The Vatican - M.E. Clayton

Chapter 1

Saveria – (Twenty-Four Years Later)~

Cira Benetti was driving me insane.

Absolutely. Insane.

No matter how many times we did the math, she just refused to accept that we did not, indeed, outnumber the men in our family. Between her parents, my parents, and Uncle Ciro and Aunt Robbie, there were exactly six boys and six girls in our generation. But if you included her Uncle Sal and Uncle Leo’s children, the males outnumbered us by five.

But. The. Girl. Just. Wouldn’t. Budge.

For the past two years, she’s been in my ear about how we could easily take over the Benetti Empire if we would just band together to overthrow the elders. Those elders being our freakin’ fathers and her uncles.

The girl was nuts.

Besides, growing up being a part of the Benetti Mafia Family, she should know better than anyone else that you can’t just…anything. Now, Cira was smart as a whip. She was beautiful, talented, and cunning. She just happened to also be spoiled. The men in her family babied the shit out of her when she was younger, and she never shook it off entirely as we grew into adulthood.

I loved the girl to death, but her plans to take over needed a lot of work.

Growing up, I was the middle child between my older brother, Vincent, and my younger brother, Dante. Vincent was twenty-six, and the oldest out of all us kids, and Dante was twenty-three. Between my parents, Phoenix and Francesca Fiore, my Uncle Ciro and his wife, Roberta Mancini, and, though not by blood, my Uncle Luca and his wife, Remy Benetti, us kids ranged from ages nineteen to twenty-six.

And every single one of us had been, or was being, groomed to take their rightful place as a Benetti in the crime family that was the Benetti Organization.

Francisco Benetti-named after my mother, because she and Uncle Luca were super close-was the heir to the throne, so to speak. In a few years, he will become the Benetti Underboss, but until he took his rightful place, Uncle Salvatore was holding the spot down for him.

The rest of us were to be utilized in whichever areas we could contribute to the best. College had been an option for all of us, but it was mostly the girls who had gone or who would go. The males, even the young ones, already knew who they were and where they were going in life; they didn’t need college for that.

I was one of the ones who chose college. I knew I’d end up working for Uncle Luca, but I wanted my reputation in the organization to be one that portrayed me as smart, ambitious, and brave. I didn’t want anyone thinking I was being treated with kid gloves because of who my parents were. It also didn’t help that my name was Luca Saveria Fiore. Or that Uncle Luca was my godfather on top of that. Or that, as rumor has it, he used to take me everywhere with him when I was a baby. Or that, thanks to Uncle Luca, I knew the ins and outs of the Benetti Organization better than anyone else.

Including his own sons.

So, that’s why I knew Cira’s half-ass plans to overthrow all the men in power would fail, even with Uncle Ciro’s girls thrown into the mix. And let me teeellllll you, those four were as cutthroat as you could get. Mattia, Camilla, Bianca, and Georgia Mancini were the reason every guy in our families slept with one eye open. Those girls wreaked havoc wherever they went, and God forbid you mess with their baby brother, Massimo. Even though Massimo was nineteen, and clearly well on his way to earning a position in the Benetti Family, those golden-eyed mercenaries adored their little brother.

The most respectful of the lot were the Benetti Brothers, though. Francisco, Angelo, and Emilio were the real thing; true Benetti Royalty. They were princes and Cira was the only princess. We all had our strengths, and we all had our weaknesses, but even on our weakest day, we were still a formidable group.

As we had been raised to be.

The problem with all of Cira’s plans to take over was that she ignored the lack of brute strength in her plans. While we were every bit as intelligent and cunning as our male counterparts, we lacked the experience of actually torturing or killing someone on a regular basis. While Cira was off getting her nails done, Emilio Benetti, at only nineteen, was already killing grown