11 Chapter 10.

January, 22nd 2016.

Ophelia's POV

I zipped my beach bag after packing everything I would need for the day. Last night the boys made me promise to go out with them and I agreed, because if I didn't, I knew my day would be filled with thoughts of Luke.

So we made a plan. We were to have breakfast on the patio then head to the giant swimming pool at the back of the house. After that, do anything till it was time to head back to the house.

I finished putting my hair in a pony tail when I heard a knock on my door, no doubt the boys.

I looked at my reflection in the full length mirror satisfied with what I saw. I wore a blue sundress that stopped mid-thigh, it hugged my curvy body and matched blue beach sandals, I wore no makeup since I was going to take a swim but I still looked beautiful.

I picked up my bag and opened the door.

"Hey, beautiful." Came Victor's voice as he pulled me into his arms and hugged me tightly.

The boys wore matching T-shirts and beach shorts, a very casual look.

"Yeah, Good morning to you too." I managed to say as he squeezed.

I raised my face just in time to see Alex glaring at his brother's back.

I disentangled myself from Victor. "Hey, Alex." I gave him a quick side hug.

"Good morning, Ophelia." He smiled. "Here, let me hold that for you." He said, taking my bag.

"That's right servant, take the bag from the lady." Victor said in an autocratic accent as he linked his arm in mine.

I couldn't help but think he was mimicking me.

Alex rolled his eyes at his brother and started walking.

"Did you sleep well?" Victor asked, putting him arm over my shoulder.

"Yeah." I replied, I looked down trying to avoid eye contact.

"You're still worried about him, aren't you?"

I nodded.

He squeezed my arm.

"Do you know anything about his current condition?" I asked Victor.

This time Alex answered. "No, but what we do know is he's in some sort of coma. The boss doesn't want anyone to go near the infirmary."

I nodded. It was definitely a security measure but why?

As we walked through the hallway, down the stairs the boys kept waving and greeting fellow mob members. They were no doubt a familiar bunch.

When we arrived the patio, my eyes widened.

"Wow!" I exclaimed.

A large table was set with different meals, fruits, vegetables, arranged in an ornate display. It was set for more than 10 people, even though it was just the three of us.

"You like it?" Alex smiled.

"Like it? I love it." I clapped my hands together, please with the arrangement.

The table and chairs were covered in white silk. Large pots of flowers stood around the table. To say it was beautiful was an understatement.

"That's good, because it was my idea." Victor said with a smile on his face.

"Liar, liar, pants on fire. You know very well it was my idea." Alex said, taking me away from his brother.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes when they started bickering. They continued arguing as they led me to the table, they were still arguing when Alex pulled a chair out for me and tucked me in, they were still arguing even when they had taken their seats in front of me.

"That's enough!" I slammed a fist on the table.

They stopped instantly, both looking at me.

I blew out a frustrated breath and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

"There's no need to argue. I know both of you put this together and I love it, that's all that matters. Now can we eat? I'm starving."

Victor proceeded to pick up his fork but his brother slapped his hand away from the utensil.

"What the hell was that for?" Victor yelled, ready to return the slap.

"You forgot to say grace." Alex said, daring his brother to slap him.

Victor huffed and I couldn't help but laugh at the expression on his face.

"You could have just said so." He replied, through clenched teeth.

After saying grace, we dug into our food, the boys well cultured enough not to talk with food in their mouths, not to belch in a barbaric manner. They also knew how to use their cutleries correctly.

The conversation between us was smooth as a baby's bottom, topic after topic the boys never ran out of anything to say.

When we finished, I stood up to clear the table.

"What are you doing?" Alex asked, looking at me like I was mad.

"I'm clearing the table, we can't just leave these things outside."

"Leave that for the maids, after all that's what they're paid to do." Victor said.

"But..."

"No buts." Victor stood up and grabbed my arm. "We're heading to the pool now."

"We can't do that." Alex said. "We just finished eating, we have to stay for at least one hour before we take a plunge..."

"Old wives tales..." Victor continued before his brother could finish his statement.

"What do you suggest we do to pass time Doc, count all the blades of grass on the lawn?" Victor asked sarcastically.

"I suggest you do..." Alex spoke but I cut him off. To avoid another argument.

