Daniella watched Rocco with her mother while she ascended the grand cherry staircase to the second floor. The two of them faced each other, talking, her mother holding both his hands in hers. Her eyes gleamed and her hair shook while she talked. Tears rolled her cheeks and Rocco’s head was dipped and tilted in an attitude of support and compassion. He understood her mother’s loss and worry.

At the wide carpeted space at the top of the stairs she turned right and crossed to her father’s office. As she walked the thick Persian runner that lay on the wood floor she passed by the archway that led to the study. She saw the four lawyers sitting together on couches with their briefcases laying expectantly on their laps. Their posture stiff, their faces belied their growing nervous concern over being summoned. She nodded to them as she passed and entered Papa Nero’s office.

It looked the same as when he was alive—her father kept it neat. On her left the arched windows looked down over the front drive and she could see pacing soldiers out there on the walk and through the garden. She moved around his monolithic executive desk and sat herself in her father’s leather office chair, settled into its deep padding and gripped the arm rests. A smile broke her face, a warm welcome thing amongst all the tension. Her Rocco. Holding hands with her mother. It seemed so natural but it was hard to believe that was the same man she knew when her father was alive. Not resorting to killing as a solution to a problem was going to take some adjustment for her rock solid swain. He was moving around in this new state of being, unsure of how to communicate. It was like he was learning a new and difficult language. But he was smart. He had a good heart. She knew he would be fluent in no time. The way he held her mothers hands? ...In his heart was a goodness and she could see it, a distant glimmering thing winking in his darkness but she was sure it was there. She would take it, brush it off, remove the grime of Rocco's past and hold it up and let it shine.

She crossed her legs and plunked them up on the polished cherry desk. Crossed her hands in her lap and tried to picture herself leading the families. How did she ever think she wanted it? What would she get from it? Enduring the legacy of death and murder and the catering to human vice. God, Rocco was right. She had so much more to give the world. She could feel it growing inside her already. Knew it was there just under the surface, swimming behind her clasped hands. That brought another smile.

At last, she shook her head and laughed, pulled the top right door on her father’s desk and fumbled her hand in its interior, her fingers scratching around for a hidden toggle. Found it, flicked it, then behind her came a buzz and a clunk. Spun her chair around and saw one segment of the bank of bookcases that lined the wall behind her father’s desk had swung outwards by a fraction. She rose and went to it, stood and peered into the dark place behind it. When she was a little girl, one Saturday she had played hide and seek with her father and she could never find him. It was a big house and there was a lot of ground to cover. Eventually she would give up and he would appear out of nowhere and scare the crap out of her. Later that day he showed her his hidden room and its passages. When she was older she learned it was built during the Prohibition and it was used to store illegal alcohol for the personal consumption of the business tycoon who had owned it back then. But now she knew it was no longer the secret hiding spot for alcohol or fun-loving fathers who liked to confound their little girls. It was where the Don of the Nero crime syndicate kept his most personal documents pertaining to the illicit workings of his empire.

There was a switch on the right hand side and her hand found it after a few blind swipes, and the secret room was lit up. It was a long and narrow space, wide enough that she could walk with both arms out and touch either side. Each side was lined with cabinets and shelving. Within the cabinets would be the paperwork involving the day to day operations of the syndicate. The legitimate businesses, the illegitimate ones too. There would be pistols and shotguns and rifles. Stacks of cash. Passports. At the end of the room were narrow passages that led through the walls on this floor of the mansion. She smiled at that nostalgic thought of the rainy day she’d spent with her Papa. Hard to believe that was the same man who'd led two lives, fathered two children with two different women. God, might there be more? She didn't want to think. Her father was a complicated man. While she always tended to see him as the doting father he was, she couldn't ignore the way others saw him. The way others feared him. Her father was a brutal man. And when he was younger she'd heard the stories about what had happened to those who crossed him. For some reason they never seemed real. She alway thought of them as legends. Fearsome fairy tales meant to keep the populace on their best behavior. Her young father, before she was ever born, always seemed like a separate man. Like they were two different people. But she knew they weren't. Could see it now. When he was gone she saw how brutal his world was. Saw the violence it existed in. He brought peace to the city. But she knew he brought it with a wagging threatening clenched fist shaken in the face of the dangerous men around him. Peace...or fucking else. Capice?

