Claimed

Special Chapter 40: Athena Pallis 

Era il mio principe oscuro. 

He was my dark prince. 

Forged in the darkness, meant to stem evil around him, meant to pretend he was someone else underneath a false sense of duty and obligation but I knew him. 

I was his light in the darkness, I loved his evil, I knew the prince lurking beneath all that armor. 

The prince who once talked to me and made me feel I was worthy. 

I was pretty. 

I was powerful. 

Mio principe wiped my tears at the age of ten when my mother had one of her panic attacks at her lavish parties and lashed out at me. 

Mio principe held me and listened to me tattle about my miserable life. 

My prince looked me in the eyes and told me, “You are a principessa. Don’t let anyone treat you otherwise.” 

Fate and his past had separated us but a love that 

Special Chapter 40: Athena Pallis 

was forged and written in the skies couldn’t be 

erased. 

Destiny worked. 

I believed in destiny. 

I believed in myself. 

Just like Christian Vitello had once told me; I was a princess and a princess got everything she wanted including his heart. 

“Silencio!” 

Allagra Pallis, my mama, CEO of Pallis Motors and the head of the Five Mafioso Families slaps her hand on the thirty–two–seat conference table. 

At the age of forty–five and with a face that didn’t seem to age. Allagra Pallis was a force to be 

reckoned with. 

Imbued with a tongue that would rival the gods. themselves, a witty mind that wasn’t passed down to me in any way and a short–circuited temper, Allagra was the epitome of perfection. 

The epitome of my imperfections. 

The epitome of the stinging jealousy that stung my heart when she mentioned my dead sister who she wished would be heir to the Pallis family 

instead of me. 

Special Chapter 40: Athena Pallis 

She didn’t tell me that herself. 

No, Allagra had a way of kicking me to the curb by smothering me with love and expectations. and I sat and followed Mama because she was the queen in this chess game. 

I was the rook meant to be tossed around. 

“Moretti betrayed us all by starting a war and leaving us in debt. Yet we expect his son to take the reins and damn us all to hell? His son will ruin us to the mud“, Ginno La Monda, the 

sixty–year–old who owns La Monda winery speaks up, the worry lines on his forehead not being a match to mama’s scowl. 

“What do you propose, Ginno?” Mama asks. 

Ginno rubs his bulging pot belly giving everyone a peek at his newest Versace suit from the new clothing line Versace just launched and a Philip Patek watch on his wrist. 

“We deny him the seat.” 

“You want us to go to war? Moretti Vitello was a fuckup but his grandfather started all this, the Cosa Nostra is his birthright. The boy deserves a chance.” 

“Don’t be too much of a prude Allagra, that’s not your style. When Moretti damned us all you took the reins, you were ready to be heir. Damn it, you are the one keeping us afloat. But we are getting 

Special Chapter 40: Athena Pallis 

too old for this, let our children take the throne.” 

He looks at his son. Ginno La Monda Jr. 

And I know Junior, we have attended balls together and he is not a good enough mafia don. 

He is no prince. 

He is no Vitello.. 

Mama chuckles ridiculing Ginno where he stands. the other families chuckle too, “Are you 

proposing we hand the seat to your son?” 

“He is more than capable of-.” 

“Your son couldn’t hold a candle to what Christian Vitello Volkov has done in Chicago. While your son stays and eats like a pig in Daddy’s overpriced mansion, Christian Vitello has built an empire with no money and no resources but his wits. 

He lost a family member and he is still going on strong. How many of us have stood strong after we lost people we cared about? 

I lost my daughter when she was four and I have never been the same. You lost your wife, La Monda, and you’ve been balls deep in mistresses ever since. Basilio? Domenico? Can you all 

compete with everything the boy has done over the years?” 

Basilio Agrusa and his family all nod their heads. 

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with a ‘no 

Domenico Albano yas my mother in her wee 

Ginno La Monda looks like he’s to g vein, “Then what do you wongrat He hand kiw the seat we’ve worked hard to traddle since bais father ruined in 

“He agreed to our terms a year app den de reached out. He agreed to claim has been 

under our terms.” 

Ginno laughs, his meaty hands depping the tas table again, “Which one of us could hand ov daughter to the bruter Huh, Allage? 1 kid you not the boy will want revenge for his father, he will run us to the grounds and I will not cover my bloodline with Moretti blood 

He might be a brute but Chrislan Vitello hash 

own way of processing things 

None of these people know him. 

Not like I know him. 

