Benito's arrival to Nice comes as shock thunders strike through my head waking the beast in me like never before. Seems I can't get rid of him since the damn shipment that I would gladly give up if I knew that was going to bring me peace.

"If you thought you could make an exchange, think twice! I'm in Nice, and I'm coming for you! B" the text message was saying and the fuck if I knew what he was talking about.

"Welcome, and don't get used to Nice too much. I'll be at the airport and meet you there." I replied and started getting ready right after.

I did take my time, though. My morning habits, my outfit, and my appearance are never disrupted even if the world is on fire.

So I take one more look at myself in the mirror, making sure that my suit is perfectly ironed, my hair is nicely combed and fixed with oil and my tie has no flows.

Image and attitude are everything.

Fabio announced to me a while ago they were close to the mansion and that Emillia was quiet and ignored him during the breakfast which she made impossible short taking away one more croissant.

I know I've disappointed her by not being there but I'll pay off when I'm back. I promised her a walk together after all.

The moment I arrive at the airport I feel something is off. No black SUVs around, and no private guards waiting outside the airport. Everything is calm, unusually calm.

"Pico, check inside the airport, private runways. He must be here but this doesn't look like a Don is around," I tell him waving my hand around and showing him the premises as if he is dumb and doesn't know what a Don means or a gangster on a visit.

He nods and gets out of the car just to come back shortly after saying he is not at the airport.

"Not in the airport?! What the fuck!" I roar frustrated with being fooled yet again by the slickly Don Benito and I fish the phone out of my pocket to call Fabio but before I press the call button he comes with a call of his own.

"Dimmi!" I shout. (Tell me!)

"You won't believe it!"

"Let me guess! Benito is waiting in my office!" I take a wild guess although I can't believe he has passed my security without me knowing about it.

"Better. He is in the living room with Emillia. And he kicked everybody out."

"The fuck are you talking about?! What's his fucking business with Emillia?!" I yell and then I remember Benito's weird text message.

"I'm on my way!" I groan and hang up. "Fly, Pico!" I shout at him and he complies burning the engine and pressing the speed paddle to the floor.

I feel my gun with the tips of my finger, wishing to land directly in my living room and smash Benito's jaws with no other introduction.

If this is his way of solving the matter we have, trying to take Emillia, he is even more stupid than I've thought, old fucking prick.

I try to call Emillia a few times but the call gets rejected each and every fucking time. Now this is fucking choking me with rage and madness and maybe we didn't actually fly all the way to my mansion but Pico surely mastered speeding as I can already see my gates in front of the car.

He parks the car at the main entrance and I jump out of the car before he has fully stopped, running up the few stairs before I burst into the house seeing Fabio at my right side standing up and trying to say something, in such a sickening leisure.

I raise an index and suggest he should shut the fuck up before all my rage targets him.

Anyway, he's next on my list.

I make my entrance into the living room, holding my gun pointed right to Benito's head with a perfectly straight right arm, fuming and breathing fast.

"Get the fuck away from her!" I shout and say all closer till the gun barrel props to his forehead.

"Raffa, no!" Emillia shouts and jumps to squeeze between my gun and Benito but I take my chance and grab her wrist, pushing her behind my back.

"Quick to kill," Benito says calmly, never breaking our stare and almost smirking cockily as if he's satisfied with something.

"You, anytime, you fucking prick!" I confirm and Emillia jumps from my back as if burned with boiled water.

"Raffa!" she scolds me and I look at her from the corner of my eyes but never losing Benito from my sight.

"Now you see, sweetheart, who are the people that have lured you here?" Benito says.

"I lured fucking nobody," I say between tight teeth and grab Emillia again, pushing her lightly behind me.

"How well do you know this guy, Mia?" Benito speaks again as if I'm not in the fucking room.

"Stop talking to her!" I order him.

It drives me insane having him here, trying to inflict Emillia with fear for being in my house.

