Listen to "Mansion" by NF while reading this chapter to get all the feels from it. And I've made little gifs for Leo and Arie to separate their POVs.

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Red flashed before my vision the moment that name left Mike's mouth. My hand instinctively shot out and grabbed the throat of the man who dared to speak it. He knew better yet he decided to risk it all.

          I slammed him against the wall with the sudden onslaught of indignation that blinded me. Every fiber in me raged, clawing at my insides and yearning to end this fool for his imprudent audacity.

          "Leave!" I roared for the idiots who were still in the living room with us. Once I heard footsteps rush out and the door slam, my fist flew toward Mike's face. Despite my hold on his neck, he scooted his head to the side right on time, forcing my fist to pound into the cement wall, the debris of which settled around my knuckles.

          "For fuck's sake," he hissed and slammed his fist against the bullet wound on my shoulder which dropped my hold on him.

I groaned from the tinge of pain, my eyes drilling holes into his skull. My heart raced frantically from the mention of Luciano's name, my clenched fists shaking with fury that I tried to suppress.

"You need to fucking listen, Leo, before you fuck everything up."

"You have a motherfucking death wish," I seethed. "And what kind of a mate would I be if I didn't give you what you wanted?"

Mike removed his gun and slid it out of our reach, putting his hands in the air as a sign of surrender. "Listen to me very clearly. I know better than to bring his name up and I never intended to do so, but I've had doubts for a while now and didn't tell you. After everything that's happened so far and what that man said about Luca, it keeps strengthening my theory about Luca and Luciano being the same person."

"Have you lost your fucking mind?"

"I'm thinking clearly, Leo, you aren't. If Luca is Luciano, a lot would make sense. Think about it!"

"There's nothing to fucking think about! He's dead. He died almost twenty years ago. That's the fucking end of it."

As those words slipped past my lips, there was a tremble that escaped with them in disguise, something that had never happened before. My heart rate accelerated exponentially. Scorching heat coursed through my body like lava flowing in my veins and burning me from the inside out. I could feel my eardrums pounding along with my head which left me puzzled as to what was happening. The physical pain from my injuries was now accompanied by the agony I had locked away ages ago.

There had been a stir in those parts of my head recently, but now there were claws scratching against the walls I knew were high and mighty within my mind. I hadn't thought of Leona very much in the years following Lina's birth, and Luciano was even less so. He was almost nonexistent in my head. Both were. Although Leona was occasionally brought up here and there as the former queen, Luciano was only uttered in my name. Not many knew of his existence to begin with, but Mike did and he dared to speak it.

"You never mourned your mother and brother," Mike announced, taking a few steps back simultaneously. "You locked it all up because Federigo ordered you to."

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," I spat, rage filling me up to the brim. Grabbing the iron fire poker from beside the fireplace, I stormed toward him.

"Fuck!" Mike cursed as I swung the deadly iron poker at him. He moved back, but his escape attempt wasn't quick enough as the pointy end of the iron rod nicked his cheek and drew blood. "You motherfucking cunt!"

Anger morphed his face as he wiped a few drops of blood that trickled down his jaw. I raised the poker again for another blow, but he countered the attack with a vase he nabbed from the table nearby that shattered upon impact with the iron rod. With my mind engulfed by the chaos, he seized the opportunity to punch me square in the jaw. Before he could get in another one, I grabbed his wrists and slammed my head against his which disoriented him for a quick second, but it was enough for me to drop him to the ground. I held him down with a knee on his chest and brought the fire rod down sideways in efforts to strangle him with it.

"Leo, fuck! Stop!" Mike yelled as he grabbed the poker, trying to push it away, but his attempt was slowly dwindling. "You don't fucking remember."

          "I remember everything."

          Mike struggled trying to keep the iron rod off his neck. "Tell me what happened during Lina's birth then."

          "What the fuck do you mean?"

          "Tell me what you, Luciano, and I were doing when Lina was being born?"

          "You know better than to play dirty games with me, Mike."

