To Play The Devil’s Game

Chapter 2

Luciana

Fifteen years ago

Luciana had not seen her mother for months. She had even heard her voice not since the night of the fight.

Her home had become a house of ghosts. Her father was always there but she could tell that he was not fully present. That he was quickly fading away. Wasting away.

She did not understand why her mother left. Her father had been kind to her. Whenever Luciana asked her father why her mother left, he would tell her that the Fontanas seduced her and turned her against him.

She wanted to question him further but she quickly realised that the more she asked, the more his heart bleed. She could see the pain in her father's eyes. Diablo Andreas, the strongest and most powerful man she had ever known, was bleeding before her very eyes and she could do nothing to stop it. She could do nothing but watch it all unfold before her.

Breakfast was silent but her father always ate with her but today, he was not there. She waited for him. She watched the clock tick as hunger ate at her innards but she waited nonetheless.

She left the dining hall in search of her father. She walked down the long hallway staring at different portraits and paintings. She didn't know what they represented but she enjoyed looking at them. There was something about them that pulled her in.

The quietness of her home echoed her footsteps. As she neared her father's office, she could hear the screams of a man.

She flinched as the terror sounds reached her ears. She did not know who it was but she knew it was not her father. Her father did not scream like that. He had never screamed like that.

She neared the door. Her steps grew more lighter as the door drew closer. And the sounds pierced through her causing fear to brew within her.

"My Mija is going to grow up with a mother because you were too stupid to notice the signs," her father shouted. She had never heard him shout.

She neared the door and leaned in to pry from the keyhole. The screaming man was bloodied and he was tied to a chair.

Blood dropped from his lips, his nose and the sight should have made her flinch but it did not. She didn't know why she didn't look away either. It is what a normal girl her age would do. But she was not a normal girl. She had never been. She was the daughter of a mafia boss and normal was not part of that job description.

"I did not know Diablo," the man pleaded. "She made me promise."

"I pay you," her father stated. "I fund the education of your children. Your loyalty should have been with me."

Luciana did not know what the man did but she knew they were talking about her mother. Is he the reason mama left? She asked herself.

The man whimpered and cried but she was not fazed. Something in her told her that he deserved every bit of the punishment that was being meted on him. Her father was a just man. He would never punish anyone because he felt like it.

Her father pulled out a gun and pointed it at the man's head. Luciana could hear her heart pound against her chest. She could feel her muscles tense as her breathing halted.

She did not know why she reacted the way she did to what was playing before her but she did not care. If the man was the reason why her home was empty then he deserved it and she was ready to watch it all unfold before her.

The man jerked back violently as the gun fired. The sound beamed all around and she flinched. She must have done more than flinched because her father turned as if he heard something. But she did not wait to know if he opened the door or not because she ran.

Present

Luciana had lived her life dreaming about the day when she would finally have her revenge against the Fontanas. A vengeance that was passed from her father along with everything she now owned.

She was ready for what she had to do tonight. She has told herself that it was worth it. No matter the cost. It was worth it. Even if it meant losing a piece of her soul, she was ready to pay.

Every fibre of her being wanted to go to the dungeon and handle the traitor but she wanted him to sweat it out. There was nothing as torturous as knowing the end is coming but yet seem to tarry.

She would take her time with him. Her father would have done the opposite. He would have gone down there and made him suffer. But she wasn't like that. She did want him to suffer and to suffer immensely. But physical pain was not enough for her. She wanted his mind to conjure up the most vicious of things that would be done to him and then deliver every one of them to him. She wanted him to suffer mentally and physically. She wanted to break him in more ways than one and she was determined to do it.

She entered her room and the greyness of it all was in sync with her life. Her life was void of colour but it was solid with power. She sometimes missed the time when everything was perfect. The time when ignorance was bliss. She missed the liveliness of her home.

The walls that once held so many memories were the same walls that now seemed like a cage. A cage that she only walked out from when it was absolutely necessary.

She missed the simpler times. She missed her father. She missed the man he was before everything slipped past their hands like the ashes of burnt prayers. She always tried to remember him as the man he was before her mother left. The man that smiled with his eyes and not just his lips. The man that was more than just the leader of the mafia.

She didn't know what happened that prompted her mother to leave without looking back. She knew that her parents loved each other dearly but still the entire event was off.

But despite the question marks that surrounded her mother's Abandonment, she hated her. She hated her for the pain she caused. The Fontanas may have goaded her decision to leave but the decision was ultimately hers to make and she chose them. She left without care, without thought. She left as if her daughter did not exist. As if she was insignificant. She hated her for it all and she blamed her mother for every price she had to pay to get to where she was. But as much as she hated her mother, a part of still loved her. A part of her hoped that one day they would reunite. Luciana knew that that hope was pointless and downright stupid, but she held onto to it regardless.

She stripped down and walked into the shower. Her eyes stung with tears and she let the tears flow. The waters from the shower are the only things that have seen her cry. She wanted her life back. The one she had been living for the past fifteen years felt like someone's else's.

She thought of what she was going to do to the man in the dungeon below. She thought of the ways to get answers from him. Earlier she was certain was ready and willing to pay any price but she felt she was turning into a shell.

The s*x she had earlier was a fleeting moment of pleasure. A moment that was far too short. She needed something to fill the abyss that was evident in her soul.

Other girls would jump on the idea that true love was the answer. That love would quiet the waking beast of emptiness that stalked her. A beast that seemed too powerful to be surmounted. But she knew that she wasn not like other girls. Love was not in the cards that life had dealt her.

She had witnessed how love destroyed her father and turned him into a shadow of the man she knew. She watched as love turned him to a walking corpse. Love had killed him before he actually died.

She wondered how something that seemed so beautiful, something that seemed worthy of envy could grow into something so dark and poisonous and unforgiving.

She had sworn to never love but what if that was the only thing that could the emptiness in her chest. What if she was doomed to the same fate as her parents.

Her thoughts were unrelenting. They came and poured into her waves and the tears and the shower were indistinguishable. Her life seemed like a weight she was getting tired of carrying. But she had to carry it.

She drew strength from that. She needed to finish what the Fontanas had started. She needed to end it and she would start with the man that dared betrayed her.