Claimed By The Mafia Don (Ariella and Asher) novel Chapter 264

ASHER

“Your father…” she begins, her voice low and trembling. "He.....he’s threatened to wipe out the Costa line.”

“You mean… the Costa bloodline?” I ask, just to be sure I’m hearing her correctly.

“Yes,” she says with a shaky breath. “He told my dad that if you were to find out in any way, if he even suspected that you knew something, if I told you or asked for your help.....it would be the end of us.

"It would just take him saying the word, and my mother, me, all of us. He said he’d put an end to every Costa alive and end our bloodline. Whether alive or unborn. He promised that everyone would forget the Costas had ever existed.”

She swallows hard, and I can see the shadow in her expression.

“I saw the toll that took on my dad,” she continues. “Because on one side, I was his daughter. He wanted to save me. But on the other hand, there were all these people, innocent people, whose lives were suddenly at risk. People who didn’t even know they were in danger.

"And I know you might think, ‘Hey, that’s your daughter.’ But you’re forgetting who my dad was. He had no power. He had no real connections. And even though all of that was happening, he still told me that if I really couldn’t go through with it, then he would stand by me." She smiles sadly

"He said we could run away. He didn’t have strong connections, but he knew a few people. He knew how to get passports, how to get us somewhere safe for a few weeks. He said he would go into hiding, take any job he could. He told me we could start saving money right away for when we left.”

Her voice cracks at this point, and she drags a hand over her face.

“But my mom… my mom was frantic. She started blaming me, saying I was putting all of our lives, plus all those innocent people’s lives, at risk. And as much as I loved you, I couldn’t bear the thought of so much blood on my hands..., because of my happiness....”

She lets out a shaky breath and shakes her head.

“So, with my childish mind, I thought… maybe if I got pregnant, if I had Romano blood inside me, then the Don would let me go. Maybe that would be the solution....I told myself that if I were carrying a Romano heir, your dad wouldn’t do anything. Right?”

I nod quickly, instinctively, desperate for her to be right. But she shakes her head again, her expression hard.

“No. Wrong.”

The single word feels like a stone dropping in my chest.

“If that’s what would have happened, I wouldn’t have run away,” she says, her voice breaking now. “I would have stayed. I would have.....”

Her voice trails off, and she doesn’t finish. The silence that follows feels like a scream in the room. I know, too.

Because I realized, yes, if her plan had worked, she wouldn’t have run away. She would have told me.... She would have stayed

And then I asked her, softly but firmly,

“This is why you were so adamant about sleeping with me. Isn’t it? I always thought it was so sudden. Because suddenly, you changed, your mom was getting more aggressive, your dad didn’t even want to see me, and you were acting strange.

"I just thought, I’m about to marry this woman..... why is all of this happening? But Luca told me to chill out. Said maybe I was just getting cold feet.”

I roll my eyes at the memory. “It’s Luca being Luca. What does he know about women anyway?”

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