"Did you find it?"

"We did, it's in our possession right now," Scott answered.

I nodded, "I will be there. I just want to fucking end this shit with Bolton. I'm fucking tired of hearing his fucking name!"

Scott chuckled on the other line. "That would be a little hard, considering you married his daughter. Elijah Bolton is tied to you for life."

"Evangeline isn't Bolton anymore, she is a Costello."

"Yeah but that's his blood coursing through her veins," he chuckled.

Irritation surged up inside of me, "Don't fucking say shit like that! I have no fucking idea how that scum can father a child like her."

Scott laughed out loud at that, "We all get lucky sometimes, don't we?"

"Sometimes, I wonder how he'd react if he saw me fucking his daughter," I laughed, "That's the kind of shit I'd pay to see."

"That psychopath would have probably tried to kill you."

I was sitting on the living room couch when I noticed her walking downstairs, "Wouldn't that be fun?" I said to Scott mindlessly, she had all of my fucking attention in those short shorts and a pink tank top.

"How is she anyway?"

"She's fine," I answered, watching her phenomenal ass as she wandered into the kitchen, "Don't go in there without me."

"Wouldn't dream of it. Did you know that there are three fucking doors to get into that thing? The first one opens with Evangeline's face, Alessandro had worked something out from her picture. The second one opens with the key and the third one opens with her thumbprint. He must have kept something fucking precious in there." 

"That's exactly what I am hoping for," I heard a loud clattering noise from the kitchen followed by her loud annoyed groan, "It'd take me a while to get down there."

"Why? What the fuck are you doing?"

I smirked, "His daughter."

"You sick bastard," he snickered.

I hung up the call and threw the phone on the couch before I went into the kitchen and saw her sitting on the kitchen island chair, her head plopped down over her arms. She sniffled a few times, was she crying again?

I went closer to her and touched her back, rubbing my hand up and down, "Baby girl..." her back muscles stiffened, and without looking at me, she got off the chair and tried to get away from me, "What's wrong, are you still mad?"

She shook her head, "Nothing, nothing is wrong, Nikolai..."

"Then why are you fucking crying?"

She sniffled., "I just want to."

"Why?"

"I don't know..."

I grabbed her shoulders from behind and pulled her body into me. I wrapped my arms around her fragile frame and kissed the back of her head, "I'm sorry, I'm fucking sorry for being an ass to you."

"Leave me alone, Nikolai."

"I said, I'm sorry."

"You being sorry isn't going to fix this, it isn't going to fix my life," she snapped, struggling in my hold.

"And what's wrong with your life?" I asked

"Everything!" she yelled out, "Everything is wrong! You, me, this marriage, everything!"

I frowned and my hold on her slacked, "What do you mean?"

She immediately shuffled away from me, "This is not what I wanted! This is not how I imagined my life."

"And how did you imagine your life?"

"I wanted to be something, Nikolai! I wanted to live! I wanted to experience things, I wanted to study... I wanted to fall in love, I wanted someone to propose to me like a normal human being, I wanted a big wedding, and I wanted to wear the perfect dress. I wanted to be with a man who I'd know inside and out. You... You are a mystery. I want a man who isn't afraid to call me his. You couldn't even utter three simple words. Three words, Nikolai, just three. I don't want this... but I can't get out of it either, I'm trapped all over again. At least with my dad, I had hope..."

Bitterness spread through my chest. I ran a frustrated hand through my hair as violent emotions washed over me once again. It always happened with her, she had the power to fucking unnerve me and she used it every single chance she could get. I calmly watched her as she cried, turning away from me, and clutching the countertop.

I again went to her. Fuck! I feel like killing someone, probably her father because I couldn't fucking hurt her and I couldn't let her go.

"Angel..."

"Please, Nikolai, please..."

I kissed the back of her head. "What do you want? What do you really want because all that bullshit you spew isn't the reason you're crying like this."

"Tell me you love me," she whispered.

"Evangeline... Can't you can fucking feel how much I care for you?" I asked, pulling her body back into mine and this time, she didn't fight, she let me hold her.

She leaned into me, "Please..."

"Did you know anything about what your father did?"

She turned in my hold and looked up at me, her eyes filled with shiny tears, that clung to her long lashes, "For once, can we talk about us, just us..."

I couldn't fucking say the words. I couldn't. We were fine, we were perfect until my father came along and fucked everything up. He fucking said something to her that made her doubt everything about us. He fucked us up.

"Is that what you want? You want me to say something I don't fucking mean?" 

Her lips slightly parted, "You won't mean it?"

"Not if you force me."

She nodded and stepped back, "Fine, just don't talk to me, and don't touch me until you say those three words and actually mean it!"

She strode out of the kitchen without looking back. Annoyance gnawed at my skin, the urge the pull her back and fucking show her who makes the rules around here crept up but I controlled it. I fucking controlled it before I do something I will fucking regret.

