Page 103 of King of Omen

He sat back, eyes on me, hands crossed over his chest.

‘You’re a tough nut to crack, Mia, but you’ve taught me what it means to cherish you.’

I gazed into his eyes, realising that I had been holding onto a lot of anger and hurt from the past.

My reticence with Lorenzo wasn’t just about him; it was about my father, who’d attempted to control me and my mother so much that she’d run from him.

However, I also recognised my man was trying his best to be genuine and remorseful, making every effort to change.

‘I know, Lorenzo. Just be patient with me.’

He nodded, understanding the weight of my words. ‘I can do that.’

I stroked his hand. ‘I need you to trust me and let me take things at my own pace.’

He kissed my palm, eyes soft, rasp timbered with need. ‘I want you to be happy, and if that means taking us slow, then so be it.’

I tilted my head, raising a brow, vowing to hold him to that promise.

Chapter 20

LORENZO

Damn, Mia.

She was becoming my entire reason for breathing.

Yet she was also infuriating, hard to control, her own woman, and a rebel at heart.

I had to persist in earning her faith because I had no clue how to navigate a future without her.

Still, until this Abrazzio shit was out of the way, it’d be unfair to ask more of her.

My job was to regain her trust and keep all hell from raining down on us.

That thought propelled me back downstairs and into my office, where I hunkered to work.

First, I listened to the encrypted wiretaps Alessio had dispatched and trawled through drone footage.

Extracted from bugs placed in the Abrazzios’ homes and clips caught in cameras hidden on hovering tiny drones we’d deployed to scout key Abrazzio hangouts.

The wiretaps revealed Ricco Abrazzio complaining about his family’s financial woes and ongoing crisis. ‘We are a mafia of lost causes—weak and flapping in the wind.’

This once influential leader who’d controlled the fates of police officers and journalists was now losing his ability to intimidate.

In their panic, the Abrazzio clan had come for us, claiming that the Calibreses planned to sell them up the river to authorities—a wild, stupid, and unfounded accusation.

Their accusation chose to dishonour the concept we’d stood for - silence.

I would not let Don Abrazzio erode our reputation nor bring us down in his manufactured vendetta.

So began the hunt for the truth to cover our backs.

With every piece of data we analysed, it became clear that the Abrazzio clan was desperate, vulnerable and hunting for allies.

One of the best pieces of evidence was the confirmation Don Abrazzio had established a binding bilateral and subordinate drug distribution deal with the ruthless Calabrian Cadaveri, one of the most brutal drug gangs in the region.

The family, however, needed to catch up on their repayments from their deals and were using any profits they earned to pay back old loans.

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