Undressed By The Mafia God

Mafia alliances really were beautiful things. Renato glanced across the room. Luca had gone quiet.

His body remained relaxed while his attention seemed to be somewhere else entirely. Something was bothering him.

And strangely enough, it was not Valentina. Luca had nothing else on his mind but Marco. That was the real problem.

There was no clever trap Luca could build around Massimo’s rules. Luca leaned back in the chair, his jaw tightening.

Valentina did not worry him so much.

Okay, no.

That was a lie. Valentina worried him for one reason that had absolutely nothing to do with whether she could hurt him.

It worried him that his wife would have to go through the horror of killing her own sister. Veronica might be taking everything in stride right now, but Luca knew better.

He knew his wife. She could stand straight through almost anything if she believed someone needed her to. She could lock pain behind her teeth, put on a brave face and convince everyone around her she had already made peace with whatever horror had landed at her feet.

But Valentina would haunt her. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not even when this was finally over and the danger had passed. But one day, when things were quiet and there was nothing left to fight, it would come for her.

Luca knew that much. For now, though, he had another problem to solve.

Marco.

He needed to prove to Massimo that everything Valentina was doing, she was doing alone. Marco had not helped her. He had not covered for her. He had not knowingly assisted her betrayal in any way.

That was the whole point of letting Valentina get this desperate. To save Marco. Every move she made without him, every alliance she formed behind his back, every reckless decision she took while Marco stood somewhere else completely unaware, only strengthened Luca’s argument.

The problem was that Massimo seemed to have already made up his mind. And once Massimo decided something was law, changing his mind became an activity somewhere between impossible and suicidal.

Luca exhaled quietly. His father was not exactly father of the year. That much was obvious. But Luca would not call him a bad father either.

They had been born into a world that did not allow ordinary childhoods or ordinary parenting. Sons were not simply raised. They were prepared. Hardened. Taught how to survive a life where weakness was not something people mocked you for; it was something that got you buried.

They all had to accept things as they were and hone the next generation to handle the baton just as effectively.

Massimo had done a good job raising him to be Don material. Luca was not going to deny that just because he hated half the methods used to get him there.

Besides, his childhood with Julian and his mother had played a part too. Between the three of them, he had somehow grown into a man capable of leading without completely losing his mind.

Mostly.

Still, Luca could not be the father Massimo had been. Call him soft if they wanted. He did not care.

He could not torture his own children into strength. He could not imagine deliberately putting his daughter through pain because one day she might need to withstand worse. He could not picture standing over one of his children after they had broken a bone in training and deciding the appropriate response was to make them get back up and continue.

He could not have his children training dangerously from a young age, breaking uncountable bones and filling their bodies with metals for emergencies. He knew exactly what those lessons had done to him. They had worked.

That was the uncomfortable part.

His instincts, his tolerance for pain, his ability to stay calm when everyone else panicked, the weapons training, the discipline, the constant awareness of danger—all of it had kept him alive more times than he could count.

Which made rejecting those methods entirely feel reckless. Not that he wanted weak children either.

Absolutely fucking not.

Because even if Luca never became Don of the entire famiglia, he was still going to lead the New York outfit, and his children would grow up with his name whether they wanted the responsibility or not.

That name came with enemies. It came with expectations. So no, his kids could not be pussies. Vee would probably slap him for phrasing it that way, but the point remained.

He wanted them strong without being damaged. Capable without being brutalised. Prepared without spending their childhood learning how much pain they could endure before passing out.

Raising balanced mafia children was going to be considerably harder than running the actual mafia.

Luca rubbed a hand over his jaw. He was truly caught between a rock and a hard place. His phone vibrated against Marco’s desk. He glanced down at the screen.

Then slowly lifted his head and looked across at Renato.

"They’re here."

Renato straightened slightly in his chair. Luca opened the drawer of Marco’s desk and pulled out his gun.

Renato’s eyes dropped to it immediately. "What? You don’t trust that we are not here to kill you?" He gave Luca a look.

Considering their history, it was a stupid question.

"You don’t have enough army, Renato," Luca said.

That wiped some of the amusement from the other man’s face.

Luca was not bluffing. Even though, technically, it would only be him, Marco and two other men against however many Bastiones Renato had allowed Valentina to bring.

On paper, those numbers were terrible. Luca simply did not particularly care. Besides, that had been deliberate.

To reduce the chances of everything blowing apart before Valentina walked far enough into the trap, Luca had sent most of the men who worked directly with him to handle other businesses. Commissioned needed to look normal enough from the outside and vulnerable enough from within.

Luca pushed away from the desk and got to his feet, gun loose at his side. He waited.

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