"We should take a walk in the garden."

"I like that idea." Victor smiled.

"Fine. Count me in too." Alex growled.

We exited the patio and walked towards the garden.

As we walked through the garden, I was very surprised to see that the boys could recall all the names of the flowers they learnt about yesterday. Occasionally mistaking one for another but they didn't get more than five incorrect.

"Wow guys, I'm impressed."

"Yeah, you should be." Victor puffed his chest out with pride.

I rolled my eyes at him, but I smiled. Sometimes he acted very childish.

We moved to sit on the bench under the large oak tree.

We looked up to see the nests of different small birds.

"Well would you look at that." Alex remarked, astonished.

We were looking at a nest of finch birds. We craned our necks and watched as the mama bird proceeded to feed her chicks. She opened her beak so the young ones could eat from it.

"That's disgusting." Victor added.

I laughed, they knew nothing about motherhood.

I checked my time to see that we had spent almost two hours in the garden. It was a few minutes past noon.

"Come on boys, its time to hit the pool."

We walked to the pool at the back of the house, making jokes and laughing. When we got there, I took my bag from Alex and took out my bottle of sunscreen. I had applied some in the morning but I doubted the boys had done the same thing, I passed the bottle to Alex.

When I turned around, I caught Victor looking through my bag.

I cleared my throat. "Did you leave something of yours in there?" I crossed my arms over my chest.

"Nope." He smiled at me, showing his teeth in an effort to feign innocence. "I'm just curious."

I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration. These boys were impossible.

I took the bag from him. "There's nothing important in here, it's just a large towel, a bikini, a shirt, a short, and a bottle of sunscreen."

Alex splash a handful of water on his brother's face. "The water temperature is just right, come on."

Victor took off his shirt and short leaving his swimming trunks on. If I thought he was fit before, seeing him shirtless just established the fact.

With a well defined six pack, muscles rippling in his arms and back with the slightest movement, Victor was the embodiment of a Greek god. Though he was no where near Luke in comparison, still he was good looking.

My cheeks burner and I turned my face away in embarrassment, no need to get caught staring. The place was suddenly quiet, which was a weird thing when the boys were around.

I turned towards the pool to see two pairs of blue-grey eyes watching me, one pair with a glint of mischief.

"What?" I asked, with a little frown.

"Its your turn." Victor said, Alex was already doing laps in the water.

My turn? Oh right, my turn to discard clothing.

I turned around, my back to them as pulled my dress off and let it fall to my feet. I was embarrassed as hell. Why did I agree to this anyway?

I picked up my dress, folded it and placed it on one of the pool chairs, I also took off my sandals. The boys were wolf whistling.

I blushed beet red. I knew I had a nice body but boys will be boys. I tried covering my large bust that was spilling out of my bikini, I was sixteen the last time I put it on. I joined them but sat at the edge of the pool submerging only my long legs in the water.

Alex was on my right side while Victor was on my left. They kept glancing at each other and were both smiling, mischievously. They obviously had a plan.

"The water is very nice, you sure you don't want to join us?" Victor asked.

They definitely had a plan.

"Nope."

"You sure?" Alex spoke this time trying to cajole me.

"One hundred percent."

No one said anything for a while. So I decided to start a conversation.

"How'd you guys get in the Mafia?" I wanted to ask them from the very first day I saw them. Which was at the dinner table when Daniel came over, they looked so innocent.

Victor groaned. "Not that story."

"We'll tell you on one condition. That you tell us how you got involved as well, I'm curious." Alex said.

His brother shot him a nasty look.

"Do we have a deal?" He asked, oblivious to the look his brother was giving him.

"Deal." I said.

Nothing could go wrong, right?

"We were brought here to be punished because we disobeyed a direct order, amongst other things." Alex said.

"Punishment we didn't deserve!" Victor added quickly.

Okay, now I was getting confused.

Sensing my confusion Alex decided to clarify. "I'll try to make it as simple and short as I can."

"We lived in the Empire House in New York. We trained and did minor drops there, errands, nothing major because they considered us armatures.

