Silva

Chapter Fourteen

• Silva •

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My mother is an awful woman and a driving force behind the Silva family.

Brilliant, cunning, and frighteningly vindictive.

I'm the head of the Silva family, but one command from her can start a war with another criminal empire. My permission be damned.

In a way, she is also the boss.

"Speak, boy," my mother orders while dabbing her lips on the burgundy napkin.

There is nothing to talk about. It'd be a waste of time to say anything when she knows everything. My mother has eyes everywhere, especially inside the Silva family.

She hates being kept in the dark, so she takes it upon herself to find the truth even if it means wrecking everything in her path.

I take after her, and I don't regret turning out to be the man I am today.

A single decision, no matter how small, can determine if I could've met Irisa or not. She's an addiction, one that I'm willing to keep for the rest of my life.

She's a special type of poison, slow and directive, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to eat her up.

As graceless and awkward she is, every stumble with her little feet changes her poisonous presence to venomous when she falls into my open arms. I'd still welcome her while knowing the repercussions.

"The toy you've kept a secret," my mother barks.

Rattling chains cuts through the heavy tension, I steal a glance at the wall where a man kneels on his blistered shins and arms twisted behind him. The chained wrists have different healing stages as the man with hollow eye sockets listens for my mother's voice.

I don't understand her fancy with eyeless men, and I don't want to know what she does with the ones she scooped out with her fingers.

"Get rid of her or I will," my mother warns.

I match the wrath of her glare. The steak knife in her hand gleams daringly under the chandelier, despairing for warm blood to coat the pristine cutlery.

"She's mine; don't get involved and don't touch her."

The psychotic mania in her eyes turns into a silent storm of lunacy. I just know she's planning something. She never backs down when her tongue holds a bitter promise of pain and cruelty.

I'm used to the destruction she brings, so this will be a normal Sunday. Once the bloodlust curbs, she'll return to the same well-dressed and mannerly woman with interest for the next tragedy.

My mother is truly a distorted atrocity.

I will contest her with unparalleled, perverse brutality if she so grazes a hair on my little girl.

"She is a curse," my mother says rather blithely with a sip of her wine.

Irisa is not a curse. She's slightly different, but she is not a catastrophe waiting to happen.

She smiles in a way that makes me question it, behaves with uncertainty looming over her, and speaks as if she's losing figments of her identity.

She doesn't notice it. I'm perceptive and observant of her; she's calling out for help.

Being undercover FBI is not the worst thing she can do. I can easily find out with a corrupted agent or inconsistencies in her identity. I still have her file, but I never read it.