"I'm perfectly allowed to speak to my daughter, kid," he replies and the skies have just crashed on me.

"Your daughter..." I mumble frowning my eyebrows, missing the air to breathe.

"Yes, Raffa. This... is my father," Emillia confirms stepping lightly from behind me and curling her fingers around my hand that holds the gun so tightly that it has turned white.

"Don't tell me you didn't know," Benito says glorious when my arm falls limb along the right side of my body, feeling the gun in my hand heavy like rocks.

"No, I didn't... I had no fucking idea..." I say.

"No, papa. I never told him who I really was because I wanted this project. I want this chance..."

"Emillia, please give me and your father a moment to speak alone," I interrupt her.

This is an entire game changer and if she stayed longer, she would find out who I really am, and I don't want that.

Not yet.

"But Raffa..." she tried to protest but luckily her father interferes.

"Mia, please leave us alone. I'll talk to you when I'm done."

"Papa..." damn, this woman is stubborn.

"Nothing will happen, Mia. We will only talk. Right... Raffa?"

I stare at him for a few more seconds trying to dig into his brain and understand what's baking in there but... the legend of the toughest Don does not disappoint. He doesn't even blink while staring at me.

I turn around and grab gently Emillia's hand, crossing one arm around her back and pulling her lightly towards the hallway, and walk her to the kitchen.

"Emillia, your father and I have to talk. You left without his permission and I don't want Fabio without a good designer. Just give us a few moments and I promise it will be solved," I tell her.

"You don't know papa," she tells me with concern.

"And you don't know me. Fabio trusts me that I can handle this. So should you," I say when we are finally in the kitchen.

Her glossy honey eyes stare at me, showing a forced acceptance and concern at the same time.

I don't blame her. Her father's repute exceeds the one of any other Don in the recent history of the Italian mafia and most probably his family has lived with it, felt it, and had to run their lives in his shadow.

"When we're done, we'll have the walk I've promised. I didn't forget about it," I encourage her and boost her confidence that she'll be able to stay although I have no clue what's in Benito's mind.

"Okay," she whispers.

The sweetness of her ravishes my chest and my hands automatically put the gun away replacing it with her soft, blushed cheeks.

When my palms rest on the skin of her face, they feel like having been there for ages and right in the perfect place.

I'm falling and I don't know how to stop that. I don't know turn my back to something so powerful that I feel I don't belong to myself anymore.

And right there and then I decide that no matter how things will go with her father, she'll never leave me. She'll never be away and nobody will take her from me, not even Benito.

"Do you trust me, Mia?" I asked her in a horse tone, absorbing that light in her eyes as if it is food for my soul.

She nods and I reward her with a soft kiss on her forehead, holding her head between my hands and struggling to be tender.

I don't even know if I've succeeded. I don't know if I can be gentle enough, the way she deserves.

"I'll be right back," I say and leave her there, standing, feeling her eyes on the back of my neck.

When I'm back in the living I find Benito standing tall and mighty facing the view of the sea through the glass wall, with hands shoved in his pockets and quietly waiting.

I take my time to observe him, almost admiring him for his masterly way of handling a situation that would have made me lose my mind without a doubt.

I walk in and make sure he hears me closing in, making him turn around and face me.

None of us speaks. The air around becomes stiff and suffocating and before starting, I fill for each of us one glass of whisky, offering his and drinking mine.

Then he sits, crossing his legs and spreading his arms on the backrest of the sofa, rolling the booze in the glass making the ice cubes clang.

"You realize she can't stay," he speaks first.

"I'm not asking her to stay."

"The fuck you don't, kid! You believe this is a fair trade for the damn shipment you've lost."

I hate when he's patronizing me this way.

"No. Not at all. A fair trade would be a life for a life. Your life for my father's."

He frowns and stares at me, his vivid black eyes searching deep into mine as if down there is the secret of the world.

