Belonging to the Mafia Don

Years Later

Proserpina

The evening was calm. Dusk settled over the valley gracefully, like a soft shawl tenderly wrapped around the shoulders of the mountain peaks that surrounded the tiny monastery, which lay half hidden on the slopes of the mountains.

I smiled as I straightened up, having rocked my twins to sleep. Almost a year and a half old now, my son, little Piers drifted off to sleep almost immediately. My daughter Ria was the stubborn one, who went to sleep unwillingly. I tucked the cotton sheet around her plump little body, dropping a kiss on her golden curls. A real fighter, I thought fondly.

Like her father, said a small voice inside me.

I sighed and stood up wearily. This had become my home, this little monastery tucked away on the hillside of the Himalayas. The orderly, serene life of the Buddhist nuns and their unconditional acceptance had been a balm on my sore heart, and when I gave birth to the children, the nuns had nursed me with tender care.

Yet the thoughts of Lucien Delano, the man I had loved so fervently and the father of my twins, remained with me all the time, though it felt like something that had happened to me in another lifetime. Even though we were thousands of miles apart, he remained in my thoughts all the time. Every second moment, I thought about him. Of course, looking at the children with their ice-blue eyes and mops of blonde hair was enough to make me think about him easily enough.

Those ice-blue eyes when they had raked over me, the powerful outline of his shoulders as they loomed over me as he had claimed me countless times; I even longed for his harshness, his cruelty, I thought, my eyes welling up at the very thought of the man who had been my much older and experienced lover, the father of my beautiful children although there was a huge catch there.

Lucien Delano had no idea that they existed.