Page 70 of Beautiful Torment (Empire of Kings #1)
ABELLA
B y Friday, I’m feeling much better—at least until it’s time to leave the island with Mariella. I go along with the appointment, even though I know it won’t change anything. In my heart, I already know what I have to do. I just need to find the courage to execute my decision.
We spend the afternoon in the city, starting with a quick physical at Mariella’s office.
She explains that she wants to run an extensive panel of bloodwork to check my hormones, including a pregnancy test, as part of the baseline.
I agree, but she can feel the shift in me when I hear those two words.
She hasn’t said so, but I know she’s still holding out hope.
As for myself, hope abandoned me long ago.
After the labs are drawn, she sends me to an imaging center for an ultrasound, explaining it might be a few days before she gets the results. When it’s all over, she takes me to lunch, and we board the water taxi back to the island.
On our return trip, we sit together and enjoy the last of the afternoon sunshine, each of us lost in our own thoughts. When Mariella finally does speak, it’s impossible to miss the edge of raw emotion in her voice.
“I could talk to Ares.”
When I glance at her, she’s staring out over the water, the barest strain of tension in her features.
She’s trying to act like it’s not a big deal, but it is.
Ares and Mariella have a complicated history that her brothers don’t know about.
He screwed up and lost the best thing he ever could have had.
Now he has to live with that regret for the rest of his life.
Mariella isn’t the kind of woman who will let someone play with her feelings.
But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt her.
I’m not certain of everything that happened between her and Ares, but I understand the sacrifice she’d be making.
She would set her pain aside to help me because that’s the kind of woman she is.
I reach over and squeeze her hand. “I love you. You know that?”
“I love you too.” She forces a smile.
“But Ares isn’t the problem.”
“I know.” She nods, choking back her emotion. “It’s just…you haven't seen the way Angelo looks at you when you're not paying attention, Abella. He’s in love with you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut to keep my tears from falling. I told myself I wouldn’t cry anymore. I’ve done enough of that already.
“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t change anything,” I say. “I love him more than anything, and I always have. But I can’t give him the future he wants.”
A long stretch of silence passes, and I know Mariella has to feel this suffocating weight hanging over us. I’m drowning in it.
“We shouldn’t even be talking about this right now,” she mutters. “Once I have all your results, we can make a plan. There are always options.”
“Okay,” I concede for her benefit.
She knows as well as I do that those options don’t apply to my circumstances. But despite being raised in this world, Mariella has never really conformed to it.
As the only Vitale daughter, she had no intention of settling for the title of Mafia princess.
At thirteen years old, she marched into her father’s office and told him that women could be just as valuable as the men in our world.
Silvio had always given her a longer leash than most fathers in the Cosa Nostra , and he told her if she believed it, then she should go ahead and prove it.
She’s been chasing that unattainable bar ever since, overachieving in everything she does.
As her contribution to the family, she focused on her education, stomping on the accelerator and never letting up.
She took summer classes and heavy course loads, graduating early before entering medical school through a pathway program.
After completing her residency at the IVI hospital in Seattle, she went on to open her own practice.
When she isn’t treating her patients from The Society or patching up the Cosa Nostra , she devotes her time to the hobbies she’s mastered. She’s a skilled violinist, well-trained in self-defense, and highly proficient in weapons.
Though her drive initially began as a need to prove herself, I don’t think she found her true purpose until Aegis was formed.
The network developed organically over time. When women in our trusted circle saw or heard of another woman in need, we’d send them to Mariella for discreet help. But as time wore on, we realized the Band-Aids we’d applied weren’t enough for the blood loss.
We had to get the women out permanently, and that required expansion.
Mariella spearheaded the entire project, and much like everything else in her life, she exceled at it.
With an army of volunteers, she figured out how to weave the network throughout the very fabric of IVI.
This meant we were able to move women out of the country and provide the necessary credentials for a fresh start.
It became bigger than we’d ever anticipated, and over the last five years, we’ve successfully helped countless women.
But there were always variables that were difficult to account for.
Some of the women were guarded so closely, it made extraction next to impossible.
Others would get caught trying to make their escapes, and those situations never ended well.
Those cases wore on all of us, but Mariella took them as a personal failure.
Then, one night, she came to us and told us she’d done something awful. She explained how she’d slipped one of the women a bottle of poison to kill her husband after every other option failed.
It was the first death on our hands, and I think she was looking for condemnation. Instead, what she found was a quiet understanding that rippled through all of us. We’d all known what it was like to feel helpless at times, but now, we had real power to change that.
The men around us doled out bloodshed for much smaller offenses. So what was the difference? Our world was ruthless, and we needed to be too.
We forged ahead with another tool in our arsenal, and now the poison has become a staple for the most dire cases. Of course, there are still times when things don’t go as planned. It doesn’t happen often, but Mariella has had to put down some of the men herself.
That was how it came to pass that when Grant Ellison followed his victim’s transporter to a safe house, he signed his own death warrant. Mariella did what was necessary to protect the entire network, and she ended his life with a single shot to the head.
With our guards none the wiser, we helped her dispose of the body.
This is the reality of Aegis. Some days are good, and some just…aren’t. But we’ve made a promise to ourselves to keep going, even when things get messy or hard. That’s how we survive.
And, should we ever need it, the very same network we created will be available to us.
I never thought I’d actually use it. Even as bad as things were with my father, I didn’t want to leave my entire life behind. But as we return to the island, the reality I’ve been trying so hard to run from catches up with me.
I don’t think I have a choice.