          I didn't know what the fuck he was on about, but my rage was progressively blinding me further.

          "Just answer this question." Mike groaned against my strength on the poker. "What was the first thing that happened with you when the queen was declared dead?"

All I wanted to do was strangle him in the very moment, but his words burrowed their way into my head and forced me to think. It should've been easy because how could someone forget the moment they received the news of their mother's passing yet... nothing. There was a void where the memory should've been which left me utterly puzzled.

Mike used my brief state of pondering to his advantage and pushed me off with a painful shove from his limbs. The fire poker slipped from my hold and I didn't reach for it again for I was stuck trying to remember something, anything at all from when Lina was born. I knew mamma had given birth then she later died and so had Luciano, but the details were nowhere to be found.

          "You don't fucking remember," Mike stated, sitting up against the back of the sofa and trying to catch his breath. "The mere mention of their names is too painful for you because they were the most important people in your life and you lost them at once. Your mind repressed the trauma to protect you from that agony. You remember their existence but you don't remember the pain that followed their deaths."

          I shook my head in hopes of denying the bullshit he was spewing, but I didn't know who the fuck I was trying to convince. Whenever I thought I was refusing to visit their memories, it was my memories that were hidden too deep for me to even retrieve. They denied me the pain of reminiscence. I remembered bits and pieces of when we were all happy, memories of which came to me in quick flashes, but nothing concrete. Then Lina's birth was a blank.

          Many unconsciously suppressed their memories to escape their trauma, something I was well aware of, but I didn't know I was one of them.

"Your father forbade everyone from speaking their names to protect the future king; to protect you from yourself. Those who knew of Luciano never spoke of him."

Guaranteed targets remained on our backs as the heirs to the throne which was why many knew of only one heir, not the both of us. Immediate family and a few others had seen the Bonferroni twins together, that much I knew. Other than that, the memories were too hazy for me to decipher.

"I was a kid, but I knew what pain was and you were in so much, Leo. You were breaking, but you had to swallow it after Federigo told you to. You may not remember, but I do. I remember everything."

          I looked at the man, trying to gauge the veracity of his words, but the sense of helplessness within me flourished painfully. My own mind had truly failed me with vital information, rendering me vulnerable and wary of even myself. The doubts of distrust that ruptured through me were not for others. I was the one staring down the daunting barrels of apprehension that were aimed at me.

          "I watched you cling to Amelia for that reason. You worshipped her because you were afraid to lose another mother."

          "Don't," I warned firmly.

          "Okay. I'll keep her out of this." Mike stood and got himself a bottle of Glenfiddich scotch. He tossed the cap aside and put it to his mouth. "Here's why I think it's Luciano." He sat on the floor once again, maintaining a distance of a few feet between us. "The spy who had been following Lina around England swore it was you who gave him the contract to do so. A part of me actually thought it was just you playing a twisted game. You still weren't over Arie then and I thought you wanted some thrill amidst the stress. Then the footage that we received from the spy's roommate revealed Luca Lumov giving the spy the contract. Given we couldn't see Luca's face, his voice matched yours. Again, I thought you were playing some sick game on us. Even Gus and Wren thought so."

          My eyes narrowed on the idiot. "I'd hire someone else to follow my own sister when I have guards on her constantly?"

          "I don't fucking know, man. You were fucked up in the head after Arie left and Verona came back. And Verona had just miscarried too, so I didn't put it past you."

"Careful," I warned once again. I didn't need reminding of the agony that followed Arie's departure from me and Verona's arrival in her horrid state, or the time when she lost our child just five months before Wren's wedding. The pain still lingered in me.

          "Fine," Mike huffed. "When we saw the tattoo of a lion on Luca's hand in that video, I knew it wasn't you. That's when Luciano popped into my head. Do you remember what your mother called your family?"

          My brow raised at his odd question, not foreseeing the direction he was treading toward.

