Reign (The Larussio Legacy Book 3)

by Via Mari

  I am just about to intervene and stop this entire thing when my great-uncle’s voice bellows through the intercom system one word: “Enough.”

  Serena has more than passed the test.

  “Leave us!” I say, dismissing Gretta with a nod and waiting until she’s upstairs and has closed the door behind her. I walk toward Serena’s hunched frame still bent over the bench, pressing the button on the wall that will turn off the audio wired into the room. I run my hand down the smoothness of her back, massaging the tight and rigid muscles in an attempt to coax her upward. “Serena, it’s over. You’ve more than passed the test, Tesoro.”

  She doesn’t raise up though and instead becomes very still. “Is she gone?”

  “The audio is off, and she’s gone, Serena. I’m so very sorry, Tesoro. I didn’t intend to let you go through with the search, he just stopped it sooner than I did. He’s grown very fond of you. He didn’t even want to subject you to the normal approach,” I say, caressing her back.

  She lets me stroke her for a moment, but then stands to face me, covering her breasts with her arms.

  “This is what you and the Family do to innocent people? I don’t even want to know what the normal approach is, Giovanni!”

  She has suffered so much at the hands of the Family, and now this. “I wouldn’t have let it go much farther before calling it off,” I say, purposely avoiding her question about the normal protocol. “You weren’t ever on camera, only audio, Tesoro. You have come to mean a great deal to Great-Uncle, but he had to be certain,” I tell her, not quite sure who I am trying to convince of this more.

  The look she gives me is withering. “That Amazon woman, she really would have searched someone else? I was joking, a sick-as-hell joke, but you are serious!”

  My jaw tightens. “You want me to lie to you or tell you the truth?”

  “Tell me the truth, Giovanni. God! This Family has always messed with my head! You know that, yet I am subjected to this while you do nothing to stop it! That’s bad enough, but what are the others subjected to? Tell me!”

  I can’t tell her everything and run my hand through my hair in frustration. “The Family knows that you are mine, and as such, you were provided certain protections, and that’s why we had a female in the room for you.”

  Serena’s eyes darken, and she slaps me square across the face. “You and your Family! Disgusting!” she says, turning from me to walk toward her clothes that were left in a heap on the floor.

  I rub my cheek where the fresh imprint of her hand is still heated and fresh and watch her bend down and slip into her panties, and my cock hardens. She may be mad as hell at me, but he doesn’t care. He wants her anyway. “Serena.”

  She ignores me, and I allow it, watching her in that position, letting her gather her blouse from the ground while my cock throbs in my pants. When she stands, she doesn’t turn to me until she’s fully covered herself. While my cock may have been tracking her body, my mind has been contemplating the very real possibility that this was simply too much for her.

  She has done what it takes to be part of the Family, but there are some things that she just doesn’t understand. I should have never told her that she got off lightly. Damn, she is pissed, and she doesn’t even know the half of it! If this had been anyone but Serena, they certainly wouldn’t have been afforded a woman. I am not the one in charge. This is how things have been handled for years, and maybe one day in the future it will change, but that day is not today.

  Serena’s looking at me with those deep brown eyes that are usually either innocent and doe-like or filled with worry for her nonna and family, but this is neither, this is different. I’ve never seen the emotion that has settled into her eyes—pure anger, fury, and I try to gauge what else, perhaps outright revulsion?

  “You asked the don of Italy if he would kill someone for you. Tesoro, I know that you were only baring your heart and wishes because of your fondness for my family, but there are many others that would love to bring the Family to their knees. The wires we were checking for are put in place every single day to try to do just that. The only way the Family can mitigate the risk is to ensure strict protocols are in place when something like that transpires. You know in your heart that Great-Uncle didn’t want to go through with it. So, we found a different way to make sure any of the Family questioning would know that you were not an agent or trying to get a drop on the Family. That is all.”

  She’s looking at me with those deep brown eyes, but there’s no light in them at all. I know what she’s going to say before she even parts her lovely lips to speak, and my chest tightens as I swallow past the growing lump in my throat.

  “We are too different, Giovanni. I thought I could fit into your life, but you will always have to follow the Family’s direction. It could not have been more clear tonight,” Serena says, turning.

  “Serena, if you are going to walk away, you at least need to hear me out.”

  “What, Giovanni? What can you possibly have to say that would help me forget this night and what the Family was going to ask me to do?”

  “We didn’t ask you to do it. That’s what you are forgetting, Serena. I gave you the clues, to let you know it was a farce. I watched as you realized exactly that it was for show. How could you think for one minute I would allow anyone, the Family or not, to subject you to that? My family cares about you. They found a way to ensure that any other Family member that would question would know that we had done our due diligence to protect the Family, without actually going through with it.”

  She nods, and I think I might be getting through to her. “It was humiliating, but you’re right, I did know it was a farce. I understood the clues this time, Giovanni. I know that you love me and knew that you weren’t going to let it go too far. That much I understand, but what you don’t understand is that it doesn’t matter. The fact that if it had been anyone but me, they would have put some other poor woman through the humiliation of having a man actually search their most private parts to ensure they weren’t traitors is appalling to me. I can’t wrap my brain around it, Giovanni. You just accept it as routine and the Family protocol.”