In many ways Flavio was a man like her father. She sighed at the thought, ran the back of her hand across her feverish forehead and got back to business. She collected all the necessary paperwork, gathered the things that the lawyers would need and made a pile at her feet.

When she had it all, she pulled open a velvet-lined drawer. Knew what was in it, now thought it seemed to have grander importance. When her father died and she resumed his businesses she had been through all these drawers, cabinets, and compartments. Knew that in this drawer there was a pewter framed photograph. She turned it to face her and ran her fingers over the faces smiling at her from behind the glass. One face a smiling, chubby cheeked and precocious little mafia princess—an eleven-year-old Daniella Nero. On the right of her, a blonde shaggy-haired, surly little boy, must have been thirteen. Flavio. The two of them on the beach in Siracusa. She remembered they’d had a picnic lunch that day. She had a crush on Gialucca, a friend of Flavio’s, and the two had argued and Flavio had punched the other kid, a year older and bigger than him, right in the stomach. Gialucca had lay in the sand trying to get his breath and she and Flavio had left him there. Then they walked up the beach and they ate fried donuts and gelato and watermelon and watched the breakers in the sun with her father and her...aunt. That had been the last time she had gone to Siricusa with her father. The last day she had seen Flavio. Her father had them pose together in the sand and he took this picture. She was tanned and little-kid chunky, black hair pulled in a ponytail, freckles from the intense sun. Flavio had been tanned and white-haired. Just like his mother. The woman she'd called her Auntie. She was so stupid. And her poor mother.

“Daniella...”

It was a ghostly voice, its sound soughing past her ears and bringing an astounding chill to her. She shivered. It was the voice of her father. She turned, saw the doorway darkened by the silhouette of her father. Not her father though. Her father’s brother. His older brother, her Uncle Tommy. She slumped against the shelf behind her, her fingers and neck tingling from that deathly scare but before she could chastise her uncle he set himself upon her, wrapping his arms around her and almost sobbing with relief.

“Oh Daniella,” he moaned in her ear. “I thought something had happened...we were all so worried.” He hugged her tight, and she closed her eyes to him, pictured her father holding her right now. She would whisper in his ear that she couldn't do it. She couldn't be him, she would have to give it all up and she would hope he'd say That's all right, baby Daniella, I just want you to be happy. Tommy hugged her and shook her, her arms pinned to her chest, clutching the pewter-framed picture of herself and her half-brother.

Finally he let her go, and his eyes glistened with wet but he didn't tear. “Rocco told me,” he said quietly, his eyes darting over hers.

She nodded, unsure of what to say. She leaned back farther, flipped the picture over and watched his face as he comprehended the picture of her and her half-brother.

“Flavio,” her uncle whispered, his head nodding.

“I'm going to give him what he wants.”

“Your father left it all for you.”

“I don't want it. This world of his is shaped by men like him. Men like his son Flavio.”

“Your father worried about Flavio. He wanted you to lead because you were good. Flavio...has always been trouble. Your father trained you bec—”

“It's not for me. I'm not of that world. I don't want to hurt anyone. Don't want to make suffering in this world.”

“I understand,” he said. “I know...”

They stood for a while, not looking at each other, looking down at the floor. Tommy’s breathing had a wheeze, the illness that kept him from walking in his brother’s shoes. He knew what it took. Knew it wasn't the kind of thing that could be gifted. Ruling this city wasn't handed over. When there was a vacuum, everything collapsed in its place. Someone would have to push its space back out again by force. It wouldn't be Tommy and it wouldn't be Daniella. At least it would be a Nero.

She said, “How could he do this to her?”

“To who?”

“To my mom… How could he have another woman?”

“Daniella, your mother knows. Your mother was the other woman.”

She winced, her face scrunching like she was in pain.

“Your father had a family before you. Your mother stole him from Flavio’s mother...”

“No...”

“She did. It was...your mother is beautiful but...it was also...Flavio's mother was crazy...dangerous...just like her son. Your mother was so good for your father...he tried...tried to be there for Flavio...”

She cried, “We went in the summers...”

“That was for you...for a time your Papa wanted you to have a relationship. He went other times too. Your mother knew, there was nothing between him and—”

“My aunt?”

Now it was his turn to wince. “No,” he said. “There was nothing there. Nothing between them. He was there for his son, but his son...”

“Ended up in Reform School?”

