Night has fallen outside, the sky as black as my soul right now. How could she leave and not respond to my message? If she didn’t want to talk, she could have texted me a goodbye. Hell, a ‘Fuck you’ if that’s how she felt. Something feels off about the whole situation. My instinct has always gotten me through and not been wrong before, so I have to trust it now when it says that this whole situation is wrong. It’s time to find out a bit more about Lillian Vicci.

My fingers type the words ‘Doctor Lillian Vicci’ into my search engine. Multiple entries regarding her medical practice come up but nothing about her personally. I recall her saying she grew up in the Bronx and moved to Brooklyn, so that is my next search. Page after page of information comes up regarding the Vicci crime family. Yes, it’s a name that rings out throughout New York City, but it never crossed my mind that the Vicci crime family would be related to my Lillian. But there it is in the headlines from several weeks ago.

MAFIA HEIR TO VICCI CRIME FAMILY SAVES THE DAY.

The sole heir and daughter to the Vicci crime family returned home to save the day and her father. Francesco Vicci suffered a major heart attack while dining at Sicily’s earlier this month. Though the heart attack only hospitalized the crime family godfather shortly, we have it from a secret source that the princess heir has returned home to perform her father’s open-heart surgery.

The young mafia princess once escaped the confinements of the family to become one of the nation’s top pediatric cardiologist surgeons. It seems that the family has drawn their daughter back into the lion's den to save the family. Francesco Vicci was released days after his heart attack with Salvatore Mangano by his side. At a time when the leadership of the family is crucial, the crime family is set to name Salvatore Mangano as its new godfather.

Mangano, a native New Yorker whose lineage reaches back to Sicily, is a descendant of the Mangano crime family, once one of the largest Cosa Nostra organizations in the 1920s in Sicily. Mangano’s great-grandfather left Sicily to expand operations into the United States but found sanctuary with the Vicci family. Over the years, the Vicci family has risen to be one of the strongest of the five families here in New York. Salvatore, who rose from underboss to Consiglieri to Francesco Vicci over the years, is the definite choice, says an insider. Does that mean that Lillian Olivia Vicci will soon become Mrs. Salvatore Mangano, or will she once again find her way out of the limelight and away from the family’s long reach once her father is better?

It all becomes clear to me now. The uneasy feeling Lillian demonstrated as we landed in New York, the evasive answers when I asked anything about her family. These were all ways to avoid talking about who she truly is. She once escaped the family to find her own independence, just to be pulled back into the mess that is the Vicci crime family.

One thing is for certain. I need to find Lillian and speak with her. If she thinks ignoring me will make me go away, she has another thing coming. It only took one night with her in my arms for me to realize that all these years of running away from commitment weren’t because I was afraid of settling. No, it was because I hadn’t found the right woman. Lillian Vicci is the right woman for me, and living without her isn’t an option. She needs to know that for the first time in my life, I’m ready to settle down. Now, all I have to figure out is how to get to her and get her alone.