          "A pride of lions, Leo. That's she called your family; a pride of lions. You and Luciano were her lion cubs that were meant to rule someday, so it'd make sense if Luciano honored the queen and got it tatted on his hand as you did on your chest."

          Mike placed the bottle of scotch between us, urging me to indulge in the toxicity of it. My sore eyes bore into the mighty bottle, watching the amber liquid slowly trickle down in rivulets inside its glass imprisonment. Every cell in me itched to bathe in it to drown out the incursions of pain and disarray of my mind yet I remained still.

          Although Mike littered my head with Luciano's name in brutal remembrance that barely came, it was still just a guess. I couldn't throw myself down this torturous path when Arie and Athena were still out there, fending for themselves in a country they weren't familiar with and among men they didn't know.

          Locking up any shred of pain within me wasn't a concept new to me. I had been doing it for ages. As the crown prince and king I had to. Such emotions occupied no place within a world of ruthless men like me who craved power and battled to sit at the top. It was a terrible world where even the whisper of such things was dangerous. Only anger was honored as it was thoroughly respected by all. And I happened to have too much of it because it all morphed into unbridled rage that blinded me at times, except when I was with her. Arie.

          She saved me from my ravaging self and submerged me in the ocean of love with her, the depths of which traveled too deep for me to ever escape now, and I didn't wish to do so. My soul—tattered and barbaric—had been lustrated to some degree by her. I didn't believe in a higher being. Once you treaded the wicked path in the underworld, it was something else you were praying to; either money or people. But one thing I chose to believe in was that Arie was irrefutably my saving grace, the queen meant to wear the crown and rule beside me.

          Come what may, Arie had to be home first before I could tackle the endless ordeals that plagued me and my unhinged mind. With her in my arms, I knew I wouldn't lose myself in the cynical storm that was brewing slowly, the havoc of which had already begun.

"It'd explain how Luca knows intimate details about the family if he is Luciano." He reached for the bottle and took a quick swig from it. "Other than you burying Luciano deep in your mind, the reason his voice probably didn't ring any bells is because it's a copy of your voice and we don't tend to recognize our own voice. It sounds different in your head and it sounds different to others."

When will your habit of playing with broken things fade? This question Luca had posed during our brawl stumbled into my mind effortlessly. Someone who knew me on a vulnerable level would say that, and Luciano knew well too well once. Could it truly be him?

          "Luciano's plane crash could've very well been a hoax orchestrated by someone within the family or an enemy. No bodies were recovered."

My fate was almost laughable at this point because I didn't remember how Luciano had even died. My mind collapsed within itself when it came to that.

"Federigo may have the answers we're looking for. And in order to ask the right questions, you need to remember first. It's time you do, Leo, because if Luciano truly is alive as I suspect, then this shit started before us, and most likely, with your father. And maybe, your mother didn't die from childbirth complications. She could've been murdered."

My rough hands rubbed my face then raked through my hair, trying to the soothe the ache that aimed to destroy me entirely. Although the walls inside my head were tremendously strong, I couldn't help but feel the rumble in the foundation of it. The debris from the rattle mimicked brutal stabs that painfully twisted my flesh.

"I can't," I whispered under my breath in a voice that was foreign to my ears. My eyes squeezed shut to block out the savages that were beginning to roar inside my head, but it was to no avail. Mike lit a match in that dark and dreadful part of my mind, shining a ray of hope for those demons and promising them a time to wreak havoc that I knew I couldn't defer forever.

"I've been beside you for years and seen the pain you've always swallowed, Leo, ever since you were a kid. Undoubtedly, it made you a great king who has accomplished so fucking much. Federigo could never and Gus can't either, but I've always seen how it affected you. You absorb your family's pain. Always have. You pay the price of the king."

My eyes felt too heavy to open, but I did so regardless to look at the man sitting in front of me. His brows were drawn together in worry and in a grim manner that grated on my mind.

"I know you just lock it up, man, but now you gotta deal with it if we want to survive what's bound to come. I can't let the king fall. It's my duty to this empire and my loyalty to you."