I walked out of the house and got into my car. I sped out the gates to get to Bolton's house.

The whole fucking family is fucking nuts.

Fucking Boltons!

My men were patrolling all around the place, I had them stay here since the day we found out about Elijah's underground lair. I don't want someone messing with it.

Scott approached me as I got out of the car and laughed, "Judging by the look on your face, I can guess that doing his daughter didn't go according to your plan."

I shook my head, "She fucked me up instead."

"Well, she's her father's daughter."

I wanted to punch his fucking face as he said that, "Don't fucking say that again."

"Your father is here," Scott told me.

"What?"

"Your father, Luciano Costello is here "

"Why? And how the fuck did he know?!"

"After meeting with Evangeline, he tried to look into Elijah—curiosity maybe—and found us here instead. He got it out of some of the men why we were here and now he won't leave until he had seen everything."

"Motherfucker!"

"And we found Mark Leopold hiding in the basement. He had been living here for days after that coward ran from us."

"Where is he now?"

"Underground with Alessandro. He had been trying to break the motherfucker into giving us all the information."

I walked past Scott and he followed behind. I wanted to get over with this shit. It had gone on for way too long.

"Niko," my father's voice stopped me in my tracks.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Why didn't you tell me about all this?"

"Why would I? I'm not answerable to you anymore."

"You did it to save your woman from my wrath? You knew who her father was and what he was up to something yet you married the whore anyway."

I clenched my jaw, my hands balled into fists, "I'm the head of the Costello Family and she is my wife. If you called my wife a whore again, I'd forget that you're my father. I'd do what I'd do to anyone who'd had the nerve to disrespect my wife. What happened the other day was a fucking exception. It won't fucking happen again, accept her or not, I won't fucking tolerate this shit."

"Niko, I'm your father---"

"And she is my wife! Next time we talk about her, keep that in mind."

"You really are serious about this girl?" his gaze dropped to the ground for a second, before darting to me once more, "Maybe, we got off on the wrong foot, let me talk to her again."

"You are not allowed to see her, meet her or talk to her," saying that, I continued walking to the basement and then headed into the elevator that took me further down to a tunnel that led to his lair.

The elevator came to a halt and I stepped out to hear distant groans. I looked around the place, it looked like he had it built recently, like two to three years ago. The thought that Elijah was fucking planning something big right under my nose made me furious.

He got an easy death, a really fucking easy death. I wish I could bring him back to life just to torture the shit out of him and make his death a long, painful journey. I followed the sounds and came face to face with Mark Leopold getting beaten up by Alessandro.

"I'm here to help you..." Mark croaked out through the pain as his eyes fell on me. The frail middle-aged man was nothing compared to Alessandro's strength.

I raised my hand and Alessandro stopped, taking a step back and pushing Mark into my feet. I heard footsteps approaching and turned to see Scott and my father. I exhaled loudly through my nose as I turned to face Mark again.

"Mark, it's been a long time, eh?" my father said.

I gestured for Alessandro to open the fucking doors. At the first door, he scanned Evangeline's 3-D face model.

"He really loved her, didn't he?" Pops asked, but I didn't bother answering him.

We walked in and saw another door. Blinding white lights all around us was giving me a fucking headache. Scott handed Alessandro the key, the fucking key was huge and the metal was shaped with incisions cut to fit the wards of a particular lock. He put it in the keyhole, twisting it as the light at the top turned green. I knew there were three doors, Scott had told me that much but it was getting insanely irritating to go through every single one of them. At the last door, Alessandro used Evangeline's thumb impression and it opened into a dark room.

Mark coughed behind me, splurting blood out of his mouth, "I know how everything works, I know the passwords to all the computers. I will tell you everything—all of his plans and what he wanted to do with you and your family—but in return I want immunity. I want a respectful dismissal from the Costello family and I want to live the rest of my life as a free man with no ties to the mafia and I want it all in writing!"

Alessandro turned the lights on and my eyes took in every single detail of that room. The computers, the papers lying before them, the plans, the pictures of me, my father, and mamma. A picture of Scott and all of the men in the inner circle. And a picture of smiling Evangeline framed by his computer.

I looked back at Mark and nodded, "Done."

Mark was the smaller fish, he was no use to me but this, all this was more important. I wanted to know what Elijah Bolton had planned for me and the entire Costello family.

"I have another condition," Mark voiced.

He was fucking testing my patience.

"What?" I barked at him.

"I will take Evangeline with me, she belongs to me after the death of her father, I'm her godfather."

Something twitched in my brain. As if someone had flicked a button on, a button that made me see nothing but red. Anger curled in my gut turning into a blazing inferno that burned me from the inside out as I faced Mark.

He had some fucking nerve.

"What did you just say?"

He swallowed and looked around all of my men, "I take Evangeline with me forever."

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