Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 151410 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 757(@200wpm)___ 606(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151410 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 757(@200wpm)___ 606(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
Now Greta and Amo were married. There was peace between the Camorra and Famiglia again. War hadn’t lasted long but its effects still lingered in the deep distrust and animosity both sides felt for each other.
Greta was a beautiful bride and her happiness over marrying Amo was obvious. But what really brought tears to my eyes was the look in Amo’s eyes when he looked at her. Pure unrestrained adoration gleamed in them. He was so very obviously in love with her. Nobody could doubt his feelings after a look at him. I wondered if anyone would ever look at me like this.
My gaze slid to Nevio in the first row beside his parents and younger brother. He looked as if this was one of the worst days of his life. Letting go of his twin was hard. Nevio seemed so full of darkness and need for destruction that many didn’t think he cared about anyone but he had trouble letting go of the people he cared about. Greta was at the very top of this list.
I had attended several weddings in my life so far. As the daughter of the head Enforcer, it was part of my social duties. But this was the second tensest wedding of my life. The first had ended in war, and this one would end war for good. But suspicion and wariness saturated the air. I hadn’t seen my aunt and cousins in so long, and still hadn’t had a chance to talk to them. Their faces reflected forced joy, but beneath it I could see the same tension I felt. A wedding mere months after the peace treaty couldn’t be as free and joyous as a celebration like that warranted.
Especially Isabella was someone I wanted to talk to. She and I had always gotten along well, and I really hoped that was still the case. Luckily, she sat at my table. The parents of the groom and bride had to share a table, which led to quite a few very intense staring matches between Luca and Remo, and I was glad I wasn’t actually sitting at the table. It didn’t help the tension between those two that Nevio looked ready for trouble. He hated that Greta married Amo, but so far he’d behaved.
At our table there were my aunts Gianna and Liliana with their families, and following etiquette Nino and his family should have sat there too, but Matteo had threatened to stab both Massimo and Alessio with a “fucking” butter knife as rumor had it and so other arrangements had been made. I had to admit I was relieved on Isabella’s behalf. I could only imagine what it would do to her to spend an entire evening at a table with the very people who’d kidnapped her and threatened her life.
Nino and his family now shared a table with Adamo and Savio and their families. I was pretty sure Kiara had had a serious conversation with both Massimo and Alessio before the wedding because so far they had both done their best to avoid any contact, even with their eyes, with Isabella and Gianna, though the latter looked ready to start a new war.
I leaned over to Isabella who sat beside me. Her maroon curls framed her face wildly and I noticed she made sure to use the curtain of her hair to shield herself from the table to our right, where Alessio and Massimo were sitting. We hadn’t gotten the chance to talk yet, except for a few brief pleasantries because of the wedding schedule.
When Nevio had kidnapped Gianna and Isa to save us, I’d been relieved, had admired his bold move. I had avoided thinking what this had done to Isa. For me Alessio, Massimo and Nevio didn’t pose a danger, and I wasn’t scared of them, but Isa didn’t know them very well, and if I was being honest, knowing their reputation, I wasn’t sure if they wouldn’t have hurt her to get their message across.
Mom began chit-chatting with Liliana and Gianna about mundane things like yoga in an attempt to avoid any touchy subjects, and the list was very long…
Still the atmosphere was difficult. Matteo wasn’t really interested in conversation with Dad, and busy glaring alternately at Massimo and Alessio, or Nevio, who apparently hadn’t gotten Kiara’s memo to keep his head down. Luckily, Maximus and Dad seemed to get along decently, and chatted about Maximus’s various tattoos all over his body. Especially Davide’s interest in the many tattoos fired the conversation up. Davide, of course, had to show off his recently acquired Camorra tattoo. Dad had insisted that he was inducted on his fourteenth birthday despite Mom’s protests, and Davide had run around like the king of the world ever since.
“Are you going to college?” I asked Isabella when the dinner conversations finally started. She was turning nineteen soon so she must have finished high school last year.