          Nothing left my mouth in response to his statements. Silence echoed in the living room almost dauntingly. I wasn't sure if I needed noise to hinder the gnawing savages in my head or silence to think. Regardless of what came, I was bound to drop down a rabbit hole with the madness that crept inside me. I knew I had to begin taking out the bricks that built the walls in my head and deal with what laid beyond yet I couldn't bring myself to it, at least not yet, not when Arie and Athena had summoned the wrath of Dimo Yardanov's army upon them.

          Mike stood from the floor with the bottle of alcohol, offering me a nod to leave me to wallow in my misery.

"Sorry," I muttered loud enough to reach his ears in a whisper.

A soft smile lingered on Mike's lips before he let out a scoff. "Don't embarrass me with an apology, Leo. You're the king and I knew what your reaction would be. I know you too well, man. I'm just glad I got a punch in. But I think you just wanted us to have matching scars on our cheeks."

"Yours isn't deep, so it'll fade. Now, fuck off."

Mike laughed, setting the bottle down after taking one last sip from it.

"You honored me when you appointed me —an outsider—as your consigliere despite the disapproval from your family. It's my job to advise you and I've never failed, but the decision is always yours in the end and I will follow your orders. No matter the battle we fight or who we fight against, I will ride into war with you every single time. It's ride or die, remember?"

I nodded and uttered, "Ride or die."

"You're not my best friend but my family, man. You're the only brother I've ever known, so no matter what happens, I got your back. It's always been you and me, and it'll always be you and me."

          Mike had remained by my side for over twenty years now. I had known him longer than I had known Luciano, at this point. No matter the decisions I made or what hole I found myself in, Mike was always there to pull me back. He didn't do so as a soldier or because of his loyalty to the king. We were family. We both had lost a lot over the span of two decades together—friends and family alike—but we always raised one another when our fates had forced us to our knees.

          No matter our disagreements that ended with us bloody on the floor, he was my confidant. He was my brother.

A creak at the door pulled our attention to it followed by a bark. We had been too engrossed in our conversation and thoughts to notice someone had entered the area. Roman stood with his black pug in his arms, his fingers wiping away false tears. "Oh, the bromance is too beautiful, bro. Worthy of an award for sure."

Mike laughed, walking over to the youngest Azallion man and wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "Why always the dog, Rome?"

Roman shrugged as Mike began escorting him out. "The way you got Leo, I got my dog. In all honestly, he keeps me sane. He's my kid."

Their voices ceased as the door shut behind them, leaving me in a state of solemnity that engulfed me inch by inch. And for all that I knew in this world, I was defenseless and unequipped against this. My own fucking mind.

***

The blanket of gloominess in the form of night had taken over the sky hours ago. I had remained in my room, conducting business as usual while my mind crumbled inside. Keeping the beasts at bay had proven to be grueling. Where there had been darkness once, now a light dangled in the distance that was slowly getter brighter.

          A knock sounded on the door before Mike let himself in. "The blood results are in," he said, disappointment evident on his face. "And it's nothing. Literally."

          "What do you mean?" I asked whilst getting up from the chair I had been sitting on. I took the papers from his grasp and looked over the results myself.

          "It doesn't match anyone in our system. We ran it against other databases as well, America, UK, Italy, Russia, but still nothing. He doesn't fucking exist in the world."

          Anger had remained dormant inside me all day, but now it was surfacing quickly once again. This should've been the answer to the question I had been asking myself all day—was Luca truly my twin that I thought I had lost almost twenty years ago? But all I received was disappointment. The man's slate had been wiped too clean.

          I shoved the papers back at Mike and walked over to the chair I had been sitting on. I picked up one of the two glasses that were propped on the small table in front of it. My hand wrapped firmly around it and squeezed until it shattered in my grasp. The shards crumbled on the table, not a single one puncturing my skin. Picking up the largest piece of broken glass, I pierced a line across my palm until blood oozed, then drained enough of it into the other glass.