  How the hell do I explain this to her when it’s been just one of the things that I haven’t been able to reconcile myself for years. The ways of the Family are part of the reason I ventured out on my own, built a legitimate empire. “Serena, you have to believe me when I tell you that I don’t condone this treatment, of you or anyone else.”

  “Then why did you let it go on at all?” she cries, turning and poking me in the chest.

  I capture her hand, the one that’s intending to poke me again, before bringing it to my lips. “Serena, you know better. You weren’t compromised. You had the power. You knew far before you opened your blouse that how you went about ensuring the Family knew you weren’t a threat was up to you. Tell me you didn’t know that,” I demand.

  She looks down, and then after a few long moments, which I give her, she nods. “You are right. I did know, because you gave me the clues. You’re right, I did have a choice, and I could have handled it in a multitude of ways, but that doesn’t excuse you or the Family! They have no right to demand anything of anyone, and yet they do! Do you see how sick this is? Do you understand the reason that I can’t be with you, Giovanni?”

  Gio

  As she walks up the stairs and out of my life, it takes everything that I have not to bring her kicking and screaming back to my arms. I will myself to remain calm and give her this space after all that she has been through.

  I send Sal a text to ensure Serena is taken to her family when they are shown to the property, and almost immediately my phone lights up with his incoming call.

  “Nate just took Serena to her cabin, and her family is just starting to arrive. She asked Nate to drive her back to the airport in the morning. She made a call on the ride over and lined up a job with the air service sh
e works for. I looked into her a little bit when you first became involved, and as you can imagine, she’s the first choice for a service attendant on anyone’s flight. No drama, classy, and always exceptional service is what I see on the reviews, over and over.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute,” I say.

  “Giovanni, you need to do something, or she will be gone tomorrow. She needs a driver at 4 a.m. to get her to the private airstrip. She is adamant about leaving and going back to work. We need a game plan!” Salvatore says.

  I shake my head as though he can see me through the phone, because the words just don’t come quite yet. After all that I have put her through, and all that she has shared with me, there is no possibility that I can hold her back. If she wants to leave, if she feels so strongly about needing to leave, then far be it from me or anyone in the Family to hold her against her will. “Let her go, Sal. Make sure that Jay and his team are safeguarding her, but the Family, we do nothing.”

  “You can’t be serious! Giovanni, have you lost your fucking mind! She doesn’t know what’s best for her, you do!” Salvatore explodes.

  “I thought I did, Sal, but instead I ended up finishing us. She doesn’t want anything to do with me or the Family. She can’t get past the fact that we put her to a test. She knows that if we didn’t care about her it would have been way worse. It’s my own fault. She told me she wanted to know everything, all eyes in, and I promised her nothing less.”

  “So, she saw the truth and it’s too much,” Salvatore says. “Great-Uncle’s looking for an update. He’s been pacing the floors since the ears went silent after you turned off the intercom.”

  “Well, how about we tell him the truth? She saw the monsters we are and left. Plain and simple,” I say.

  “You really believe that nonsense you’re spewing? Our Family protects all the people in our country from a multitude of issues. Deaths from horrible drugs infiltrating the country, all the trafficking, you name it and we’re fighting against it.”

  “Yeah, except when our own Family was extracting money from the most vulnerable in our country. How do you explain that, Sal?”

  “That is a grave and horrendous tragedy, one which will take a great deal of time to make right, but we will do it, Giovanni. Even as we speak, our people are working to find each and every family that was blackmailed under our name, and we will make it right, no?”

  “Sal, I know you’re working diligently on this, and I should care more, but I just don’t. Right now, I just need eyes on Serena. I know the security team have her under surveillance, but I need to make sure that someone in the Family is watching out for her, too.”

  “I’ll do whatever you need, Gio, but at some point, we’re going to sit down and talk about the Family, the good we do in this country and its future,” Salvatore says.

  “We will, but right now I just need a little time,” I say, disconnecting and heading to my room. The very place I should be sharing with Serena. How in less than an hour things can go from great to absolute shit, I will never know. That’s not really true, because I do know. It’s this Family, it’s the shadow of the Larussios, never far and always lurking.

  I strip out of my suit and throw on my running gear before heading downstairs to pound out my frustration on the treadmill. I should never have told her that other women would have been subjected to far more humiliation during a search. Hell, I didn’t even have a chance to tell her that those women were undercover, trying to get a drop on the Family by cozying up to one of the men in the Family, not that it would have made any difference.

  In the end, what I told her was honest. She deserves that if she’s going to be part of this Family, and now she knows the truth. Well, not entirely the whole truth. I didn’t tell her that those women probably didn’t make it out alive. I’m usually spared even base knowledge about these things, but I do know that if this Family thinks you are a traitor or are trying to get any information that could be used to bring harm or prison to the Family, you will not live.

