Bloody City: Temptations

Chapter Eleven

I'd understood what it meant to be close to the Don of a powerful Familia. I hadn't expected the difference between how when my father said he'd be home late, that meant midnight at the latest; and so my mom would just stay up with tea and greet him at the door when he walked through the door. Alessio was as I should have predicted, different.

It had been almost five hours since he disappeared into the night and as I'd seen so many times before I made myself a cup of tea, found a blanket, and a book to curl up with in the living room. The large black and gold clock above the fireplace proclaiming each passing second with an almost inaudible tick. The small hand resting at the two and the large just past the second thick notch in the top right corner.

Then as I flipped my page and set down what must have been my sixth cup of tea I heard the sound of an engine and spotted the black Mercedes Coupe that Alessio had taken where I could see Alessio his dark suit darker in places along with his hair being messy and falling over his face with the splatter of something over his hands and face.

What happened?

Then Lino walked through the front door, a few specks of a dark crimson liquid on his face but no where near the amount as there was on Alessio.

"Lino, what happened to him?" I ask and the blonde haired man glanced at me before sighing.

"Your fiancés work is something to discuss with him, he's okay though nothing happened to him," Lino replies before walking away towards one of the halls leading away from the entryway.

When I turned back around there stood Alessio covered in blood with bruised hands and looking like he'd walked through a civil war in hell.

He actually looked like he'd personally killed an army.

"Alessio, whose blood are you covered in?" I ask my voice surprisingly stable though I knew it couldn't be his, he hadn't once been caught by any of the other Familias he'd stood against and he was known for not ever being gotten the better of. If this was his blood. He'd done for worse to whoever it was on the other end.

"A small pocket of mafioso's were caught rigging a bomb to an Underbosses car, which is a sign of war," Alessio says darkly, "I'm covered in the blood of those who tried to break the code. Which results in death here in my territory".

The longer he stood here the more I'd caught the smell of iron, the smell of blood. The smell of death.

This must have been how he earned his nickname.

"Arianna, I need you to say something," he says trying to soften his tone and only partially succeeding or just succeeding to where his voice would allow him.

"How, how many people did you kill?" I ask feeling my gut twist but I wanted to know, I needed to know. Most fiancés or wives of Mafia members didn't ask, it wasn't their place but I was going to marry the Boss of the largest family in Italy and the one who was the boss of all other Familias.

"Twenty...seven," Alessio says looking straight at me before moving past me and putting the key away into it's correct spot.

"And how many have you killed Alessio?" I ask at least knowing that if I could accept the fact the man I was going to marry was exactly who he said he was I'd know I'd have an honest marriage.

"twenty-five thousand, likely more. Like I've told you I am not a good man Arianna, and I won't pretend to be. I just won't be a cruel man towards you ever," he adds with a level of conviction that I wasn't prepared for at any degree, and it seemed to travel through me, because I'd heard enough stories to know that he did all those things for his Familia, and he wasn't blinded by tradition he was adaptable, and I wondered if he just hid the kinder part of himself because of his past. The one I didn't know anything about, other then he and his siblings, and mother were abused by his father.