          "Run his blood against mine. If our DNA doesn't match then it's not Luciano, and we keep looking."

Denica, Luca's regular whore should've been the easy way to know if it was Luciano, but the woman was nowhere to be found by my men. Yet.

"Okay."

Mike walked out with the glass of blood as I sat back down. A few seconds later, another knocked rumbled against the door until I allowed the person to come in. Federigo entered the dimly lit room and frowned. Great!

          "If this doleful room is any indication of your mood, I must assume you failed with your tasks," he remarked, closing the door behind him and walking in further with his hands in his pockets. His eyes lingered on the pack of cigarettes that Luca had tossed me. "You despise when I smoke my cigars yet here you are taking up the habit."

          I nodded, boring my eyes into him. "Do you recall the name Luca Lumov?"

          "The man who hired someone to follow Lina?"

          "Precisely."

          "How does he factor into this situation?" he wondered.

          "Turns out he's more involved than we thought, and I refuse to believe it's a coincidence. Before I tell you more, I need to know about your meeting with Faustino Colombo."

          The Colombos were the leading family of La Cosa Nostra, and Faustino Colombo was their leader.

          Federigo eyed me carefully, his head tilting to the side. "Stand, boy."

          My jaw tightened at the word boy. I hated it yet he said it every time to grate on my fucking nerves. But I did as he demanded. He was still my father and the former king which warranted him my respect. Also, he remained a leader within our family.

          "Eros didn't act under your supervision, did he?"

          "You think I'd order him to burn people on the street in my country and pick a fight with the members of La Cosa Nostra when I got all this other shit to deal with?"

          "In that case, we should hand over the boy to them to punish him as they see fit because he acted on his own accord."

          As those words left his mouth, I wanted nothing more than to give him a taste of my fists.

          "I will not sacrifice one of my own for doing what I would've possibly done myself. Eros is family, you know that," I spat. "And do you really wish for Athena's wrath upon the empire? She's like Belle, but worse in many ways."

          "She's dead!" he raged. He had always seen Athena as his daughter, so it wasn't surprising when he felt the pain of her supposed death. "Her loyalty was sworn to us and her husband jeopardized the empire. She would've known what needs to done."

          "Maybe I forgot to mention this, but Athena is very much alive. The body we received wasn't hers," I informed and sauntered over to the small fridge that had a bottle of vodka and a few glasses nicely set on top.

          "How do you know that?"

          I poured him a glass and handed it to him. "Camera footage and sources. She rescued Arie from the handler who trafficked her. Then Luca Lumov landed her in Dimo Yardanov's lap until last night when Arie returned the favor and rescued her. They singlehandedly slaughtered his men. It's a bloodbath, and you really think Athena will remain sane when you sacrifice the only person she has truly loved in her life even if she stands by and watch us do it because of her sworn loyalty to us?" I questioned, wondering if his age was finally catching up to him and making him think irrationally. "You and I both know of the hell she endured throughout her life, Father, so let's save her from any more pain. She has had a lifetime worth of it already."

          "What he did was an act of defiance regardless, it's betrayal, and the punishment has always been death for it," he argued his point and gulped down the rest of his drink.

          "I will not hand over Eros to them on a silver platter. He's one of mine and I will protect him. If you or Zio Valerio take any steps to defy my orders in any way, I will forget that we share the same blood and you'll face dire consequences. And if Sebastiano aids you two, I will kill him in a heartbeat. Don't force my hand."

          "È una minaccia, boy (Is that a threat, boy)?" Federigo snorted then flung his empty glass at me that I caught before it could hit my face.

          "Careful, Father," I warned whilst stepping closer to him. "Might I remind you it is the king you speak with. I sit on the throne, not you or Zio Valerio. Both factions are under my rule. The reason all of you have power is because of me."

Federigo bared his teeth like a predator and stepped even closer. We were both the same height and stood above most of the men around us. It earned us the desired effect we wanted; intimidation. But that wasn't the case when it came to each other. We were alphas and bowing before others was unacceptable, so we glared at one another until he grabbed my jaw.

