Union Of Death (Secrets of The Famiglia Part 2)

I go to my journal and pick it up and take it across the room where I move the rug on the wall aside and open my safe, placing the book in a more secure venue. I ignore Aliyana’s tantrum, because that is what it is, a tantrum.

This isn’t about the book; I see it now. It is about us and it’s time we talked.

“I love Camilla, Aliyana, but I’m not in love with her.” My voice is not raised in my confession, nor is it changed by the truth. Because for Aliyana this is news to her, but for me, I have said those words in my head every single day I laid my cursed soul in her path. Every time I stepped foot in her home I have said those words in my head.

She turns around and I see her tear-stricken face, “I don’t want to hear it, I just want to leave and stay gone, please Marco.”

“No, hear me out, if you still want to leave then go.”

“Leaving you when I did and how I did was the only option there was. Marrying me comes with a heady price tag.”

“Mischa?” She asks, and I nod as she moves into the room, further away from the door.

“Yes, and no. I come with an early death sentence. I have a lot of enemies, many of them. When I saw you on that rooftop you stole a piece of me, I didn’t want to give to anyone, and every day since, you took more. But like you, I made Ren promises, and one of them was leaving you to live your life.”

“What? But I only met you that day, and Ren died that night.” She comes closer to me and her eyes are so confused but wary.

you were a kid. Never meeting you in person was

“I don’t understand.”

But I didn’t want to put a child’s face to the woman who

you chose Camilla.”

I changed my mind a bit too late. My father agreed to Dante Moretti’s terms and

you chose to hurt me instead? Do you have any idea how

marry you in secret and keep you here just like Elladio did with his wife.” A tear leaks from her eyes and she looks behind me at the painting of the beautiful woman who once graced this library. A woman

you hated me, I convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough, it took me months to get

graze her arm which she moves and turns away

me there, then you announced to the entire world that your marrying Camilla. Now what?

her waist, “I’m

time with Aliyana so close to me and not having her be mine, has made me realize that I want her and my brother is right, I am not just a Catelli and Elladio DeMarco found a way to be with his

Aliyana, you can’t leave me, never again.”

things in her ear as she quietens down.

two of his children to be married to a Catelli, don’t you get it?

Aliyana, your father is a man, like all of us.” I will kill him if I have to, she will hate me but eventually, she will learn to live with it. She lifts herself up from her position and looks at me with her red-streaked face, and glistening green eyes, and I swear my soul leaves