chapter 26

"Charles...." Aliza began to have shorter breathes going tensed.  "I promise you Liza whatever the reason may be I am going to try keeping myself in control and understand you. But I wish to tell you in advance this is a bitter pill both of us have to swallow accepting the challenge of whatever it gives." Charles held her firmer pulling her more to his chest in order to give her the psychological strength.  Aliza closed her eyes for a moment ready to brace the situation. "That day after we were together I was...I was." She hicupped.  "You are fine Liza. I am here to take care of every wrong that happened in our family to change it to right, just like I did for Asher. You just need to have the trust in me." Charles assured pulling Liza to his chest and running his hands on her back. "Here, drink some water." He clutched her to his chest and extended the water glass to her lips making her sit along with him. Aliza continued.  "You sent me to my cabin to make preparations for the next meet and a lady named Shelly Spark approached.""Yeah I remember. I gave her daughter your name when she asked me to name her." Charles chuckles remembering the sweet memory pulling Aliza's cheeks with love. "She told me you are a mafia leader and her husband died in one of the mafia attacks done by your mafia group." Aliza told everything in a breathe closing her eyes. Charles understood her discomfort but did not want to show the startle in his eyes to his fiancee after learning the important piece of information about him. He knew one day or the other being his wife she has to learn he was a mafia leader.He pushed away the hairs out of Aliza's face and asked her in calmness like one speaks to a child. "So in what way does it concern you, Liza?  I paid her handsome. The normal amount Richmond industries pays towards insurance of its employee is five millions but I paid her ten since she had to suffer long because of somebody else's mismanagement."Holding him firm, Aliza slid on top of Charles to feel the comfort of his bracing body. Charles surrounded his arms around Liza and something twitched inside him. Sweet Jesus patience Charles.... "I felt...I felt our kids will one day be like..... " Aliza couldn't complete the sentence. Even to say the word felt calamitous for her. But Charles did not require the phrases to understand his fiancee. He knew every vibration inside her like his own even before she even realizes it. They were two bodies but with a single soul. Charles bent back her head across his arm and with a swift gradation of intensity he kissed her. Aliza clung to him as the only solid thing in a dizzy swaying world. His insistent mouth was parting her shaking lips, sending wild tremors along her nerves, evoking from her sensations she had never known she was capable of feeling. And before a swimming giddiness spun her round Aliza was kissing him back with equal fervour ache and wantonness.The kiss was a slow drugged kiss. Charles wanted to distract Aliza from the actuality of facts. He wanted to make her feel light. Holding her firm his tongue rolled inside her mouth in a rule. His hands traveled every where on her ups and downs empowering her in his alluring scent. A low moan escaped Aliza and her hands went back playing the soft hairs of Charles. After a hot make out session Charles released every bit of stress inside her and Aliza was back to say what she felt that day."Her children became fatherless after the mafia attack. They were so small." She burst into a cry. Charles became stiff as soon as the words were left out of Aliza's lips but he maintained his composure to know the next part. "The next day I met Larry when he came to meet his mother. He told me between our conversations that he donates part of his earnings every year on orphanages.""He asked me to help him with the details of your quotation and if he wins the tender he would donate part of the money to children's orphanage." The last words of Aliza brought Charles to flames but he wasn't a person to display his emotions going lose. He was a business tycoon and mafia leader who knew how to play his cards well. He wasn't insensate but he can project himself emotionless if the situation demands. He would make people say the words he wanted with guilt rather  punish them with his speech."Did he donate? Least did he reply to your calls? You helped him at the cost of risking your job? Isn't it?" He asked her in innocence but in reality Charles Rodriguez, the unstoppable business man and mafia boss was far beyond going reproachable. Nonetheless poor Aliza was too naive to understand her fiancee's sharpness. She  shook her head innocuous. Aliza understood she was dumped by Larry but it was too late for realization.  "I loved you Liza, I helped you out of your abusive family, pulled you out of financial constraints, believed you and wanted to marry. For God's sake we were engaged. Damn it!" Charles snarled. This time he lost it, unable to mend his broken heart.He pulled the shirt that was lying on the floor and buttoned it up. Aliza did the same. "How could you be such a fool to cheat upon your fiancee for a rag-tag and bobtail?" He spoke going annoyed and Aliza reduced her eyes to the floor. "Aliza, Larry was nobody in our life till you believed him. He tricked you so easy breaking away our three year long relationship. How could you do it away so easy Liza, just because he promised to give the money to orphanages?" Charles clutched the upper arms of her and shook her as if it would bring her away from the silly trance she was in.""We were in a relationship Liza. Did you never see me as a philantrophist? You worked for Richmond Industries so long? You could have just told me and donated the money to orphanages." He marked. There was sadness laced not only in the voice but in Charles features too. "Just because I'm a mafia leader, my money is black. Isn't it the information you are trying to go unprojected? I can read your eyes like an open book sweetheart. He tipped her head up holding her chin with pain in his eyes.  "You couldn't even bestow upon me the benefit of doubt. What do you know about my underworld business, Aliza? All that glitters is not gold, love." Aliza knew she had offended Charles more than ever but she felt her honest confessions and ventilation of her apprehensions would make their relationship stronger."My father inherited mafia business from my grandfather. Before leaving the world he married off his daughter (my mother) to my dad and left him as the owner of Richmond Industries along with his mafia business. We are of course illegal and I'm a murderer." Charles admitted with a sigh and a weight on his heart but his eyes were pure facing Aliza in a declaration. "We do not punish the innocents and do justice to the just where even the highest court cannot help."Aliza watched Asher through the baby monitor. He was still sleeping soundly. Truth or dare Aliza decided to open up completely to Charles that day. "After you bailed me out of the prison, you know I went to hospital?" Charles nods at Aliza's question. "I was feeling sick since long and was diagnosed pregnant. I became more afraid. I was apprehensive about the safety of our child and I ran away." She completed with a quake in her heart.Charles gave out a hysteric laughter. "You thought I cannot protect my son. I will be killed, he will be killed, all of us will be killed by the mafia. He shouted the last sentences in rage. "And what happened now?" His words became instantly soft like the calmness of the sea. "We would have lost our son if I had not interfered. It is the same mafia money which came to your son's rescue now." He banged the table pushing his hand flat on it after standing from the bed.Aliza shivered at the violent hit. "Charles please calm down. You promised you will try to understand me." Aliza cried reminding him of his past words. "I was frightened Charles....terribly frightened. I was not in my right senses when I heard the news I was pregnant. There was a turmoil of emotions in my mind. Your mafia leadership exposed, our love, engagement and the pregnancy. My only intention was to save the child." Aliza called out to Charles in agony."Save the child?" Charles tittered with a clap. "You saved Asher excellently well Aliza. I agree there was a huge catastrophe in Shelly Spark's life but not everyone's lives turn a disaster like her. If what you think was the case I and my siblings would have died long ago."Aliza sobbed silently for the piercing words of Charles. Fate had played a sick game with her. Had Asher not fallen sick, things would have been different for her. Aliza doesn't go contented that mafia lives are safe. She couldn't think of marrying any one in place of Charles.  She loves him from the bottom of her heart. But.... Leading a life under his shelter? Was she ready for it? Charles could read Aliza's features like the back of his hand. He confronted her just to clarify her apprehensions about his profession but was he successful to win her heart back like before? Will Charles and Aliza forget their differences, short comings and be one like a river joins the ocean or will they continue to be the railway lines that can never join?Â