to that club tomorrow. If he doesn't turn up, I'll put a bullet in your head right then and there."

After a fearful nod from him, I knocked him out despite the sudden jolt of pain that erupted in my body with the force I used.

          "This Luca is a major fucking pain," Mike spat, staring at the unconscious body by my feet. "This fucker has been at it for a while now, and we have nothing on him. How the fuck can he get away like this?"

Luca-motherfucking-Lumov was playing a stealthy game, and that cunt was winning so far. He had Lina followed, he had called the hit on me and Arie which ended with Wren's death, and now he had my woman. I had no idea who the fuck he was, but once I had my hands on him, I'd wring his fucking neck out. That'd be too easy though. Even years of slow and brutal torture wouldn't be enough to make him pay for what he'd done.

"Contain them in this country. Keep a watch at every airport, seaport, and the fucking border. They better not leave Bulgaria. And make sure no one suspects you."

Mike immediately got on his phone and barked orders while I turned to my other men.

"Call backup and clean this shit up immediately."

The Bulgarian mob was notorious and full of dishonorable fuckers. We were in Dimo Yordanov's territory. Once he got a whiff of my presence, his dogs would come to bite. And if he got to know the reason behind my visit, he'd put the entire fucking country on Arie's trail. The past between him and Federigo was a bloody one, and he'd do anything to get back at the Bonferroni clan. For all I knew, Luca was his goon. Once I had Arie by my side, I'd take down every single person involved in this fiasco.

I had the boys search through the pockets of the dead men. Nothing but packs of cigarettes and money were found with no cellphone in sight. My eyes scanned the area for anything else that could provide me with any more information when I spotted a camera outside the building across the street.

Some of the scouts that had been searching for Arie in the sea earlier had now arrived with a van to load it with bodies. While they did that, I sauntered across the street with Mike and Paul behind me.

          The door of the small building with the camera had a glass door. Paul smashed his fist through it and unlocked the door for us to enter. It was a local restaurant cramped with tables and chairs. Even though it was empty, a suffocating presence remained dominant upon us.

          A faint footstep was heard on the floor above us. Paul cocked his gun and followed the noise upstairs while Mike and I made our way toward the back to find the office where the monitor for the camera was set up. I sank down on the rolling chair and watched the screen that recorded everything that was transpiring outside. The bodies were being loaded into the van while someone else was spraying the blood off the sidewalk and road.

When I heard the shouts and cries of a woman, I stilled and faced the entrance of the tiny office. Mike kept his gun ready by the door in case of an attack which was highly unlikely, but we could never be too sure.

Paul dragged a man in. A sobbing woman followed behind who pleaded helplessly for her husband's safety. "Shut up!" Paul shoved the woman aside and shot her a glare that quieted her down a little before her eyes found me. Another sense of fear shot through her.

"Please, don't hurt him," she begged in Bulgarian, collapsing to my feet and grabbing them. "We will pay the protection money we owe Mr. Yordanov. Don't kill him."

She thought we were Dimo Yordanov's men, and I was going to humor her.

"Let go of my feet first and sit against the wall," I spoke in her language. She followed orders obediently, her eyes intact on her husband who watched me. "You have some time to deliver the money you owe Yordanov. For now, I need something else."

"Whatever you want, Sir." The man fell to his knees before me with hands clasped. "Just spare my family. My children need me."

"Give me the access to the footage your camera recorded outside the building in the past hour. That's all."

I rolled out of the man's way on the chair to allow him to bring up the footage.

"And you." I looked at the hysterical wife. "Go back to your children upstairs. Inform anyone about this and your husband's head will be at your feet along with your children's. I'm sure you don't want that."

The menacing smile that stretched across my face paled her immediately. Once the shock wore off, she sprung up and ran out of the room, her footsteps echoing as she sprinted up the stairs.

"Here." The man stepped aside to let me look at the screen.

"Paul, take the man outside and keep an eye on him until I'm done."

Paul did as ordered and took the man away while I played the footage. It was calm. Nothing unusual occurred for quite some time. I fast-forwarded the recording until entities finally appeared on the screen. A small sense of relief burst in me when I saw a woman pull along a beaten-down man who was missing an arm.

"Is that..." Mike stood in utter bewilderment before he lowered himself to get a better look.

"It is," I said simply.

Athena. I knew the burnt body that was sent to us wasn't hers. They tried their hardest to match Athena's description, but they lacked the common sense to do so. She couldn't be bested so easily.

I was faced with a similar situation when it came to Verona from all those years ago. They made me believe it was her body, and I mindlessly did. I knew better this time.

          Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... Not going to fucking happen.

My eyes immediately sought out Arie who emerged from the docks after Athena. She looked too fragile from the accident we both had gotten into. Fuck! My insides were in a knot knowing she was in pain and so hurt.

          Athena was busy crushing something under her foot which I assumed was Arie's tracker. Of course, she wanted to handle this on her own as-fucking-usual which got her in this mess in the first place, but I was also relieved that Arie had her. I knew Athena wasn't very fond of Arie when she had decided to leave me, but Athena wouldn't let any harm come to Arie.