One day, a situation came up. One of our own, a high ranking hitman was brought in barely alive. The guy was a bloody mess, I mean his eyes were gorged out and he was no doubt tortured for days, no teeth in his mouth, his tongue unceremoniously cut out, his body carved out. It was a nasty scene, the boss there, Miller ordered him to be taken to the infirmary. Believe me, the doctors did everything they could to save the poor guy but he was far gone and died two hours later.

As days went on, we got to find out that he wasn't the first one to arrive like that and he wouldn't be the last.

Miller, our superior, had put a hit on a disloyal hitman who had stolen vital Mafia documents containing offshore accounts and names of some Empire members, he had given them to a rival gang, who had in turn, given it the police. There was a huge reward for whoever killed the bastard.

Many had gone, tried but they all came back the same way. Parts of their bodies missing, no doubt kept as trophies by the psychopath.

Miller had had enough apparently because he called off the hit on the grounds of losing too many men, anyone caught talking about it would be dealt with.

Stubborn as always, my obnoxious brother here decided to give it a go despite the warning. He convinced me to join in because the reward money would be enough to leave this life, disappear and turn a new leaf somewhere else."

How wrong they had been, there was no leaving this life once you joined or got mixed up in it.

"One day, after everyone had gone to sleep we decided to break into Miller's office." Alex continued.

"You were caught?!" I asked terrified.

"Caught?" Victor huffed. "We had the perfect plan."

He started narrating.

"We had been planning this for days. And that night we were on duty to guard the office."

I let out a relived breath. Victor looked at Alex, a sign he wanted him to continue.

"After we broke in, it didn't take us very long to locate the document we were after. It was in desk drawer, the one he labeled 'discarded'. We couldn't risk taking it so we photocopied it and every other piece of information we needed. Victor took the documents back to our room while I put the place back in order, cleaned up, wiping all the surfaces we had touched and locked the door.

We spent weeks studying, memorizing and piecing together all the information in that file. Sometimes during drops or errands we would take a detour to check out some places listed in the files, places like restaurants, pubs, clubs, brothels, things like that. We prepared ourselves as much as we could."

"Weeks later, we decided to approach our target. That day being a Wednesday, he would be eating at a place called 'the sea', a seafood restaurant in the heart of town. We had been to the place a couple of times to scout the area, by now we knew his sitting position.

Common sense told us to sit behind him were we could observe him without being noticed, common sense won until I saw it. I always wondered how our target knew he was being watched, why he never looked over his shoulder, I mean if you've killed a lot of people, intuition would tell you to check behind you once a while."

"Everything made sense when I saw it, a mirror at the far end of the wall. Our target hadn't arrived yet so I took the liberty of taking his seat and told Victor to stay where we wanted to sit, I was right. I could see Victor looking at me from the mirror, all I had to do was raise my eyes from the table without moving my head. The guy was smart, very smart I had to give it to him, I mean every single person he killed must have sat behind him.

We needed a plan fast, if we couldn't observe him from behind then our best shot was to sit in front of him without being noticed but how could we do that?

As I was thinking of a suitable plan, the devil himself walked in. This guy didn't look like a hitman at all, he looked like a kid who was fresh out of college. He was looked very responsible, geeky but looks can be deceiving, Victor and I had learnt that a long time ago. I could tell he had at least two guns on him and a couple of other weapons, he wore a large coat too big for his frame no doubt to hide all the weapons he carried.

We had no choice, we were forced to sit in front of him.

He ordered, we ordered just to blend in. I saw him raise his eyes just like I predicted, looking behind him, seeing no one he continued eating.

I knew he must have been surprised for weeks now, no one had been tailing him.

It was all going great and smooth until he looked up, right at our table, looking me in the eye. Intuition or his sixth sense I did not know but he knew he was being watched."

The suspense was much and Alex knew it.

"Then this one saved the day." He pointed to his brother.

I ruffled Victor's hair and laughed. "How?"

"Apparently, while I was doing all the work watching our target, Victor here was checking out the waitress' backside."

"Typical." I said.

"When the target maintained eye contact, Victor obliviously said, 'Bro, check out that ass'. 'The ass' was right behind the target, so it looked like we were looking at the waitress. Our target looked behind, saw the girl, turned back to look at me, smirked and then waved. I waved back."

"Close call." I remarked.

