Page 29 of Undeniable

She laughs lightly and shoves his shoulder playfully.

“Thanks jerk.”

Alessandro laughs as he opens the frige, attempting to reach the eggs, which Tasha helps him with. They start going about their morning like any other day, meanwhile I am frozen in place watching them, not knowing what to do.

“Don’t you have to go to work, Papa?” Alessandro asks.

Tasha keeps her eyes focused on the omelet she appears to be making and doesn’t even bother to glance in my direction unlike Alessandro.

I nod before I hold my arms out to him. I hug him quickly, all while keeping my eyes trained on her.

“I love you, be good,” I say as I kiss the top of Alessandro’s head and stand up to my full height.

Still, Tasha’s eyes never leave the damn stove and for some ridiculous reason it pisses me off. My jaw ticks and I turn on my heel, opening and slamming the front door shut a lot harder than necessary. What is wrong with me? This is a good thing. Alessandro gets to keep the nanny that he adores and has grown attached to and there are no expectations for more from me or Tasha.

If this is so good though, why do I feel like I am going to fucking vomit.

-

It has been 2 weeks since the night in the elevator. In that time, Tasha has barely said 5 words to me. She is cordial and professional but cold and detached. She seems to genuinely be happy to see Alessandro but holds nothing but contempt for me.

Over the passing weeks my conflictions have only grown. More than a few times I have found myself wondering if I made a mistake walking out on her like that. If maybe this is the best, if she is the best. It doesn’t really matter. Any shot that I could have had is long gone now.

Since Luca is at home with Ashlynn and the kids, I have been handling things in his place. Unfortunately, Ashlynn’s water broke at a really inconvenient time for us.

Our latest shipment of coke went missing a few weeks ago. It took us a bit, but we were finally able to track it down to some dock in Virginia. We went to look into things and to hopefully figure out who the fuck stole from us. We were able to get the shipping paperwork so that we could find out who had it re-directed from the original location up in New York. We haven’t been able to dig up much since it was obviously authorized under a fake name.

We haven’t had any issues with really anyone in a while, so the missing shipment was definitely a surprise. 2 years ago, we had that stuff that went down with the Farelli family, but since we essentially wiped them out in one night, no one has really dared to step out of line. Whoever is behind this royally fucked up by screwing with our shit. When we get our hands on them, we will definitely be making an example of them for anyone else who mistakes our time of peace as weakness.

I am driving in the car when my phone rings. I notice that it is Benjamin, the family’s Consigliere, and hit accept.

“Got something good for me?”

He lets out an aggravated huff. “Not good.”

Unease creeps in at the hostility his tone holds. “What?”

“I was able to figure out who was behind that swiped shipment.”

“And?” I egg on.

“One name. Chernoff.”

My blood turns to ice in a second and the world around me seems to slow.Chernoff. Those Russian piece of fucking shits. The same motherfuckers that ordered my family to be murdered, the people that took my Isabelle away from me.

The Chernoff’s came to the US over 35 years ago and for the most part the Mariano’s never had too much trouble with them. Until they got greedy and decided that they wanted to encroach on our territory. The attacks started out small and sporadic, but they were making no real head way at taking over our properties. Luca was blood thirsty, freshly healing from the death of his family and savagely attacked the Chernoffs just as hard as they came at us.

Quickly they realized that their bullshit tactics weren’t enough, so they hit us where it counted. Since Luca no longer had any family to target, they instead decided to go after his men’s families. 7 sets of soldiers were sent to 7 different houses, murdering everyone inside. There were no survivors among any of our loved ones, except for Alessandro.

Instead of crippling us momentarily like they had hoped, it filled us with a white-hot fury that was impossible to contain. Within 11 hours of my wife’s death, I was soaked from head to toe in the head of the family, Vladimir’s, blood before I delivered his unrecognizable head to his family home.

The rest of our men attacked their businesses, warehouses and homes. It was a complete blood bath and only a few members of the family were able to slip away before we could track them down. There were rumors that his right-hand man, Dimitri Potrov stepped into place, but nothing has ever been confirmed.

All signs pointed to them fleeing the country and going back to Russia, but I never bought it. They were proud people, too proud to tuck tail and run away. No. They were just biding their time and apparently now they are ready to go to war again.

Fucking bring it on.

“Are you fucking with me?” I spit.

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