All Chapters of The Don's Unwanted Prize : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

23 Chapters

Ch 1: Lucas De Santis

01:18 PM. The numbers on the clock burned my retinas like a countdown to an execution. Today was the day I stopped being a person and started being a peace treaty. I rolled out of my bed, a massive, silk-sheeted island that suddenly felt like a coffin. My head throbbed, a brutal reminder of the cheap liquor I’d used to try and drown out the sunrise. It hadn’t worked. It never worked. “Luca! Are you up?” Tatiana’s voice sliced through my skull. “Stop screaming, Tati,” I groaned, shielding my eyes. My sister pushed into the room, her eyes full of that suffocating pity I hated. “Father wants you sorted,” she whispered. “Like he cares,” I snapped, the bitterness sharp in my throat. “He’s just happy to finally sell off the unwanted son.”I walked into the bathroom, catching my reflection. I looked like a ghost. This war with the North had turned us all into monsters or corpses. My father, Don De Santis, had ‘solved’ it with this marriage. A genius move for him; a life sentence for me.

Ch 2: Silas Vane

Don De Santis couldn’t handle the fury of the North. Nobody can. He spent a year trying to steal my shipments and take over my streets, and all he got for it was a pile of body bags.He finally realized that you don’t play games with the Vane family. We have owned this city for decades. We are old money built on silence and iron. He is new money, built on noise and chaos. So, he did what all cowards do when they are losing. He crawled to me and begged for peace. He offered me a treaty in the most unlikely way: a marriage. He wanted to tie our bloodlines together so I wouldn’t finish what I started. I’m not entirely sure why I agreed to this charade, but I am a man of my word. If a wedding stops the bloodbath for a while, I will take the deal. But I don’t believe in peace. Peace is just a quiet moment between two wars. It is the time a man takes to reload his gun. I stood at the altar of St. Anne Cathedral, my back a straight line of iron. I didn’t feel like a groom. I felt like a ge

Ch 3: Silas Vane

Usually, the thick and heavy glass insulation drowned out the world, leaving me in the peaceful vacuum of my own thoughts. But today, the silence was jagged. It was occupied by the frantic, shallow breathing of the boy sitting three feet away from me. I didn’t need to look at Luca De Santis to know he was falling apart. I could smell it on him; the sharp, bitter scent of fear mixed with the floral notes of too much expensive wine and the chemical sweetness of whatever he’d popped before walking down the aisle. I sat perfectly still, my legs crossed at the knee, watching the blurred grey of Chicago suburbs turn into the sharp, steel lines of the North Side. I felt the weight of my wedding ring, a brand-new band of heavy platinum. I felt like a shackle, though I was the one holding the key. Fifteen years ago, when I sat in a car like this with Clara, the air had been filled with the scent of lilies and her soft laughter. She had been a prize of tradition. Luca? Luca was a prize of wa

Ch 4: Lucas De Santis

The car ride was a slow descent into a reality I wasn’t ready for. The glass of Silas Vane’s SUV was so thick it felt like it was soundproofing the world, leaving me alone with the man who had just pointed a gun at my family. I slumped against the door, my head resting against the cool window, wishing the Xanax would kick in faster.I kept my Ray-Bans on. They were my only shield. Behind the dark lenses, I could watch him without him seeing the terror in my eyes. He sat there like a king on a throne of black leather, perfectly still, while I felt like I was vibrating out of my skin."You can take the glasses off, Luca," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it had the weight of a command.I didn't move. I couldn't. "I like the view better this way," I slurred, my tongue feeling heavy. "It filters out the parts of this wedding I didn’t sign up for."He didn't argue. He just reached out. For a second, I thought he was going to hit me. I flinched, pulling back into the seat, but he didn't

Ch 5: Silas Vane

I stood over him, my hands curled into fists. I watched the “South Side Prince” collapse into a heap of white silk and trembling limbs on my marble floor. The silence that followed was heavy. Usually, this kind of silence meant a death sentence in my head. But as I looked down at the boy, I didn’t feel like reaching for my gun. I felt deeply irritated!My home is a haven of discipline. And here was Luca, a glitch, leaking his father’s failures all over. He didn’t move. He stayed on his knees, his forehead pressed against the floor. His shoulders heaved. Was he waiting for a blow?. I could see it in the way his muscles were tensed. He was bracing for a boot to the ribs or maybe a hand in his hair. That was the language of the South. “Get up,” My voice was low. He didn’t move. A broken sob escaped him. I didn’t wait for him to comply. As a man of action. I stepped into the mess, my shoes clicking on the floor. I reached down and hooked my hands under his arms, hoisting him up. He wa

