Flesh And Blood: His Dark Obsession

I was just a lower-tier nobody when the Matriarch of the New York Famiglia offered me a dangerous deal: cure the ruthless Don Enzo's psychological trauma, and rise from the gutter.

But Enzo's trauma was deadly. His two previous wives were rival assassins who hid micro-explosives in their breast implants. Now, he violently attacked any woman who came near him, terrified of surgically modified bodies.

Just as I managed to break through his walls by proving my natural curves were entirely real, disaster struck. Camilla, a vicious mafia princess, burst into the Don's suite with corrupt doctors.

"She is a fake silicone whore and an FBI rat!"

She threw forged medical dossiers and deep-fake photos onto the table, rallying the entire syndicate to demand my immediate execution.

Camilla even pulled out a surgical scalpel, shrieking that she would slice my chest open herself to prove I had wires hidden inside.

I was surrounded by armed guards and hostile Capos, facing the terrifying prospect of the Don's lethal paranoia returning. Would he believe the digital lies and the syndicate's accusations over the warm truth his own hands had just verified?

Instead of panicking, I calmly stepped forward and looked Camilla dead in the eye.

I pulled down my collar to expose a fatal flaw in their deep-fake photos, revealing the permanent, dark bite mark the Don had just left on my bare skin. It was time to show them how a real Mafia Queen destroys her enemies.

Chapter 1

Valentina POV

When I stood in the heavily guarded center of the Salvatore fortress, surrounded by mafia princesses of a surgical, marmoreal perfection, the Matriarch of the New York Famiglia pressed a hand, cold from its many rings, to my back and whispered an ultimatum that felt like a sliver of ice against my skin.

She offered a bargain: my ascent from the Family's lower tiers, secured by coin and the Salvatore name, in exchange for a single night's work-to infiltrate her son's chambers and cure his affliction.

I swallowed hard against the knot of apprehension that had formed in my throat and looked straight ahead.

At the far end of the grand hall sat Lorenzo "Enzo" Salvatore.

He was a name whispered in two different registers.

To the public, he was a legitimate billionaire who owned half the skyline.

To the underworld, he was a ruthless executioner who controlled the New York Famiglia with a frigid, unquestioned authority.

He sat on a high-backed chair of buttoned leather that was less a piece of furniture than a declaration.

His bespoke suit stretched tight across his broad shoulders, a tailored armor that did little to conceal the brutal topography of scars beneath.

His eyes, the color of wet slate, held a stillness that was not peace, but absence, but I knew his secret.

Everyone in the lower tiers whispered about the Don's deep psychological trauma.

His two previous arranged wives had been rival assassins dispatched to end his reign.

The precise mechanics of their treachery were a syndicate legend, a story told in hushed tones and never fully understood by those on the periphery.

They had been sent not with guns or knives, but with surgically implanted toxin capsules concealed beneath their skin. One had triggered hers with a bite; the other had used a subcutaneous timer. Both died in his bed, their bodies releasing lethal compounds that nearly killed Enzo as he slept beside them. He survived. They did not.

The betrayals had ended in gruesome deaths and left Enzo with a violent, paranoid phobia of any woman who had gone under the knife.

Yet, blind to the true nature of his malady, the syndicate kept parading these fake, plastic girls in front of him.

I was different.

I had a lush, naturally curvy figure that made me an outcast among these other women, all sharp angles and calculated hunger.

I wore a dress of some cheap, worn fabric that clung to the swell of my breasts and the breadth of my hips with an unceremonious honesty.

I needed sanctuary from the brutal streets, and conquering the Don was my only passage from the gutter.

The Bride Selection began.

Girls stepped forward one by one.

Enzo barely looked at them before waving a dismissive hand, signaling his soldiers to drag them away.

It was my turn.

I walked forward, my hips moving with a natural weight that I made no effort to disguise.

I stopped right in front of him.

Enzo did not even lift his chin.

He stared at the marble floor and flicked his fingers.

