No Strings Attached

CHAPTER 15

I open the door to exit the room and wait until Anastasia to walk out before following her. I can't deny she has talent, it's possibly the best tattoo I've ever had done.

I hear heavy footsteps coming down the stairs and I look up to see a shadow approaching.

"Anastasia where the fuck have you been?" the voice shouts, "You know I want you here every night to discuss how-" he cuts himself off when he reaches the bottom of the stairs, his gaze hardening when he sees me.

My eyes meet the drunken ones of Leonardo Rossi, the man who sent me the letter the other day, a letter which has been doing my fucking head in since the moment it arrived.

"What the fuck is he doing here?" he snarls, and I notice Anastasia freezes when her gaze focuses on the empty bottle in Leonardo's hand.

She takes a step back and I gently place my hand on her lower back, "I was just getting a tattoo," I say cooly, trying to ignore the way Anastasia relaxes under my touch.

"I don't want any of those wretched people in my house again," Leonardo snaps, glaring at his granddaughter.

"My house, and he was just about to pay," Anastasia says coldly, moving away from my hand as Leonardo mutters something under his breath before storming back upstairs.

She shakes her head and walks behind the front desk, putting the eftpos machine in front of me as I pay. She rips the receipt off and scrunches it up, I open up my wallet and take out a hundred dollar bill, placing it on the counter, "A tip for your troubles," I mutter, not saying another word as I turn around and walk out of the store.

I check the road and quickly cross it, unlocking my car as I sit inside. I go to check the road to see if it's safe to pull out but my eye is caught by Anastasia running out of the store, her face panicked as she practically leaps into her car before taking a deep breath and driving away.

Is she really that scared of her Grandfather?

I shake my head and decide to go to my penthouse before driving home, needing time to think clearly about everything.

I pull out onto the road and start the short drive to my penthouse, leaning back in my seat as I try to get Anastasia out of my mind.

After the letter from Leonardo I believed it, or more so I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe the letter so that I had an adequate reason for killing Anastasia, finally taking down The Fiore Mortale who's plagued my Mafia for so long. If the letter is true, my family has no reason to doubt me and my motives, but if it's not true, they have reason to question me.

I believed the letter until I saw the way Anastasia acted around Leonardo today, too tense for a Grandfather-Granddaughter relationship.

She was scared of him, acting stand-offish until she saw the empty bottle in his hands, then she acted strangely. As if it triggered her, making her incapable of standing up for herself.

I don't know why she acted that way, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that she is a threat. Regardless of who's ideas the hits were, Anastasia is the one who carried them out so is the one who has to pay.

It might be unfair to take it out on Anastasia is she's not the only behind it all, but in the Mafia there's no time to get caught up in guilt like that. For if I sat in my guilt every time I did something, I would get nothing done and just be a wreck, so it's easier to detach yourself from emotions and spare no thoughts.

I arrive at my penthouse and park in the underground garage, going up the elevator to my floor. The door rings and I step out, ignoring the overly happy receptionist as I push the door open to my level, closing it behind me as I toss my blazer over a chair.

I take a seat at the kitchen table and open my laptop, trying to find security footage of outside the tattoo parlour, trying to figure out where Anastasia went.

If she was trying to escape her Grandfather, she would have gone to a safe house of some sorts, but instead her car drives off into the direction of Le Aquile Rosse's infamous house. No doubt to tell them about my booking.

They don't know I'm onto them now, so I'll let them stress about it.

I'm not sure how Le Aquile Rosse and Anastasia are connected, or if it's purely as a show of her power, but she's fucking with the wrong Mafia if that's the case.

Not only will she lose her life, but she'll have to watch me kill every member of that fucking gang first, payback for targeting my Mafia.

Everyone in the underworld knows the price for targeting us, and if it's a mistake they're foolish enough to make, it's a price they'll have to pay.

A price Anastasia thinks she can dodge, only adding to my list of reasons to hate her. She's made a fucking fool out of me, defying me, taunting me. Thinking she can kill my men then retreat back to the 'safety' of Le Aquile Rosse. A safety net which will no longer work, for no one escapes Vincenzo De Santis.

Never have I let a threat run free, and I'll be damned if The Fiore Mortale is the first one to escape.

What infuriates me even more is that my own family won't take her seriously. Refusing to register her as a threat purely because of her parents. I know what it's like to not be taken seriously because of a parents legacy, and it pisses me off that the same is happening to her. In no way do I feel sorry for her for my parents pity, but the fact that she has their sympathy just makes them undermine me even more.

My parents tapped into this a few years back and got me a therapist, a fucking waste of time. I ended up killing him when he asked me to journal my feelings, his useless blocks of time distracting me from my work. Distracting me from the threat all those years ago, the threat which almost ended up costing me my whole family.

It's softness like that which can be exploited, a softness I dare not show to the outside world. If my enemies knew how deeply I care for my family's safety they would take advantage of that, and I refuse to let that happen.

But a weakness in Anastasia which I can exploit is her fear towards her Grandfather. I can work with him to get to Anastasia, he snitched on her so I have no doubt he would like nothing more than to be part of her downfall.

I know I wouldn't be able to tell my family about these plans, as they all believe Leonardo was the mastermind behind everything. But it's not like I would keep him around, I'd kill him alongside his granddaughter.

I sigh and watch Anastasia's car drive off in the direction of Le Aquile Rosse's house for the hundredth time, each time filling me with more disgust.

If she wanted to kill me she should've done it when she was tattooing me, not escaping like a pussy to her vintage motorcycle gang.

I smirk as I watch her scared face rushing into her car. She has no idea I'm onto her and fuck that excites me.

//

Not sure how I feel about this chapter, but it'll do for now,

Next chapter will be out tomorrow, so until then have a good day/night and don't forget to vote!!

Abi <3