"You know I can still drop you within a second, boy."

Although he was delusional when it came to his strength against me, he truly was stronger than most. He was a tough opponent even in his fifties and could definitely handle many on his own, but not me.

"Do you really wish to test it, Father?" I removed his hold with quick force and tightened my fingers painfully around his wrist then let go with a shove. "Or do you really want to end up like Nonna?"

"So, it was you," he stated as if he already had an inkling.

I simply smiled. Just like the rest of the world, he didn't know she was actually locked up behind a wall in New York, and it'd remain that way.

"If you're done asserting your dominance, shall we continue with Colombo?"

          I took a jab at the man who clearly wanted to strangle me in the moment. As long as I remembered, our relationship had always been strained like this since Lina's birth. And in the fragments of memories from the time before that, I remembered his smile around my mother and his affection for his children, but none of it mattered anymore. He had long lost that part of him.

          "What are Colombo's demands?" I asked.

          Federigo helped himself to another glass of vodka. "It'd be much easier to hand the man over rather than giving them what they actually want."

          "And what is it they want?"

          "An alliance to safeguard their cabal of coglioni (assholes). They believe there won't be bloodshed if our names are linked through marriage."

          I could almost laugh at their proposal for alliance. I knew their demands were going to be ridiculous.

          "If it comes down to bloodshed, so be it, but I will not put a Colombo girl on my throne. Arie will be the regina of my empire and she will become a Bonferroni as my wife. She belongs to me as I belong to her. There will be no other woman, and that's my final decision."

          Federigo narrowed his eyes on me. "It's not you they proposed the alliance for."

          Again, I wanted to laugh.

          "Gus will ruin their girl, if that's what you're suggesting. You know how their women are; traditional and timid, and I don't need to tell you how much of a bastard Gus is. Blood is bound to be drawn with their matrimony."

          "Faustino wants Lina for his heir, not Augustus," he hissed.

          My fists clenched with the mere prospect of Lina going into their family. "That's impossible. Lina doesn't exist for the world."

"Which is why I couldn't kill him right there," Federigo seethed, tossing the bitter liquid down his throat. "I wonder what else he knows and who he told it to, so we can't make the mistake of ending him just yet."

"I'll skin him and his fucking heir alive before I let either of them come close to Lina. I'm not going to make the same mistake I did with Belle. I don't need another Astor situation on my hand. The man she marries will be the absolute fucking best and perfect for her. I will ensure her happiness and she will have a say in it. I'm not handing her to those traditional fucks."

"She's turning twenty very soon. She's of age. We must start looking for a suitor."

"Not until she agrees to it. I won't let anyone force her into a marriage she doesn't want. As I said, she will have a say," I declared.

Belle had been married off by the age of twenty. My parents barely hit their twenties when they were forced into marriage for the sake of an alliance between their families which made me wonder what caused the royals to give their daughter to the brutes of Milan. Perhaps it was where it all started.

"I happened to meet Luca Lumov last night. I wounded him, but he slipped through my fingers."

Federigo shook his head, almost disappointingly. "You were bested by a wounded man?"

"Need I remind you I'm recovering from injuries myself?"

"Leonardo, you were taught better."

"Which is why I'm still walking when I should be on strict bed rest . You have no inkling of the pain I'm in right now, but I'd rather not waste my breath on that." I sat back down on the cushioned chair I had been sitting on earlier and looked intently at my father who possessed information crucial to me.

"Luca is a smart one. He meticulously knows his way around the back alleys of the underworld and hasn't surfaced on any digital playground. He basically doesn't exist, but that's not the thing that surprises me the most. He knew intimate details of the family. He knew me, but I couldn't place him. He even knows Lina's alias when some of the members in my inner circle have no idea about."

"Someone has been feeding him information; someone close."

"That's what I believe, but there's something else he said that has left me with questions."

          Federigo raised a brow. "What questions?"

