“No.”
“Sorry, could it be an ex-boyfriend?”
“No!” I gasp. “I’m not fucking gay, what the fuck?” I shake my head and try to calm myself, blowing out a breath. “I don’t know who it is, just that my roommate saw a man in our room in the middle of the night, and then when I woke up, this box was there.
“Your roommate saw a man?”
“Yes.” I lean forward. “We’d been out drinking and when…”
“You’d been out drinking?” His eyebrows raise, and he pulls a face that says,Yeah, sure, kid.
“Yes, but he, well, he woke up, and a man was standing over me.”
“Your drunk roommate saw him?”
“Yes.”
“He was probably dreaming.”
“But the gifts, the boxes, they were all on my pillow.”
“Have you asked your roommate if he left them? Maybe he has a crush on you.” He shrugs and stands up.
“Wait, that’s it?” I pick up the lighter. “Look at it. It’s weird, right? It’s so expensive but weird. Please, I just need someone to check.”
“I’ll give you a crime number, lad, but honestly, I would get a new roommate.”
“Please, it’s not my roommate.” He stands and holds the door open while I gather the items off the desk and stuff them back in the bag. I stutter a breath, shaking my head, but heading for the door. “Thank you.” I force out as I step out of the room. He hands me a form with the crime number on it, and I sigh because what was the point?
I step out of the door and peer both ways down the street, making sure no one is around before I pull my hood up over my head, stuff my hands in the front pocket of my hoodie, and storm off. Keeping close to walls, avoiding alleyways, and just generally being paranoid, apparently; surely it’s not all in my mind. Surely someone will believe me. I take a breath and head back to my dorm. My brain is mapping everything out, trying to figure out who it is and why me? Why any of this, and what do the gifts mean?
I slam the door open to our room and quickly shut it behind me, locking it, and drag my hoodie off and throw it onthe floor, climbing on the bed with my bag of weird gifts, and I spread them out.
A personalised engraved Zippo lighter, Leonardo in a swirling font; the human heart and intricate vines are beautiful. It’s definitely custom-made. A silver keyring with L.R. on it, which makes no sense because my initials are L.C. Gems pepper the outline, sparkling and neatly edging it. A pen again engraved with my name. I lean over, snatching a piece of paper off the bedside table and scribbling my name on it.
Okay, the pen is nice and writes so smoothly. A silver tie clip with the same vines engraved across it with the same initials. L.R. I look closer at the back, and there’s a stamp on it. I pull out my phone and search for the marking. What does it mean?
After a quick search, I find the markings. It’s platinum. Seriously, I snatch the pen, and there tucked under the clip is the same mark, the key ring and then the lighter; they all carry the same mark. Who the fuck can afford platinum? I googled what everything is worth, at least a couple of grand. Trinkets left on my pillow in a locked room, it doesn’t seem like something someone would do if they wanted to cause me harm. It’s definitely not Darius.
I flop back on the bed because who the hell is giving out custom platinum pieces to some random student?
Bellino
Chapter Seventeen
We take our time planning, plotting. I want to jump in and end it all, take Leonardo as mine, and start to live my life the way I want to, but Arianna wants to do everything properly. She wants to create a story, a narrative we can spin, so it looks like I’ve stepped up and not staged a coup, so I’m backing Father on every decision. I’ve fallen into line. I’m standing with him. And things are going smoothly.
It’s the night of the coup. We’ve arranged for two of his sergeants to visit. A monthly insight into what’s happening, but we’ve been pulling strings in the background. That makes it look like one or both have been stealing, undercutting and keeping profits.
We will kill them and stage it, that they shot me and Father, and I called Vittorio and Arianna for backup. We’ll call in the Syndicate and lay the story out for them. Arianna trustedme and told me the full story of how she killed her father, not Alfredo, and how she staged the whole thing. I know she gave me this little nugget so we can have some kind of bond or some shit. But now it all makes sense, and the more I know her, the more I know we would never have worked together. I have to admit that she and my brother are good together.
That sends me spiralling back to Leonardo. I need him. That one taste wasn’t enough. I watch the video of him, of me taking his dick in my mouth, and I close my eyes and berate myself. Now is not the fucking time. I need to keep a lid on this until Father’s dead. A few more hours and I’ll be able to set the ball rolling. Leonardo knows I’m not marrying his sister. But my father hasn’t told his father yet. There’s a merger going on, and they’re both trying to stay neutral. It won’t happen as soon as Father tells Enzo his daughter isn’t good enough. And then when I inform him I will be taking Leonardo as my husband, he will lose his shit.
But he won’t have a choice. He won’t defy me.
I head up the steps to the house. I still live with Father. I stride inside like I haven’t been plotting his demise for the last few hours. I have a gun tucked in my back that has a silicone protector. Once I kill Father with it, I’ll pick one of the guys and put their prints on it just so it’s traced back to them. Arianna says the gun is untraceable. And I actually believe her. She held the gun on the silicone protector to prove she wasn’t trying toscrew me, but the more time we spend together, I think she’s growing on me.
My father meets me at the office, and I step in beside him. He claims we need to talk about the wedding. After the meeting, he’s found another woman, someone more fitting, with better breeding, but loosely translated means she can give him more than Enzo’s daughter can. Maybe her family is more prominent.
