Back to the Day She Stole My Mafia Fiancé Chapter 05

Back to the Day She Stole My Mafia Fiancé Chapter 05

Antonio’s expression darkened. “You went through my stuff? You invaded my privacy, Natalia!”

“What are you going to do? Put a hit out on me?”

I folded my arms and smiled. “Go ahead. Call a family sit-down. Let the Commission see what the great Don Bellini has been hiding about his feelings for his fiancée’s sister.”

His jaw tightened. His fists clenched at his sides. He looked like he was about two seconds from losing it completely.

I stepped back without thinking, and that’s when I saw his hand rise.

Before he could take a swing, a heavy silver ice bucket came crashing down over his head.

The metal bucket clanged off the floor. Antonio staggered, lost his footing, and went face-first into

the floor.

“A grown man cornering a woman half his size? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

A veteran female enforcer from the family payroll came barreling around the corner, a retractable baton raised like a baseball bat. “Since nobody taught you how to act right, I’ll do it myself!”

She swung before he could get up. The baton cracked across his back hard enough to echo.

Antonio yelped and scrambled for the door.

The enforcer watched him go, shook her head in disgust, then turned to me with a completely different face. “You okay, Ms. Sterling? He didn’t hurt you?”

“If he comes back, you tell me. I’ll handle him.”

Something loosened in my chest. “Thank you. Really. I’m okay.”

I started to worry she’d catch heat from the family for that stunt.

She waved me off, completely unbothered. “Oh, honey. Don’t worry about me. This is nothing.”

The next day, word spread through the foundation: Antonio had been stripped of his oversight of the joint syndicate ports by the council.

The next few days were quiet.

I was starting to believe I might actually be free of it all.

Then I got a call from home.

The demand was laughable: five hundred thousand dollars for Luciana’s off-the-books clinic in

Switzerland.

I actually pulled the phone away from my ear to check the caller ID.

Riccardo’s voice was dead serious on the other end. “Don’t play dumb, Natalia. Luciana’s accident happened because of you. This is on you.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

Forget the fact that Luciana’s entire accident was staged.

Even if the crash had been real, shouldn’t they be going after the driver?

And somehow I was the one writing the check?

Not a chance.

I let out a slow breath. “If she’s sick, take her to a vet. I don’t treat animals.”

“You already hurt her once! She hasn’t stopped crying since she came home. She’s been to the ER twice!”

“You haven’t shown up to see her once! Not once! And now you’re cracking jokes? What is wrong with you? Does someone have to die before you care?”

Riccardo cycled through every insult he had. When silence was the only thing he got back, his voice

went ugly.

“You’d better do what I’m telling you, Natalia. Otherwise, don’t ever think about coming home again.”

“Think about it. A woman with no family backing her? No one in her corner? That’s a hard life, Natalia. A real hard life.”

“When some guy puts his hands on you someday, nobody’s going to show up. You’ll die alone, and nobody will even claim the body.”

I hung up, blocked his number, and deleted the call log. Three seconds. Done.

Then I went back to work on the shipping logistics bid I’d been grinding through all night.

Riccardo still thought he could bully me into caving.

But I didn’t need them anymore. My confidence came from what I could do: my work, my mind, my

own hands..

The harder I worked, the further I got from ever needing anyone like them again.

I was the only person I could count on. And that was enough.

I powered through it, nights blurring together, coffee replacing sleep, until the bid was finished.

The client signed. The deal was done.

This was it, the win that should have pushed me straight into that territory expansion.

Then someone filed a formal grievance with the council. The accusation: my logistics bid was forged to embezzle syndicate funds.

The whole operation heard about it within hours.

The rat was Riccardo. My own brother.

But he wasn’t the one who got away with it. He was the one who ended up in federal custody.

When Riccardo showed up at my office waving his so-called proof and screaming about embezzlement, I didn’t even blink.

If anything, I felt something settle inside me. Like the last piece clicking into place.

He’d done this before. In my last life, the exact same move.

Back then, I’d just been thrown out. I still believed, somewhere underneath it all, that family meant something. I’d poured everything into my career, desperate to prove I was worth keeping

And Riccardo had answered by stabbing me in the back.

All because I wouldn’t hand over five hundred thousand dollars. That was all it took for him to try to destroy my career, just to prove his loyalty to Luciana.