Ruthless Prince (Dark Syndicate 1)
So that’s it…
I take the pen. Tears blind me as I sign away my life and my dreams.
The tears fall onto the contract as my vision blurs.
“Take her to the house,” Massimo commands. Someone takes my arm.
I don’t know who it is. I just move, feeling numb inside. I can’t look at my father as I leave
.
How could he do this to me? Sell me.
Instead of looking forward to my dreams, I’m walking to what I know will be my destruction.
What else could it be?
Chapter Two
Massimo
I stare after Manni, my head guard, as he takes Emelia away. If I were finished up here, I’d take her to the house myself. Not him.
I already feel my blood boiling watching him touch her. Watching him touch what’s mine. The Balesteri Princess, a woman deemed to be prized.
She’s the princess locked away in the tower. I just moved her from one tower to another. The difference about this story is, there will be no prince to save her. No one will come to give her freedom. She is the spoils of war. The trophy I came to collect.
If I were a better man, I’d feel sorry for her. She’s a victim, a piece on the chess board who now belongs to me.
“It’s done,” the lawyer, that fucktard Marzetti, says. I return my focus to them as he applies the Balesteri family seal to the contract.
“Good,” Pa says, taking back the lead on this visit of ours.
Although I can feel Riccardo’s heated gaze on me, I watch Marzetti as he gathers the contract and the other documents with our offer and starts placing them in an envelope.
He’s what I call a ‘yes man’. An irritating, spineless piece of shit who does what he’s told. That’s what he does. Vermin who worked for Riccardo way back when. I stare the asshole down and wonder if he remembers me as a boy. I’m sure he does. He’s been looking at me like he remembers me just fine.
As he and his company of fuckers came to throw my family out of our home, I stared him down just like I am now. Back then, he laughed at me and called me a foolish child. I was ten years old. Now I’m twenty-nine, and I’m about to take over my father’s empire. An empire he built from the nothingness we had.
With the handover of leadership, the repayment of the debt will come to me.
Unlike the foolish child I was called, I now own Emelia and close to sixty percent of all Balesteri assets. The rest will come when turns twenty-one.
Power is a beautiful thing. It’s so much better when you can taste it and feel it coursing through your veins.
Marzetti is not laughing now. He’s shit scared, the same as that devil Riccardo.
Pa and I are here before him, and we are so far from powerless, useless, or helpless. Unlike that day at the cemetery, there’s not a damn thing anybody would be able to do if we killed every motherfucker in this house.
“May I go now?” Marzetti asks when he’s finished. I almost laugh. He looks like he’s ready to shit himself.
Riccardo looks even worse for the fact that his beloved lawyer had to ask us permission to leave.
“You may,” Pa answers. We don’t need a lawyer for what happens next.
It’s Syndicate business and as such will be handled between us. It will be interesting to watch. I continue to stare at Marzetti, who hurries out of here, scurrying away like the rat he is.
“Leave us,” Riccardo tells his men, and they follow.