“It should have been prison, Daniella. Your father kept him out, kept him safe. Paid the guards there at the prison-school to make sure he was pampered and safe. Gave him all kinds of money.”

“Well, he used that money to raise an army that tried to kill me. Tried to kill Rocco.”

Tommy smiled, strange under the circumstances, but she knew what brought it. He said, “He might be crazy but he's a lot like your father at that age.”

“I’ve heard,” she murmured. “He never killed his sister, did he?”

Tommy smirked, said, “No. But he woulda killed anybody got in his way.”

“Maybe Flavio is the one to rule this city then.”

Tommy shrugged.

She stooped and picked up all the paperwork needed for the lawyers, stood up and clutched them to her chest, said, “I’m giving him all that Papa left me.”

“You're crazy...”

“No, I'm not. I’m doing it on my terms. Those lawyers still waiting?”

He nodded. “They look nervous.”

She winked at her uncle. “Wait til I tell them what I want them to do.”

* * *

Vida made them meatballs and pasta e fagiole for dinner and there was no stopping her. He and Daniella and Tommy all ate at the dining room table in the grand ballroom. The house seemed so empty now what with Papa Nero gone. Usually when he'd broken bread in the Nero home that ballroom had two dozen people in it. There had been a lot of changes in the Nero household and there were more to come.

He said, “Those lawyers looked like they'd seen a ghost when they left the study.”

“I imagine,” she agreed with a smirk, but she said no more.

“What do you have up your sleeve?”

“Maybe if you're a good boy I’ll tell you,” she said slyly. His cock jumped in his pants, flexed hard from between his balls all the way to the tip in sudden eagerness.

They sat together on her bed in her teenage bedroom. The bedroom she’d lived in when he first met the beautiful princess daughter of the man he served. He sat near the bottom, his feet on the floor and Daniella sat with her back in the pillows, her feet up on the bed near his hip. It was late now, the sun beginning to go down. Tomorrow would be a big day. Tomorrow this should all be settled and they could go on their way and lead their lives together... Or they could walk into a crazy trap and Flavio would execute them both. This was a wild risk for the woman he loved. His hand idly squeezed at what he had growing under his denim, watching her sultry eyes in the sharp moonlight that crossed from her tall mansion window and slashed across her bed at an angle. He'd do whatever she wanted. His sexy smart tiger. She might be about creation, might not ever want to hurt someone, but she was dangerous. She had Nero blood.

He took the hand that wasn't on his cock, gripped her ankle tight and yanked her down the bed towards him, growled, “What do you want a good boy for?”

She yelped and laughed, kicked at him with the heel of her other foot. Her kick bounced off his muscle. Soon he had her foot in the grip of his strong hands and he kneaded her scrunched little soles, her foot flexing and arching. She made soft groaning sounds a lot like purring. He dug his thumbs into her soft flesh, up and down her foot, worked her toes. She began to laugh and she lay her back flat on the bed, her beautiful hair splayed around her.

He inhaled deep and looked around her room. Tall coffered ceiling in deep lustrous wood, a narrow marble fireplace with a fire he’d built gently licking at the brick firebox and softly hissing and cracking. Her bed was a massive sled in polished mahogany, a four poster with an undulating red canopy, red sails draping along at the foot and thick bunting wrapped around the posts. Daniella was a princess.

He said, “You know all the nights I was posted in this house how I dreamed one day I’d be in here?”

“Did you? But you never made it...”

“I’m here now...”

“How old were you then?”

“When I was just a thug, standing guard with a gun?”

She nodded.

“I was nineteen. Just a dumb kid.”

“A dangerous kid,” she said.

“I sure was.”

She kicked herself free of his rubbing and rolled on her tummy and shimmied farther up the bed. She wore a loose T-shirt, something sleek and fashionable, probably cost what her father used to pay him in a week when he was that dumb kid. She had bare feet and black yoga pants, her legs slowly scissored while she opened the drawer on the table beside her bed. A padded notebook was withdrawn, a brass lock clasped it closed. She fished around with her other hand under her pillows and withdrew a tiny brass key, unlocked the book and rolled to her back, putting herself up in her pillows again. She hummed with amusement and licked a thumb, flipped through the pages. “Ah,” she said finally, flexed the book open and closed and read to him.