          "He said that all of this started with you. And he wanted me to ask you about your sins and what you did with Leona."

          He stiffened upon the mention of my mother's name as I usually did. I wanted to believe she wasn't murdered by him, that my bastard of a father wasn't capable of killing his own wife after giving birth to his child, but Luca had planted a doubt in my mind I couldn't shake off, and after my talk with Mike, it only grew.

          "She died from a complication after birthing Lina."

          "Okay. Tell me how Luciano died then."

          Federigo eyes almost reflected shock for a brief moment. "You never spoke his name."

          "I never thought of him, but the recent circumstances left me no choice, so tell me what happened to him."

          "The engine on his jet malfunctioned," Federigo answered without a shred of emotion on his face, but his hard swallow didn't go unnoticed. "Luciano and you were being brought to London separately so you could see your mother one last time. You never traveled together for safety reasons in case of a fatal incident so we didn't lose all our heirs. Gus was too young, so it was best for him to stay in Italy. You landed but Luciano never did."

          I nodded slowly, trying to keep Luciano's brutal memories at bay. The sudden pang in my chest proved difficult to subdue, but I never let it surface. Leona and Luciano dying on the same day couldn't have been a coincidence. Nothing in my world was. Everything and everyone served a purpose. But I'd expect Federigo to investigate this back then and apprehend the perpetrator. Perhaps he did and saved me the trouble of knowledge relating to it, or he never looked into it because he was involved.

          Belle always had doubts and never trusted our father. Being young and having no recollection of that particular tragedy of my life rendered me an accessory to the crimes of someone who was responsible for this ordeal, but not any longer. Whoever was responsible would pay.

          Although I had millions of questions swarming my head, asking him about them wouldn't be sufficient knowing he'd close off. He was a suspect, after all.

          "I have one final question. Answer me truly and don't even think about lying."

          He subjected me to his infamous glare. "Don't test my patience, Leonardo."

          "Very well, then. Why did Bartolomeo Drago agree to marrying Leona off to a Bonferroni when these two families never saw eye to eye?"

          Federigo's glare deepened menacingly as he set his empty glass aside. "You shouldn't concern yourself with the ghosts of the past, boy."

          "I have a right to know, and I demand it as your king, dear father." I forced my lips into a cunning smile I knew he loathed. "So, you better start telling me what basis the alliance was established on and why you—of all the people in Italy—would marry a fucking Drago princess?"

———————————————————

Yay or nay?

The Luciano seed has sowed itself deep within Leo's mind now. For all those wondering why Leo never thought of his twin even when the signs were in front of him, now you know. His mind never allowed him to see it.

Who wants to hug Leo and tell him that everything will be okay?

Do you think Leo will ever dig deep and allow himself to remember what happened back then?

Will he ever break down his walls and let the savages run rampant in his head?

Who enjoys the bromance between Leo and Mike? I love writing the dynamics between siblings and friends. It's just too pure and wholesome.

And can we have a quick round of applause for Mike who didn't cower before Leo and gave it to him straight about Luciano! 👏 He came in for the win 😂

Who's excited for Leo to know for sure about Luciano with the blood he gave to run against Luca's?

Will Leo be able to remain sane until he gets Arie and Athena back or will the monsters unleash before he gets to them?

Will Eros be handed over to La Cosa Nostra as Papa Asshole insisted on?

What do you think about Colombo's demand for Lina? Will Lina be married into that family someday?

Do you think Leona was murdered or was it a complication from Lina's birth?

Do you think Papa Asshole had anything to do with Leona's death?

Do you think Federigo had a hand in what happened with Luciano?

And I'm certain I've asked this before, but I'll ask again. What was the reason behind Leona's and Federigo's marriage?

Thoughts on Leo?

Or Arie?

Luca?

Further comments and questions are always welcome ❤️

HIT ME WITH THE THEORIES!

Come join the fun and the family on Instagram @reetilicious.

Be kind to one another and yourself.

Stay safe and much love to everyone ❤️
~Reet