Married To The Mafia...?

No matter where in the world I went to, how far I travelled or the amount of time between steps upon the Nevada pavement, no where felt like home quite like Vegas. The dancing lights and sounds of raining quarters never strayed far from my midnight dreams. I never forgot the smell of bustling streets that never fell asleep no matter the size of the oceans that seperated me from the golden strip.

The second I stepped foot over the warm cement and the desert sun kissed my bare skin I knew I was where I belonged. They say home is where the heart is and if it were true I hadn't felt my heart beat in months.

I was never cut out to walk in my father's footsteps, for my entire life I had been sheltered from the illict world of the black market and the money hungry taboo of casino and hotel enterprises. I knew the industry secrets but that was as far as my knowledge lasted. My brain fizzed and imploded when it came to numbers, to stess, to high calculations and involved millions upon millions of dollars per day. I didn't know how my father had managed for the entire time of his life when I lasted a whole of three weeks. I took advantage of the signed contract of my wedding and pushed the burdon of my father's hotel business onto Ethan.

Stress learned to live inside my veins. A single month had past since my father had died, since I had been married, since we had returned to Vegas with the pressure of taking over the world. A single month had changed almost everything and nothing at the same time. In a whole month my life had been turned upside down and spun around over and over; I was married... at twenty-one I was a wife, I had made sacred vowes in front of family and friends, I was dealt a responsibility to care for another human being as much as myself. I had lost my father the night of my wedding, I had watched as his body slumped and fell bloodied and broken in the centre of my reception. I had clutched to my husband of three hours as the life trickled from his body. I had been thrown into the deep end of the mafia life and I was barely keeping my head above water.

Ethan and I had barely wasted time in making over my father's previous business. I had been naive to think that we would simply continue from exactly where my father had left off. Over half of his employees were immediately dismissed under evidence that they had helped the Jakowski, they were corrupt, they worked for Mason. A whole of fifty new employees were hired and the remaining of my father's were placed under constant surveillance until they were cleared as a threat. With new employees however, came new responsibilities for both Ethan and I and our main was to uphold our appearance as newly weds.

Nothing emotionally had changed between either of us. I didn't dwell on holding feelings for him, I didn't feel like I had to fall completely and utterly in love. I didn't feel like we were even married. But in front of everyone else we had to play pretend.

"Amelia." Emanuel Rodriguez was the newest face of our surveillance team. He had previously worked for an intelligence opperation in national security. "I think you need to see this." He had stepped swiftly into the glass doored office both Ethan and I called our own, in his hand a small USB stick, on his face a look of pure seriousness that told me that whatever it was he had discovered it was not a laughing matter.

Quickly Emanuel pushed the small memory card into the side of the computer upon the desk and immediately security footage rolled along the screen. At first it was fast, sketchy and didn't make sense as Emauel fast forwarded to a precise point. As his finger tip click play I knew immediately what he had found. A familiar face flashed over the screen and immediately my heart sank, my palms grew sweaty but my eyes refused to stray from the video.

A familiar scent wafted through the glass doors and I shifted my eyes from the fuzzy screen to the intense gaze of Ethaniel Radev. His eyes smiled warmly as he walked in my direction, his body bending to kiss my forehead as he stood by my side. Nothing ever got past Ethan and he almost immediately picked up on the sterile feeling swirling around the room.

"Is everything alright?" He shifted so to stand behind my chair, his palms resting softly on either on my shoulders as he scanned the computer screen. At his realisation tension rose and suffocated every ounce of the small space. "When was this from?"

"This morning..." Emanuel's voice was shaky and filled with nerves at the sound of Ethan's building aggression. Quickly he stumbled over his word and excuse himself, fleeing from the room just as quickly as he had entered.

"What's he doing here?" Ethan paced back and forth before the desk, his hand pushing through the layers of dark hair upon his head, his green eyes flamming in frustration. "What does he want?"

"I-I don't know..." I stammered and struggled to think of an answer. The same question had been running through my head since his face appeared before me.

"You aren't being left alone."

"Ethan-"

"I mean it Amelia. Not one second until we figure this out."

His words were final. While my estranged brother Mason Samuels' face was portrayed across our surveillance cameras I would be surrounded by any and everybody.

My engagement had ended a chapter of my life filled with turmoil and tragedy.
I only prayed my marriage wouldn't dance along the same path.