  My phone buzzes with an incoming call from my great-uncle. Damn it all to hell! An hour on this fucking machine and I’m still wound as tight as a drum and in no mood to discuss Serena with him right now. I send the call to voicemail and slow the machine before heading to the weights. I’m resting in between sets when I look up into the mirror on the wall and see my great-uncle standing in the door frame of the gym behind me. “We need to talk, Giovanni.”

  I sit up on the weight bench and turn to face him. “What do we need to discuss? She’s made her decision. She’s gone.”

  “I forbid it, Giovanni!”

  “No disrespect intended, but you can’t just fix this by forbidding it. I should have never allowed the test. Never! But I did, and that’s on me. I’ll have to live with that decision for the rest of my life. Every goddamn time I think about Serena, I will have to wonder what the hell ever possessed me to agree to your fucking protocols!”

  His dark eyes narrow at me. “Come, Giovanni, was it the test? Because I think Serena knew exactly what she was doing, knew that she was being tested. No?”

  He sees too goddamn much for his own good and for mine, or Sal’s been flapping his fucking lips to the old man. “I told her she got off light, and she wanted to know the truth about what really happens to others in the same situation.”

  He looks incredulously at me. “Giovanni, what did you tell Serena?”

  “The truth, I told her the fucking truth! That if she weren’t protected by us, she would have been subjected to far worse humiliation and it wouldn’t have been at the hands of a woman by any fucking means of the imagination. Just that alone had her running out of here, scared out of her mind. What do you think would have happened if I had told her everything? Should I have told her that if anyone else had asked you to kill for them they would’ve been lucky to make it out alive? Maybe she would have felt better about that? No?”

  “Enough, Giovanni!”

  “No, she asked me for the truth. She needs to know the truth, and I need to give her time to process. Would you prefer she find out how our Family operates after we’ve been married and everyone has gotten far closer to her? Perhaps when children are involved?”

  Great-Uncle starts to say something, but I’m just not in the mood and interrupt him before he can get a word out. “If she’s unable to accept the realities of this Family, then she can walk away. I will allow it, and she will remain under the protection of the Family,” I say.

  “You seem to have forgotten that you are not yet the don, Giovanni, and those decisions are not yours to make.”

  “This is my call to make. She has done nothing but love this family, it is just too much for her. She has plans to leave the estate tomorrow, and our Family will allow it because she needs time, and we will protect her! We will call the Family and security together later in the day and put a plan in place to keep her safe from the time she leaves the estate.”

  Great-Uncle’s eyes gleam with moisture and he shakes his head. “If you would just stop talking and talking and just listen. It is too late. She has taken matters into her own hands. She is already gone, Giovanni, Serena is already gone.”

  Serena

  Nate is a good man, one of the many security agents who protect the Family and those they care about. Salvatore has arranged for him to give me a ride to the cabin my family and I are supposed to stay in, which is located somewhere on this vast property. I also know that he is loyal, and not to me, but that little piece of knowledge will work in my favor. I purposely call my employer while he’s focused on driving but within earshot, and accept a new assignment to provide service for a flight to Paris the next day, and then ask him to drive me to the airstrip the following morning at 4 a.m.

  I know exactly when Nate has divulged this information to his employers, because Sal’s ring tone immediately lights up my phone. Salvatore Larussio may be feared and
revered by all of those who don’t know him personally, but he has become as close as a brother to me. It makes me sad to ignore his call, but he is part of this Family who does these despicable things. There is no way to reconcile the way the Larussios treat people, after what I learned. I was fortunate. I knew Giovanni would only allow it to go so far, even before Great-Uncle intervened, but what about the other women? What about their humiliation when these men make them strip and then search them in places that only lovers should see? They aren’t even given the decency of having a woman do it. Horrible, unforgivable!

  Nate walks with me from the car to the cottage, where I am greeted by my brothers, who have a multitude of questions about why they’ve been brought back to the Larussio estate. They should be happy that they are being protected, but sadly that is not the case, and they continue to fire question after question at me. They will never truly be friends of the Larussios. I try to answer all of them, but I am just simply too exhausted and beg a brief time out in order to freshen up and make a few calls.

  When I return, Sal has arrived and is talking with Nate. He looks like he’s about to say something to me, too, but glances around at my brothers and decides it’s probably not a very good idea, and I have no doubt they have been bombarding him with questions in my absence. It’s not long before he leaves, presumably to flap his loose lips to that no-good Giovanni! Well, he can flap all he wants, because little does he know that he will be doing exactly as I wish.

  I let my brothers and Nate know I’m going for a walk and make my way into the fresh air. The estate is like a fortress, so the security team can let their guard down while we are within these walls, but still I make sure no one is watching before heading towards the car that brought my brothers and is still parked in the driveway. The driver is down the lane having a quick smoke break. With one more glance around to make sure I’m not seen, I quietly open the back door of the sedan. I shrug out of my light jacket and lay uncomfortably across the bottom of the backseat floor, pulling the jacket over the top of me. If someone passes by and looks down into the window, all they will see is a crumpled old jacket lying in the backseat of the car.