“Dear Diary,” she said, looking up at him through her eyebrows, then back down at the page to continue. “There’s a new guard tonight. He’s young. He is a meathead. He’s kind of cute but I’ve overheard that he is an animal. The others talk about him with fear. He is creeping me out. If he looked at me I think I would scream.” She looked up to him, her expression wondering his opinion.

He laughed, “Why would you read me that?”

She smiled but didn't laugh, held up one index finger indicating him to hold on. Flipped ahead, found what she was looking for, read it first, her lips gently moving. She laughed and covered her mouth. She shook her head.

“What is it?”

She looked hesitant now, rolled her eyes, then read, “Dear Diary,” she began once more, smirking, “I had the dream again. I’m dreaming about that guard Rocco. In the dream he is holding me and I’m afraid but he kisses me and it makes it all go away. Then his hands go all over me and well, he does all sorts of things to me, diary.” She wiped at her upper lip, her smile growing wider. “I woke up and I had sweat the bed. My sheets were soaking. I’ve never had a dream like that. Then all morning I couldn't think about anything but him. How can I like a boy like that?” She burst out laughing at the final statement

“You liked me when you were a kid?”

She nodded and he could see her face had gone red.

“You’re blushing,” he said, climbing up onto the bed now, getting on all fours.

She put the diary down and put her hands on her cheeks. “Probably,” she laughed.

“I liked you too, but you scared me more than I scared you. The boss’s daughter. The king’s princess...and I was a lowly soldier.”

“It was meant to be,” she said and shrugged.

“It was,” he said, crawling closer. “Took us til we were in our twenties—even then I felt like I was never good enough.”

“You were the monster...yet you were the one that ran away...”

He bristled, but she was right. He ran away.

The pain he’d caused her was somehow lessening, dispersing, being replaced by his love. He was filling her up with his love. He’d left dead patches in her garden by leaving her, but she was still fertile, still ripe, and he would water it and fertilize it and he would nourish her back to abounding life. In her eyes he saw her renewal, just a glimmer now, but he knew it would soon burn like the sun.

He ran the back of his knuckles over her cheek and she wrapped her perfect little fingers over his wrist and she smiled. He said, “Somehow, I chose killing over you. I chose destruction. I destroyed myself. Me leaving kept you safe, safe from me, for four years but death still came for you. And what did those four years mean to me? Sadness, loneliness...fuck, regret. I was a coward. But I grew up in that time. I’m not a boy anymore. I’ll fight for you, I’ll protect you, get you what you want, get you outta here...”

Love, lust, passion...they drove men to do awful things. Bloodthirsty things. Sometimes, maybe even do good things. He wouldn’t kill Flavio. He wouldn’t kill the man who shared the blood of the woman he loved. She wanted a new life. One without violence and murder and death. He would live that life for her. One bullet in Flavio’s face and they could go wherever they wanted and live the life they wanted but it would be the old way. The way that divided them, split them, kept him from the woman he would never stop loving.

His lips met hers, her eyes gently closing as he narrowed the distance. She held his face and he held hers. He breathed her deeply, lived four years in that moment, kissing and loving, listening to his own heartbeat, listening to the soft wet smacking of her soft lips. The fire crackled and popped, her breath grew lusty.

“You’re all I live for, Daniella,” he said, holding her, his thumbs caressing her cheeks. “I don’t know what you have up your sleeve for tomorrow but I know I’ll be there for you. I won’t let nothing ever happen to you.”

They looked into one another’s eyes for a good long moment, hands touching faces, expressions morphing from mirth and humor to love, then truckling to their wondrous desire. Their bodies clashed together and he took her to her back. She succumbed, her legs wrapping him. He ground his hardness into her soft yielding pussy. He swelled to steel, kissing and remembering their first time together in four years and how he made her come by humping it against her. He writhed over her, pushed his hardness into her, felt her soft feminine yielding to his arousal. He stripped her. Hands slipping up under the shirt she wore, prying it up her body, pulling it up over her head. She shook her hair out and ran her nails over him while he kissed the gentle scoop of her breasts, his tongue tracing the line where her black lacy bra scored her milky flesh. Yanked the cups down, her hips driving against his cock as he did, a gasp escaping her lips. He ripped the bra in two, made her bare. Her beautiful breasts swayed and her nipples condensed tightly before him, so tight the skin around them dimpled. He ravished her with passionate kisses, took her nipples in his mouth, explored their thrilling shape with his tongue, suckling and biting. Her legs began to writhe on him, squeezing his waist, her feet going up and down the sides of his thighs. She ached for him as badly as he ached to be in her. He reared up, knelt over her and admired her. She was beautiful any way he would look at her but she was exquisite on her back with her legs open. She looked at him, bashful but simultaneously libertine. A shy little girl who was going to suck his cock and fuck him til dawn. There was a twinkle in her eye and he knew they were going to be up all night. They could be dead tomorrow.

