Doomed to Love the Mafia Boss.

Chapter 16

I believe that in that moment my eyes nearly leave their sockets. Never, under any circumstances, has anyone from outside called me that. Never has anyone from outside mentioned the existence of the Mafia so openly.

My breathing quickens and fear takes me. I do not know if I let something slip, but that woman is absolutely intelligent, and she frightens me. I am terrified.

She does not only read my eyes.

She knows.

“What…” I stammer. “You do not… Jesus.” I gasp as if I need to recover my breath.

“Calm down.”

“You know,” I state, still holding my breath. She has no idea how dangerous it is. Messing with the Mafia. Knowing its secrets.

“You still have not understood. Valentina, I do not merely know…”

“You are one of us,” I interrupt her and conclude, completely shocked, while remembering the rigid classes, the perfect English accent, not a single trace of Sicilian blood in her veins.

Nothing. Only an unbearable etiquette class, where I only managed an average grade no matter how hard I tried. I always thought she hated me, and now this.

This cannot be real.

“Heavens, you are English!”

“We are family. That is what matters.”

My reasoning is slow. Looking at her profile, her appearance, her eyes… any trace of what she says is hidden by dark hair and pale skin, a rigidity atypical of an Italian woman.

But something in her indicates the truth of her words. Anger crackles inside her, as it does in me. I do not know her story, but it is as if I were looking at myself in a mirror. She is not lying.

How she went from a Mafia woman to an English governess, I have no idea. Perhaps it was when they took everything from her. Her restrained manner is pure farce, and I can see that now. She has hot blood, scorching anger, and motivation.

And she sees all of that in me.

“You are like me, Valentina.” I stare at her, afraid to move and make all of this unreal. “They are taking everything from you only because you are who you are. They are reducing you to dust, and you are letting yourself be scattered. They see your anger, your pain, and your hatred. They see all of it with a smile on their lips, certain that you can do nothing but obey and serve the planned end. One day I was stupid enough to let them see. I can no longer get close, I cannot…” There is something she does not tell me and, by the way, will not yet.

“Why did you leave?”

“For something much greater than me.”

“And how did you leave? Just…”

“One leaves dead, I know. And I died, girl. Believe me.”

“Who were you?” Curiosity corrodes me.

“That no longer matters. Who I was died, remember? What matters is who you choose to be. The victim they value so much?”

“Never! As you said, I want to become embers from the ashes. To be that mythological bird that inspires you so much.”

“You will be a beautiful Phoenix, Valentina.”

“To be reborn from the ashes,” I say, fascinated by that woman, realizing the fact that she is burning in front of me.

I see determination crackling, anger, the desire for revenge.

She is a Nemesis.

The goddess of vengeance incarnate in front of me, looking at me as her pupil. What did they take from her so deeply that they set her soul on fire? To what point did they break her and leave her, so that the person she once was could die and Elinor could be born?

As if she knows my questions, she smiles, confident.

“Ready to burn?”

“Si,” I say in my native language.

There are moments in life when the choices we make allow no return, because it is always impossible to defeat Chronos in the past. He never returns. I arrive at that exact moment when I decide to be the Phoenix reborn at Nemesis’s request.

And I am ready to set the world on fire and gloriously admire the flames swallowing everyone who burned me.

22 years old

Seven years ago, Elinor took me to see the storage room, and I said yes to her, even without knowing the extent of what I was accepting. The room was a training place, an almost faithful model of the ones where boys became Men of Honor.

There, we trained knife handling, practiced shooting with weapons I did not even know existed, torture methods, and other things I had never seen. Things only someone from the organization would know.

I remember my fascination during that first year, when I understood Elinor’s two faces. Her words were sealed inside me.

“Valentina, you must learn how to deal with all this. Here, you learn what they will not teach you anywhere else. In the gyms below, you will learn self-defense, Krav Maga, and, on the third floor, acting.”

“Acting?”

“That is the class where we learn to be silent. We are full-time actresses, Valentina.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“And it is. We will also train your agility. You need to learn how to be a ghost when necessary.”

“Like you have been. How long have you been like this?”

“Eighteen years.”

“You managed to stay hidden all that time?”

“They are not that good, are they?” she said, ironic.

“Actually, they are. But you…”

“I learned to surpass them.”

From the day we had that conversation until now, I suffered. I suffered because every day of effort, hidden in that beauty clinic, training to become something close to what Elinor was, while undergoing different aesthetic treatments to disguise my visits there, seemed as if it would steal my sanity.

I remembered that, one year later, the following Christmas, she failed me in her subject, and I was terribly upset.

“Do you know what will happen if my father finds out?” I said when she handed me my grade.

“Afraid again? It does not matter what he will do. How many times do I have to say it? As a repeater, you stay here during the holidays, stop seeing your family, and train more. You know you need to train more. You are terrible with knives.”

“Heavens, I do not even know if I will ever have the chance to use that skill. I… Arghhh,” I roared, furious.

“You know the story you did not want to tell me?” she asked, referring to Alexandra. I never managed to tell it. I was still ashamed to this day of having been responsible for prolonging her hell. I avoided thinking about her, despite the fact that everything I did was for her.

“What about it?”

“If you master knives, you master your fear. And it is the only thing that will stop you from resolving whatever it is that shames you.”

I remember training furiously until I had no strength left. I lived covered in bruises from the fights Elinor had with me. She demanded from me, drained me, shouted, and extracted beyond my maximum.

During the most intense training sessions, she played music. It was a way to turn off my mind, because I was always too centered on what I had lost. My father’s and brother’s cruelties were demons I carried, and they blocked me. They darkened my judgment. It was terrifying when I did not advance, because I became more incapable.

And in the middle of all that, the music hid the sounds of my mind. I needed to learn how to disconnect from the environment so I would never, ever suffer a distraction.