"Remove her from my sight," he ordered, his voice a low, gravelly threat that vibrated in my chest.

Two massive soldiers grabbed my arms and dragged me roughly toward the estate gates.

I struggled, but their grip was like iron.

Camilla Vincenzo stood near the heavy oak doors.

She was the vicious daughter of a powerful Capo.

Her waist was unnaturally tiny, and her chest sat high and rigid beneath the costly fabric of her gown.

"Look at this heifer," Camilla sneered, signaling her friends to laugh. "Did you truly believe the Don would spare a glance for refuse from the associates' quarter?"

Before I could spit in her face, a sharp voice cut through the hall.

"Silence."

Donna Salvatore, the Matriarch, walked toward us.

She looked Camilla up and down with deep disgust.

Then she turned her gaze, sharp and appraising, to me.

She stared at the natural slope of my waist and the heavy curve of my hips.

"Release her," the Matriarch ordered the soldiers.

They dropped my arms instantly.

The Matriarch grabbed my wrist and pulled me into a private side room.

She locked the heavy oak door behind us.

"You are real," she said, her eyes scanning my body as a stockman might a prize mare. "No silicone. No missing ribs. Just flesh and blood."

"I am a survivor," I told her, my chin held high.

"My son is broken," she said, pulling a folded black fabric from a cabinet of dark mahogany. "He needs an authentic woman to fracture the walls he has built around himself and secure this Family's bloodline."

She shoved the fabric into my hands.

It was a maid uniform.

It was extremely tight and cut to be restrictive.

"Put this on," the Matriarch commanded. "You work for me now. Take his morning espresso to his master suite. Do whatever it takes to make him see you."

I stripped off my cheap dress and pulled the uniform over my body.

The white apron squeezed my waist, pushing my breasts up dangerously high.

I carried a silver tray with a steaming cup of espresso up the great marble staircase.

Armed guards stood outside Enzo's heavily fortified master suite.

"The Matriarch sent me," I told them, my voice betraying no tremor.

They checked me for weapons and opened the heavy steel door.

I stepped inside.

The room was dimly lit, the air heavy with the scent of expensive cologne and the faint, acrid tang of gunpowder.

Enzo stood by the window, shirtless.

His back was covered in a brutal cartography of jagged scars, each a testament to his survival.

I set the silver tray on his desk.

The clink of the metal made him turn around.

His slate-gray eyes locked onto me.

For a split second, I saw raw, unfiltered hunger flash across his face as his gaze dropped to my chest.

He took a step toward me.

His breathing hitched.

But then, his composure fractured as if from a physical blow.

I could almost see the images flickering behind his eyes-toxin, convulsions, and blood.

The cold, slate-grey of his irises suddenly dissolved, his pupils dilating in sheer terror to swallow their original color, mingled with a directionless rage.

His jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked in his cheek.

"Get out!" he roared.

He lunged forward and swiped his massive arm across the desk.

The silver tray flew across the room.

The hot espresso shattered against the wall, splashing near my feet.

"Who sent you?" he demanded, his Adam's apple bobbing rapidly, as if the air he inhaled had turned to grit, forcing him to gasp with an open mouth while he backed away from me as though I were a lit fuse.

Instinct urged me to retreat, but the heel of my shoe caught in a seam of the marble, pinning me to the spot. I forced my gaze past the spatter of coffee to fix upon the cold sweat beading on his temple and the way his lethal hands trembled.

"Get the hell out of my sanctum before I kill you myself!" he shouted, pointing toward the door, his finger trembling as he pointed.

I turned and walked out slowly, letting my hips sway with a sway I hoped looked like defiance.

I stood in the hallway as a draft whipped against my back as the steel door was violently closed, the vibration traveling up from the floor and into my ankles.

I was not terrified.

My survival instinct flared hot in my veins, a heat that cauterized any trace of fear.

I was going to conquer the Dark Don, and I was going to make him beg for it. And when I did, the entire New York Famiglia would watch their untouchable king fall to his knees.