The fifteen-year-old girl who had been taken with Arie stood beside her. There was also a man among them who jogged away after Athena said something. Unfortunately, the video didn't record any sound.

After dropping the armless man who I assumed was Lawrence Kane, Athena tightened her grip on a gun and machete. Everyone's attention was suddenly pulled to the side, and a second later, a man came up behind Arie and clamped his hand down on her mouth. He was wearing a hat and some cloth covered his face, so it was impossible to tell what he looked like, but he was tall and well-built. Athena aimed her gun at the man but didn't shoot. Instead, she lowered her weapon a few seconds later. What the fuck?

I stiffened when Arie's body suddenly went limp in the man's arms. He must have injected something into her. Athena stepped forward to aid Arie's flaccid body, but the man held his hand up. Two cars came to a halt by them and a dozen men exited to surround Athena. One of them grabbed the fifteen-year-old girl before she could run. Everything began to click for Athena and she raised her gun to shoot, but the man closest to her knocked it out of her grip. They had guns of their own, but none of them pulled it out. Their goal was to only restrain her, but they didn't know who they fucked with.

Athena made quick use of the machete she held. She slashed and tore through their torsos and split one's face open without remorse. She wildly swung the bloody blade around, but there were still too many alive. They pounced on her at the same time, tackling her to the ground. She struggled for a while, kicking and bucking her hips up. Her arms had been pinned down so she couldn't use the machete. Her fight stopped a second later when one of them injected her unconscious.

I knew they didn't kill her. If they wanted to do that, they would've used their guns and shot her brain out. But why?

Arie was carried to one car while Athena, the girl, and the armless man were shoved into the other one. The vehicles sped out of there and left a few men behind to clean the mess up. About five minutes later was when we arrived.

"Cazzo (Fuck)!" I banged my fist beside the keyboard and huffed out harshly. "We were so fucking close!"

Mike ran his hand through his dark hair and sighed exasperatedly. "She's fucking alive."

"I know."

He looked at me quizzically. "You knew?"

I stood from the chair and nodded. "They pulled the same shit with Verona. I wasn't going to be fooled by some fucking doctors again. That's why I had you send Mathias up to my room. I've sent him after them."

"It's all fucking connected," he hissed. "It started with Verona and now it's gonna end with Arie and you."

"That won't happen. Delete any trace of the footage."

With a nod, Mike got to work on the computer while I walked out. "Go back to your family and speak of this to no one," I ordered the man who was held by Paul.

The man immediately ran upstairs without looking back while Mike and Paul followed me out after Mike was done erasing any trace of what happened.

          Athena hadn't taken a shot at the person who had Arie which meant it was someone she knew; someone I knew. But who?

I had failed Verona when she underwent the hell from Astor, but I wasn't going to let that happen to Arie. She was much stronger and she possessed the will to fight till her last dying breath. I knew she could escape, but the thought of her soul being ransacked under sexual, mental, emotional, and physical torture was something I didn't even want to imagine. Arie would never be the same, and I couldn't allow that.

They didn't want Arie dead. It was obvious at this point. She was the leverage they had over my head. It was only time before they approached me with their demands, and I knew it was the empire they wanted.

The throne was mine and so was Arie. I wasn't going to loosen my grip on either of them. They were mine.

Only mine!

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I know this was a much shorter chapter compared to the others, but I just wanted to get something out for you guys.

School is on my ass and has been piling on too much for me to handle and I don't have the time for anything. I had an exam earlier this week that I fucked up real bad because I didn't have the time to study. I have two more next week and too much homework. My mind has been in a terrible place for me to concentrate on anything, but I'm trying. We all gotta stay positive and push through whatever we are facing. We can get through this together.

And how are you guys doing though? Hopefully, everyone is safe! If any of you wants someone to talk to, you can always message me on Instagram at @reetilicious. It's easier for me to get to you on there than on private messages here because I've been very lazy with opening my notifications.

I made this edit of the Bonferroni siblings. I hope you guys like it. I've made more edits of the characters that I've posted on Instagram. Go there to see the others with Arie, Leo, Mike, Wendy, Valentina, and our crazy Athena and Eros. I've made a few more that I'll be posting later with Gus and Vince.

⚠️ I HAVE A REQUEST ⚠️

So, the book series was nominated for The Readers Choice Awards!!! Exciting news! We are at the voting stage now. It would mean the world to me if you guys could vote for it under "Best Series" category. You gotta go to the voting stage (not the nomination one) and comment +1 beside my name on there. You can only vote once and every vote counts. Even if 20 of you voted, it would push us up a little more, so please vote. It'll mean the world to me.

So now you know what happened with Athena and Robyn. Where do you think they were taken with Lawrence?

Will Leo come face to face with "Luca" for the deliverance of money? What do you think will happen then?

I have Luciano's conversation lined up with Arie for the next chapter. Who's excited?

What do you think we will be finding out about from Luciano?

Thoughts on Leo?

Or Arie?

Further comments and questions are always welcome ❤️

HIT ME WITH THE THEORIES!

Follow me on INSTAGRAM @reetilicious for sneak peeks of the future chapters and fun question times.

Stay safe and much love to everyone ❤️
~Reet