"Your father was like a brother to me. We grew up together, under the same roof. Until he tried to kill my wife. That was and still is a red line for anybody. And the same goes for my kids."

I glue my eyes on him, secretly amazed at how unexpectedly my fucking plans have changed.

The man I was planning to eliminate and take my revenge on in the name of my father proved to be not only someone I could admire but also family to Emillia.

Of all women of the world, I had to cross my ways with the daughter of a Don. Not just any Don, but one who still iconically represents classic mafia in Sicily and not only, one who has my fucking weapon shipment throwing me to sharks, one who is the murderer of my father and who doesn't have the slightest remorse, one whom I wished was there, by my side when danger was blowing in the back of my neck.

"Why are you here?" I ask drily.

He bends in the front and pins his elbows on the knees, drinking his booze in one go.

"I don't know how my daughter has ended up here, in your house, but surprisingly she's here by her own will."

"I had no idea she's your daughter, I swear. My revenge doesn't go so low. I needed an architect and she was the one I found fitter for the job."

It's not like I'm going to tell him that I've been knocked out by her mafia drama and silly romance stories she writes, which by the way, I truly miss.

Benito nods, really trying to show himself convinced, and then the only thing I would have never thought to come out of his mouth, it did.

"I mean don't get me wrong, she's my daughter and she's my flesh and blood that keeps me alive, but I'm surprised she managed to get this project. I'm, she doesn't design that much, all she passionately does is writing those damn stories, day and night."

"Really?" I say trying to look surprised and displaying a smirk that hasn't truly made Benito happy.

He didn't move and single muscle on his face while staring at me and waiting for me to be done acting stupid.

Which I did, immediately he made me feel abused and slaughtered by his big black eyes.

I clear my throat and become serious again trying to speak my mind but...

"I mean, you do realize she hasn't worked on a project in her life, other than the school assignments? You know that?" he says.

In a way, I truly appreciate his ambassadorial way of trying to get his daughter out before putting his hands on weapons, being still convinced I'm keeping her in my house by force or revenge.

I'm mean, don't get me wrong, I've seen him shooting and his mean fighting. I would truly be worried if he decided on that.

"She now has the chance to work on an important project, my five stars hotels, and who knows, maybe more. But look, if she decides to come with you, you can both leave this place right away," I tell him.

Stupid? Yes, I am. I know I have all the chances in the world that she leaves but if doesn't willingly stay, why force her?

I mean force her right now, because eventually, she'll still end up with me.

"You're sure?" Benito asks.

"Hundred percent! Let me call her. To be truly honest, if she decides to leave, I rather have her leave with you than alone later on. We are in the same gangster pack, Benito. We both know what liabilities mean for us," I say and give him no chance to reply.

I stand up and walk to the kitchen and on the way there the word liability resounded in my ears with every second passing by. It hurt to speak about Emillia this way, but I can't let my feelings gloom my business. And Benito is a business.

I find Emillia sitting quietly in the kitchen at the counter with a piece of cake in front of her which she mostly plays with than eats.

"Your father wants..." are the only words I manage to speak before she snaps her eyes at me and jumps from her place, walking past me straight to the living.

I follow her but stay rather behind to give them privacy. Well, okay, the impression of privacy. I can't let anything happen in my house without me knowing about it.

"Papa, I'm not coming back home," she tells him once she sees him.

"Principessa, vieni qui," I hear Benito saying in the sweetest voice I could imagine. (Princess, come here.). "I will not ask you to come home but you need to know you're not safe here," he reasons his intention of taking her with him.

Well, he is not wrong. But I won't let anyone touch Emillia, I stubbornly decide and I move from my spot, intending to interfere.

"I won't be safe anywhere, papa. It's the life we live and I can't let that make me live in fear forever. I can't hide all my life, I can't stop living because of that," she replies and I stop in my spot.

I still have a chance, thanks to this little, sweet stubborn woman who has all the premises to turn my life upside down.

~~~~~
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