Ch 6: Lucas De Santis

I opened my eyes, and for a second, I thought I was blind. Everything was grey. I felt the silence, and it wasn’t the peaceful kind. It was the heavy, suffocating silence of a grave. The pale, ghostly light of Chicago morning was filtering in. I tried to sit up, but my body felt like it had been dismantled and put back together by someone who hated me. My heart gave a dull, stuttering thud against my ribs. Then memory hit me. The bathroom, the pills swirling down the drain, the fire in my chest, and Silas. Silas was holding me down, his face a mask of cold fury as he told me I wasn’t allowed to die. I looked at my arm. There was a small bandage over my elbow. An IV. They must have pumped me full of something to stop the shivering, but it wasn’t the “fruity” high I was used to. This felt…clinical. Cold, very cold. I was alone in the massive bed. Silas was gone. I pushed the sheets back and swung my legs over to the edge. I was still half-naked, wearing only my boxers. I felt raw

Ch 7: Lucas De Santis

I sat there, shaking, the silence rushing back in to fill the space she’d left. I felt the absence of Xanax like a physical hole in my brain. My heart was doing that weird, irregular skip. Again. My legs felt like jelly as I stood and made my way to the closet. It was a walk-in. Rows of charcoal suits, white shirts, and black coats. It felt like a uniform shop for the depressed.I found a silk robe, it was heavy and dark blue. I pulled it on, the fabric felt cool against my heat-flushed body. I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror. Aunt Gable was right. I looked like a wreck. My eyes were sunken, and my hair was a tangled mess of blonde curls. I looked like the ‘trash’ she said I was. I looked at the mahogany dresser she’d mentioned. I could almost see the ‘Shadow of Claire’ standing there, arranging her perfect white roses. I imagined her in a white silk gown, smiling perfectly at Silas, never needing a pill to get through the day. I didn’t even know this woman,

Ch 8: Luca De Santis

Detox wasn’t a ‘journey.’ It was a war. The next three days were a blur of grey walls and white-hot agony. I spent most of it curled into a ball on Silas’s black silk sheets, shivering so hard I thought my teeth would shatter. I pulled the blue robe tighter around my shivering body. Every minute without a pill felt like a slow-motion car crash. My nerves were frayed wires, sparking every time I moved. Silas was mostly there like a silent, dark shadow at his desk, but he never touched me. He sat at his desk, the lamp casting a sharp glow over the folders in front of him. He barely looked at me since he told me I was “the chaos.”“You’re going to a gala,” Silas said, without looking up. I let out a dry, hacking laugh. “A gala? Silas, I can barely walk to the bathroom without the room spinning. I’m pretty sure ‘vomiting on the elite’ isn’t on the itinerary.”“The Board doesn’t care about your stomach,” Silas replied, his voice flat. He finally closed the folder and looked at me. “The

Ch 9: Lucas De Santis

“The fabric… It’s too heavy.”“Its weight is its worth,” she countered, pinning the shoulder of the jacket. “Claire understood that. She wore her diamonds like they were light as air, even when they weighed five pounds. She never complained. She never sweated.”“I’m not Claire!” I shouted, the frustration finally snapping. The room went silent. Aunt Gable froze, a pin held between her lips. Silas, who had been looking out the window, turned slowly. “No,” Aunt Gable said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “You certainly aren’t. She was a masterpiece. But tomorrow, you will pretend. For Silas’s sake, you will be perfect.”Silas was watching the whole thing like a theater performance. “He needs to look powerful, Aunt,” Silas interjected. “Not just elegant. I want the Board to see that I’ve tamed the South, not just bought it.”“Tamed?” I turned my head to look at him, nearly getting a pin in the neck. “Is that what this is? A taming? You’re just like my father, Silas. You just

Ch 10: Elizabeth Gable

The air in the ballroom of the Vane Estate was thick, unquiet, and smelled of expensive lilies, the scent of a very high-class funeral. The cool brass of the railing biting into my palm, my cigarette holder balanced between my fingers like a conductor’s baton. Below me, the elite of the North Side moved in choreographed circles and whispered secrets over the black-and-white marble. To the untrained eye, it was a celebration of power. But I knew these people. I had built the political foundation they stood upon. They were vultures in tuxedos, waiting for a single drop of blood. They were waiting for Silas to fail. And more specifically, they were waiting for the South Side to show its symptoms. “Elizabeth. You look as formidable as ever.”

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