Clutching my Brunello Cucinelli handbag straightening the La Perla minidress I have on, I speak up. 

“I will marry him. I’ll marry Christian Vitello “ 

Mama’s sharp eyes are the first ones to shoot me down and before she can scold me for speaking 

out of turn, Ginno claps his hands. 

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“Great. How befitting. It’s decided then Athena 

Pallis will marry the Cosa Nostra heir and keep him in line from killing us all. Meeting 

adjourned.” 

Everyone leaps out one by one. 

My mother struggles to keep her anger in check 

but fails when we are left alone. 

“You were to observe, you were to listen you were 

not to-.” 

“Mama-” 

“You do not speak out of turn; you do not give these men ammunition to destroy you because once they have it you are as good as done. How many times have I taught you that, Thena? How many times I have taught you we women need to be careful in this type of world?” 

I glance at her blue eyes, the ones that earned her the name ‘Alessandro Pallis‘ pearl‘. 

She was my father’s pearl. 

I’ll never be like that and maybe some part of me 

hates her for it. 

Maybe I want to move away from her shadow. To the only man who has ever understood me. 

“I love him.” 

I utter the words I have been speaking in my dreams for years out loud and feel my heart 

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Setting 

1585 

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weigh a little less, 

I have loved the prince who consoled me in my mother’s garden and never spoke to me again. 

I have loved him since high school. 

When he ran away to America I cried that night for him, for us, for our future but destiny has intervened. 

“Ooh, Athena. Men like him, fueled by revenge and darkness, never have it in them to love. A love like that will consume you.” 

“Dad was like that and he loved you. He loved you to the very end, there is hope for me and Christian, I know there is. I will make sure there 

is.” 

“Thena-.” 

“I’m not a kid, I’m sorry I’m not like Alessandra, that I couldn’t be enough for you after she and 

dad died but this is what I want, he is what I want and I will fight for him.” 

Fight to the death. 

Fight for his darkness. 

Fight for his love. 

申申申 

I arrived in Chicago even after my mother’s 

protests. 

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I have been to Taiwan, to Beijing, to Moscow, Mexico but never this north of America. 

Never too close to where Christian Vitello 

operated. 

I was too scared, too shy to speak to him but he will get the news soon. 

He will know we are to wed and he will 

remember me. 

I went shopping in a few stores though, to look good for him, to seduce him. My nerves were all over the place as I skimmed over all the outfits I would get to wear for him. 

Tonight, in the bustling cold night of Chicago, my driver and I are parked across a shabby ‘almost falling apart‘ building. 

We followed Christian all the way here and he has 

not come down yet. 

Does he carry out his operations here? In this dump? 

“Ms. Pallis? I think it’s getting late, we should head back to your apartment because your mother 

wouldn’t like to hear any of-.” 

“Do you work for my mother or do you work for me, Alonso?” 

“For you, ma’am.” 

“Then if I say we are staying here till my fiancé 

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comes down then we stay all night if we have to.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Christian didn’t come down. 

Not after ten hours of gazing out the window 

anyway. 

When he came down, mama’s words rang in my mind. 

“A man like him does not have it in him to love anything or anyone.” 

Then why is he holding the blonde woman outside the shabby apartment like they are his prized possessions? 

“A love like that will consume you.” 

It’s already consuming me, mama. 

His eyes, his smile. 

He is happy with this woman. 

This American whore. Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

It hurts. 

It hurts even more when he pinches her butt and kisses the child like the nasty thing is his. 

Why do they look like a family? 

Why is she stealing what’s mine? 

He’s mine. I saw him first. He became my prince. 

first.

Special Chapter 40: Athena Pallis 

“Alexia Green, twenty–three years old, orphan has a three–month–old child with one Rhett. 

Kingston. She’s been off and on the streets for a few months up until recently according to the neighbors, two loan sharks invaded her home and 

took her.” 

“The clinic she works in is indeed your fiancé’s, 

ma’am. I couldn’t get every detail since her co–workers are a little tight lipped but your 

fiancé’s men have been there a lot. Seems like 

Alexia Green is the head nurse.” 

“I’m doing everything I can to find Rhett Kingston, ma’am but no private investigator can work under the pressure you have me under. No, money is not an issue. 

I’ll find him for you ma’am.” 

“I found Rhett Kingston. He’s in New Jersey.” 

Rhett Kingston is my ticket in getting rid of Alexia Green and now no one will stand in my way in winning what’s mine. 

In winning the heart of Christian Vitello Volkov.