He gripped her waistband, tore it down, the tight pants scoring her flesh and making her jiggle. His bad girl without her panties. He bent and kissed her, kissed her soft heat, felt those soft twists of flesh pulse and engorge in his mouth. Pushed her knees up to her chest, her little legs kicking as he resumed his suckling of her feminine flesh, licking and biting at that pink part of her that he cherished. She was breathing heavily now, almost panting, her feet dangled loosely above his head. Couldn’t take it anymore, took the pants where they bunched at her knees and whisked them down, turned them inside out and threw them off the bed. Her hands attacked his buckle, delicate fingers working the roller and pin and swooping the leather out with a fervor-focused skill. He watched dumbly, eager as she was to see his enormous arousal revealed. Shook his head, peeled his shirt off and when he had his head free her mouth was on him. Like hot wet velvet she sucked the glans and he held her head while she pleasured him. He sank back slowly, his knees bent awkwardly. Daniella had a power over him. He encouraged her, gentle urgings and softly saying her name while she brought him close to orgasm. Her hands searched his briefs found his balls and fondled them.

When she had him right on the brink, windmilling at the edge of sweet release, she stopped and smiled slyly. Ran her flattened tongue along the wide underside of him, base to tip, a smirk tugging one corner of her mouth, a chuckle whisking coldly against his spit-cold cock. Her meanness brought his own smile. He growled and rose, her hands pulling his jeans down as he did. She was on her back again, looking in his eyes and guiding his swollen cock with a gentle grip, stroking his tip against her wet pink stripe. Their eyes held as he entered her. Then he took her with kisses, her nails raking his back, his entry drawing a single sharp cry. Then he was pounding into her savagely, eager to give her his seed. She moiled against his thrusts, her hips pumping wildly, wanting him deep and hard. He gave it to her, a rising intensity building in his hanging bouncing balls. He was boiling over, he was going to fill her up with all he had, he was going to watch her face as she felt his wet love shoot from him. He stopped and she mewled.

He stood, a mean smirk of his own, his sweet Daniella clinging ardently to him, so eager to feel his come inside her. He walked with her, her beautiful flesh clutched to him, her legs over his hips. Their walking sank his hardness deep inside her, painfully deep, and she grimaced and laughed, hugged her cheek to his chest.

In front of the fire he lay her on her back, and with his cock still buried in her he watched her face in the flickering golden flame. She was lit in dancing amber, her black eyes sparkled like jewels and her eyes spoke honest unending love. His eyes told her the same, giving off to her the electric copper-coil love he had for her that buzzed inside him like a dynamo. He explored her with his hands and her heavy yearning breaths caused her insides to scantly slip on the hard swollen end of him buried inside her. Her breathing drawing his seed from him, sucking on him, pulling his nectar through his tubes and vessels like it was sucking on a straw.

“I fucking love you,” he said.

“I fucking love you, Rocco,” she said.

He thrust in and out of her, clear excitement spilling from him, lubricating their passion til she felt like silk and he kissed her and she ran her soft little feet along the outside of his thighs. His stomach tightened to a stony column as it rose within him, a pounding fiery release starting low and consuming him, washing him over with warmth and sanctity, and his pulse pounded up his neck. His eyes swelled, his hearing went distant, and she brought it out of him, conjured his seed from him like a djinn. He roared and thrust and she hissed at its heat, her lips scrolled to a snarl, her white teeth clenched and glistening wet in the light of the fire. He collapsed on her, gave her his weight, let her know she was his and she was protected. Cuddled her to him, their wetness smearing their thighs and bellies, and he kissed her, rolled with her in the warmth of the fire.

They made love all night. Playing and teasing and exploring, cuddling, and sometimes he watched her nap and she was sure she did to. When the sun rose in her towering castle windows they were close to sated, but there was much left to do. If every night could be like this he would do anything to make it happen. Even if for once it meant sparing someone’s life instead of taking it.