Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Then, thankfully, I convinced Joseph to make his son delay the wedding. It took some negotiating and sacrifices on our end, but he agreed.
“He can say whatever he wants,” I tell him. “But she’s not signing a marriage license until after she walks across the stage.”
If everything goes according to plan, our father will be dead, and I can tell Joseph and his son to go fuck themselves. Dad’s deteriorating quickly on his own, but Matteo and I have already discussed ending him if we need to.
“Speaking of which,” Matteo says, the humor in his voice telling me exactly where this conversation is going.
“Don’t go there,” I warn, but my brother never fucking listens. I might be feared by damn near everyone who knows our family, but there’s one person they fear more—Matteo Antonov.
“Lorenzo went to visit Daniella at boarding school,” he taunts.
“I said, don’t go there.”
I don’t want to know anything about the seventeen-year-old I’ve been arranged to marry. I’m not a good guy by any means. My family deals in drugs and weapons and has as many, if not more, illegal businesses as we do legal. I sold my soul a long time ago. But even I have my limits, and pedophilia is a hard one.
Not too long ago, our men found out a few guys in South Harbor Point were selling underage sex tapes on the dark web from their basement. We wiped them from the face of the earth and made an example out of them. Nobody fucks with underage women in this city. So, just the thought of marrying Daniella Russo, who’s fourteen years younger than me, makes my stomach churn.
It was supposed to happen when she turned eighteen, but when my father and I renegotiated the terms for Brielle, Giuseppe—Daniella’s father—insisted his daughter be allowed to go to college as well, thanks to me putting that bug in his ear. While I did it for Brielle, a small part of me made the deal in hope of avoiding having to spend my life with a woman I have no desire to be with.
“You can live in denial all you want,” Matteo says, “but in four years—”
“Anything can happen.”
Don’t get me wrong. She might be pretty—hell, she might even be beautiful, but I wouldn’t know since I haven’t seen her in years since her parents sent her off to boarding school when she was younger—but regardless of her age, I’ll always see Daniella Russo as the little girl with pigtails and braces, running around the backyard at our parents’ annual Fourth of July party.
Not that our fathers give a shit about that. Andrey Antonov, Giuseppe Russo, and Joseph Rothschild only care about three things: money, power, and control.
Even when they were younger, when most guys their age were fucking around, they were building their empires and strategizing how to make them stronger. And I gotta give it to them—they succeeded in owning damn near the entire city we live in, as well as the surrounding area and the port that controls most of the import and export to major countries, like the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Colombia.
“Anything can happen,” Matteo agrees, “but you know they’re hell-bent on seeing their plan through.”
Their plan …
My thoughts go back to when I was a teenager and learned of my father’s ludicrous scheme.
“One day, this empire will rest on your shoulders, son,” Dad said in a tone that conveyed his seriousness. “And when that day comes, you’re going to have to do things to ensure our power and control remain.”
“Like what?” I asked curiously.
I was no stranger to the shady shit my father had done over the years. While some dads tried to keep their children’s innocence for as long as possible, Andrey Antonov believed in tough love. He might be rich and powerful now, but it hadn’t always been that way, and he thought that if he took it easy on us, he’d make us soft.
I had been five the first time I watched him slice a man’s neck for betraying him.
At ten, I’d witnessed him murder a city official because he was going to come between him and a development my dad was passionate about.
At twelve, I’d killed for the first time—a motel owner who had been lying to Dad about what he was up to. He’d paid Dad for protection, and in doing so, Dad got a cut of the women he prostituted. But he hadn’t been honest about how much he was bringing in, and Dad had said an example needed to be made out of him.
And when I’d been thirteen, he’d forced me to go with him to a sex club, where he got footage to blackmail a politician. While there, he insisted I lose my virginity so I would become a man—his words, not mine.