Mafia King's Addiction: No Longer Your Puppet

Isabella's POV

"Diego!"

The groaning of Leonardo Pablo echoed from wall to wall, leaving his capos and soldiers bowed.

The deafening silence hanging over them wasn't as threatening as the grinning on their faces, most especially on the face of Diego.

Holding his father's hand firmly, he listened to the last wishes of the underworld grandmaster of mafia as he took his final strokes of death.

Bald-haired and sixty-five years of age, with strong features, Leonardo had dominated and governed the underworld of mafias with tight fists and ruthlessness, sustaining a life-threatening gun injury in the process. He wasn't sure of the mafia that gave him the shots because his name was on the bullets of every don he fell out with.

But one thing was sure; he had terminated them all leaving him to suffer painstakingly from the gun injury in his lungs. To him he was going to die a fulfilled death because his son, Diego Pablo had succeeded him with a strong heart.

Even the voices of mafias had testified about the ruthlessness of Diego which overshadowed that of his father.

Letting out a whooping cough, Leonardo breathed hard, his eyes shutting and opening with unease.

"It's OK, father. You are going to be fine. Doctor Antonio is here. You are not going to die," the baritone voice of Diego thudded in the heart of his father but the oldie tossed his head in protest.

Doctor Antonio, a middle aged medical practitioner, stood idly, with arms folded for the hour to come. Several times Leonardo had told him he would die this day, before the twilight and it was happening. This had made the doctor fear him for perfectly predicting his death.

The door creaked and opened for a slim, busty, brown-haired, Caucasian lady to step in with a tray of water.

"The don, here is your favorite green tea. Please, don't die," I wailed, kneeling with head bowed.

My name was Isabella Lucia, the professional chef of the Pablo's. My name courted nothing except food and running private errands for Leonardo and his son.

This day, he had gathered loyalists, including his mafias, all dressed in black tuxedos and hats to witness his death.

"It is appointed to all mafias to die and I am obeying that fate," he tried to utter in a breath as he forced out a witty smile at me and held my hands.

Diego shut his eyes briefly; his jaw sagged as he leaned to his father, speechless and locking eyes with him. He wished he could keep Leonardo alive, but the gun injury had lasted as old as the Pablo's mafia.

"You have to be formidable, son, just as you have been," each word ended with a bit stuttering, "I can't keep the circle running anymore with this excruciating injury. Five years with unseen bullets in my lungs is no joke. I just have to go."

"You don't have to go," Diego argued it with a deep sigh, and clenching of jaw, "I still need you in the circle."

"Not anymore, son," he coughed a little more and breathed hard, "May the indelible footprints I have laid guide you to finish what I have started. The strokes of death have come. But the marathon must continue."

Diego sniffed what would have been a cry.

Leonardo turned his meshed gaze to me and returned it to his son, it was as if a bit of message just dropped in his mind.

"Son, I want to make two wishes before I kick the bucket."

"Say it and it shall be done, father" Diego affirmed with a dark grinning on his cheeks.

Leonardo's warm hands located mine and took it closer to Diego's. "You shall swear an oath to marry lsabella. I promised her my son will be the man in her life for her father's loyalty and now hers."

With his misty, green eyes shifting to me, I argued if Diego approved of it. With his grinning hardening, he tossed his head, and didn't protest it.

All through the years I served his father, I have never seen him get down with any woman neither has he been serviced by any hooker. He was a formidable alpha mafia, a man whose name courted dread and respect that went about his father's drug trafficking and delivered results.

"After taking the oath I shall tell you my second wish," Leonardo sounded, his eyes rolling impatiently at his son to do his bidding.

Several times I had peeped at them take an oath and I knew it was going to involve blood.

One of the soldiers took out a sharp dagger from his waist and made Diego take a cut in his palm.

"I Diego Pablo swear with my life to make Isabella Lucia my lawfully wedded wife from this moment," he licked the blood and gave me to do the same.

A rare vacant smile rose from Leonardo's grinned face. But it was short-lived as he began to cough heavily.

Diego rubbed him gently on the chest, seeing he still had a few more words to say.

"My second wish is to die by your bullet and not my rival's."

"Father?" he protested this time.

"Keep shut, son," he shunned him and scowled his face more horribly and breathed hard. "I have waited for this day. And whenever I snapped the lives of my rival's I often told them I would never die by their bullets, and today is that day. A pride kept is victory." Staring at his beholder dearly, he added, "Do it, son. Take my life with any arsenal of choice, your dagger or your gun."

Diego stole a glance at the pistol in his waist and he shut his eyes, winking back the tears that hung in his eyes.

"Be fast about it, the strokes of death calls," he hastened him with the nodding of his head.

Diego's jaw clenched, teeth gnashed, as he tapped on his 16-rounds pistol.

"You chose that, do it, son and help me fulfill my promise to my rivals. If your father dies by their bullets then your father died a weakling, such an awkward biography."

With clenched jaw, Diego pulled out his pistol, closed his eyes and his hands began to tremble.

Bang! Bang!

In a few seconds the reechoing of gunshot ravaged my ears, as I shut my eyes in tears.

With blood dripping from his neck, Leonardo's eyes stared whitely at the ceiling.

Already Diego's face was splashed with blood.

He had shot his father.