Page 30 of Covert Desires

Nobody has come for me yet. Which is good. But I know my luck won’t last forever.

If my mother was alive, she would’ve found me ages ago already. That bitch was far cleverer than any of them, especially my slimy little brother.

But it’s been more than a year since we found her lifeless body floating face down in the pool surrounded by a sea of pretty red. Death was a good look on her. Nobody shed a tear for that whore except Ricardo.

I felt no loss; she was never a mother to me. Nannies raised us. My mother was alwaysbusywith something else. I was 11 when she told me she never wanted us, never even wanted my father.

An arranged marriage to bring peace and power to the two rival crime families. We were merely for show. She pushed out an heir and a backup for the Don as per her contractual duty, and that was that.

That woman didn’t have a maternal instinct in her body. Her only response to her young children crying was to threaten to give us something to cry about.

The scar under my eye is a testament to her idea ofmotherhood.It reminds me that love is a currency and everyone has an agenda.

I was only seven when I got that scar.

In a fit of unprovoked rage, my mother hit me across the face with her wine glass, breaking it to pieces against my skin.

The cruel bitch just laughed at my hysteric crying and forced me to clean my blood off the floor myself.

She didn’t even bother to look whether the profusely bleeding cut under my eye was serious. She didn’t care.

The crisscrossing scars on my back were from the belt buckle, but that was my dad’s doing. He was hardly any better than her.

But none of that matters now.

What matters is my throne and taking back what’smine. I’ve put up with their cruel ways my whole life, for 28 years, holding onto the thought that the empire would be mine one day.

Only to have it stolen from me at the last minute.

How did it all go wrong?

I had it all planned out. The poison would’ve given me the perfect alibi. I would actsoshocked when they phoned me with the news that my fathersuddenlydied. I’d step up like the loyal son, swearing to avenge my father as I took my rightful seat at the head of the table.

It was supposed to be a smooth transition.

But that’s not how it went down.

Not at all.

What a fucking mess.

My skin itches with impatience. My future beckons; I can’t stay here.

But my body is too weak to beat the restraints. All this time in bed has drained the power from my muscles.

At least my shoulder healed somewhat. It no longer aches in the night.

Though Kiah has retrained my wrists again, making my life much harder. They are tied together, crossed over my stomach, with more duct tape than I could ever break.

Her cautious ways are annoying the shit out of me.

It’s painfully obvious that I’m not getting out of here by force. I’ll have to catch some flies with honey, or however the saying goes.

Charm it is.

The fog encapsulating my brain has finally lifted enough for me to start scheming.

I wait until the innkeeper sits down to wash me before I stutter a dramatic breath, fluttering my eyes open like a soldier coming out of a coma—dazed, lost.

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