Chapter 34 TYPICAL LUCIANO.
\~~~RAINA.
“Talia,” I looked up just as the glass door swung open and Alessia, Luciano’s sister stepped inside.
“You’ll be handling tomorrow’s operational presentation,” she said, pulling out the chair in front of me and settling on it.
My stomach dropped. “Tomorrow?”
“Yes.” She handed me a thin folder. “You will brief the board on our expansion progress, and you will answer any questions they throw at you. I won’t be present, so it is your floor.”
Great, Alessia, great, because why can’t you just come straight at me and tell me that you hate me and would like me to resign, instead of this unnecessary bullying?
“I am starting to think you like me so much,” I adjusted in my seat, staring at her.
“No, honey, you’ve gotten it all wrong.”
“You have been in my office four times today, to give me ridiculous assignments. Things I have no business with. I resumed like… just yesterday, and you’re about to choke me to death just on the second day.”
“So, sister in law,” she leaned closer, smiling.
“Will you resign, and just leave?”
“Oh, you wish.”
“Luciano and I struggled to build all of this,” she slammed her palm on the table.
“My brother fought so hard to become what he is and… and you think you can just come here and take away everything?”
“Why do you think he left me to handle the underworld while I handle this?” She asked.
“I don’t really care about how you two chose to run your family, Alessia. I don’t even wish for all of this.”
“No, you do. And do you know what I’ll do?”
“What?”
“Exactly what I am good at.”
“Which is?” I raised a brow.
“What? You don’t think you are the first woman in my brother’s life, do you? Even those born and raised in our world don't stand a chance against me, so, you…”
“Wait, so you are like the… Cinderella’s stepmother?”
“Wh… who is that?”
“You don’t know the story of Cinderella?” I asked her, my eyes widened.
Wait, who the actual fuck doesn’t know that?!
“Is she someone important that I have to know about?”
“What?!” I burst into laughter and palmed my lips the moment her eyes threw daggers at me.
“How exactly were you raised, sister in law? Who doesn’t know Cinderella?! How about Rapunzel? And S…”
“Who are those?”
“No one read these stories to you?”
“Stories?!” She laughed, clapping her hands together.
“I am a mafia principessa, and what?” Alessia spread her hands dramatically.
“Do you think anyone was reading me bedtime stories about girls with stupid princes?”
I blinked. “So… no Cinderella?”
“No.”
“No Rapunzel?”
“No.”
“No Sleeping Beauty? You didn’t even get Sleeping…?”
“Talia,” she breathed out slowly, “I grew up learning how to dismantle a gun with my eyes closed. Not… whatever… fairy-tale nonsense you are talking about.”
I gasped. Actually gasped.
“Oh, you poor, deprived child.”
Her eyes snapped up to mine deadly, irritated, and offended. “Deprived?!”
“Yes! Every female child deserves at least one delusional princess fantasy!” I protested, hands in the air. “What did you grow up on?”
“Blood,” she said flatly.
“Oh.”
“And knives.”
“Wow.”
“And the reminder that the world bends to people like us, not the other way around.”
“Well… that is… cute?” I swallowed.
She leaned forward, her voice cold.
“What I am telling you, sister-in-law, is this, I don’t lose. Ever. Not in business. Not in the underworld. And certainly not to someone Monroe’s family dumped on my brother’s doorstep.”
“And yet,” I said sweetly, “here I am. Right on your doorstep.”
“You’d be a clown to think I believe your marriage with my brother is based on love, or whatever.” Her jaw ticked.
Before she could snap, I continued, “Look, Alessia. You can hate me. Totally fine. I am not even offended anymore.”
“You should be.”
“Trust me, I have been offended enough times in this family. I am kind of immune now,” I smiled, shrugging my shoulders off.
She frowned at me like I was the world’s most persistent cockroach.
“I will do the presentation,” I said, tapping the folder.
“But stop pretending you are giving me these tasks because you care about the company. You just want me gone.”
“And?”
“And I am not leaving.”
She smirked, slowly and darkly.
Like the kind of smile someone makes right before war breaks out.
“We will see,” she whispered.
“Add this to your fairytale knowledge,” I whispered back.
“The villain always thinks she is winning in the middle of the story.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you calling me the villain?”
“In this office? Yes, you are.”
She stood, adjusting her coat. “Then pray you’re not Snow White.”
“Why?”
“Because I am allergic to happy endings.”
Wait, didn’t she just say she knew nothing about fairytales!
“I am very familiar with the story of Snow White, actually,” she said, pointing her index finger at me before she turned to leave the office.
Liar. Professional liar. Olympic-level liar.
I stared at the door for a full five seconds, then whispered to myself,
“What the actual hell just happened?”
I slumped back into my chair, dragging my palms over my face.
How the hell am I supposed to brief a room full of billion–dollar sociopaths about some expansion progress?
Let me not even start with the pretense that I am qualified for this.
I spread the folder open and all I could see was charts, graphs, and a map of territories that looked like someone had traced them with blood.
And on the last page, a short memo in Alessia’s handwriting was there and it went thus,
Do not embarrass us.
Wow, my very charming sister-in-law
I closed the file, staring into space like I was watching my life crumble in slow motion.
“I swear,” I muttered, “if this family doesn’t kill me, stress will.”
My phone buzzed on the table and I breathed out just by seeing the name.
Luciano.
I inhaled and picked up. “Hello?”
“Come down,” he said. No greeting, and just commands. Typical Luciano.
“What is it?”
“You have five minutes,” he said and then he hung up.
I grabbed the folder, shoved it under my arm, and marched toward the elevator.
By the time I reached the lobby, Luciano was standing near the entrance with Viktor beside him, both looking like they had just walked out of a dark crime documentary where no one survives the last episode.
His eyes locked on me instantly.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting my boss, your sister, to threaten my life using Disney references, so…”
Luciano blinked slowly. “Oh, I see you and Alessia are getting along.”
“Yes, of course. She said something about being allergic to happy endings and I guess I could say the same about you too.”
Viktor coughed in what I suspected was a warning, but he wasn’t sparing a glance.
Luciano’s jaw ticked. “Get in the car.”
“No ‘how was your day, wife’? No ‘did anyone try to kill you today’? Nothing, nothing?”
“Talia,” he warned.
I rolled my eyes and slid into the backseat.
As the door closed beside me, I whispered to myself…
“If the presentation tomorrow doesn't kill me, the Morettis definitely will.”
And unfortunately?
I wasn’t joking.