"Close call indeed." Alex replied.

"We stalked our target for days, this time staying inconspicuous, we had a lot of free time on our hands. When he walked the streets we stayed airborne, trying our best to jump from rooftop to rooftop."

Someone once said, 'remember to always attack your enemies from above because they'll be to busy looking for you below.' I guess the twins keyed into that, unconsciously.

"Didn't your boss notice your disappearance?" I asked.

"Like I said before, we weren't taken seriously. They only sent us on drops because they thought we would do them the favour of getting ourselves killed. We were considered...a burden." Alex's voice dropped and he lowered his eyes.

I cupped his cheek, offering as much as comfort as I could. There was no doubt they had it rough. He leaned into my touch and continued.

"Months went by and so did our target's painstaking. He became carefree and careless. He often got drunk at bars and walked the streets in the dead of the night unarmed. We couldn't attack then because we were inexperienced, we needed a good plan if we wanted to leave the hunt unharmed.

And then it clicked. We'd been observing our target long enough to know that he always ordered pizza from 8-9pm everyday, so we could use pizza to gain entry into his home."

"Humour me." I tried to hide my smile.

Pizza, Seriously?

"I'll do more than that, I'll overwhelm you."

He continued.

"I made Victor get a job at the pizza place, this part was very easy because my brother here, is a people's person. He charmed his way into the place that very day and started the night shift.

Night in, night out he tried as much as possible to make this delivery and failed countless times, Countless days turned into countless weeks. We needed another plan."

"What's so hard in making a pizza delivery?" I asked, puzzled.

"It becomes hard when the target in question likes his pizza delivered by a particular employee. If it wasn't Paul, he wouldn't take the pizza."

"Security measure?" I offered.

"Very good, you think fast. I decided to step in, I swapped places with my brother and no one suspected a thing."

"One night, I slipped a certain pill into Paul's coffee during our break. After a few minutes, Paul's face turned red, he was sweating profusely and he started throwing up everywhere, which is totally unhealthy in a food shop. He tried all type of things from sitting down to drinking a whole jug of water but nothing worked. I volunteered to cover for him, telling him he would feel better if he went home to rest, of course I knew the pill would stop working, giving me enough time to act.

By 8:05pm the phone rang, it was the target requesting his normal order. I kindly explained to him that Paul called in sick and would not to be able to deliver but I was available and he could cancel if he wanted to. He accepted to have me deliver the pizza."

"This is where it gets interesting." Victor said.

"I added something special to the pizza before I had it delivered to the target's house."

"What?" I asked.

"Antifreeze.

My mouth dropped open.

Victor laughed at the expression on my face, "I know you think we're mad men but we're not. Antifreeze is sweet tasting and has a special effect on the human body and trust me its not positive."

"Didn't he notice a difference in the taste?"

"I don't know, we didn't ask. Besides, it's not like I poured it all over the food." Alex said.

Okay. At least he had a conscience.

"I injected it into the food." He continued.

I felt the blood drain from my face. It was devious.

Alex ignored me and continued. "A few hours later when we were sure chemical X had taken effect, we invited ourselves into the home of the target. He was on the floor, weak, holding his stomach like I knew he would. He had thrown up everywhere too."

"You should have seen the look on his face when he recognized us, still he was weak and helpless to defend himself so we decided to have a little fun with him."

"I do not want to know." I said.

"We'll tell you anyway." Victor replied. He had been playing with the straps of my bikini bottom and this was the second time I slapped his hand away.

"We did it for the fallen men. Reciprocating everything he did to everyone that went after him. Though, we didn't kill him, we did carve him out pretty bad and took out a few teeth, okay that's not entirely true. We took out a lot of teeth."

"Then we tied him up and took him home. Apparently that was the worst mistake of our lives." Victor added.

"By the time we got home, a really important meeting was going on with all the mob members present. We took our hostage and dumped him in the middle of the hall, in front of the boss. Surprise was etched on everybody's face and nobody dared to make a sound. The boss looked at the man in front of him with so much hatred that it should have killed him, then he looked at us."

"Of course we were proud soldiers, chest puffed out, it was definitely reward time. Unfortunately, you don't always get what you want. He signaled the others to get us, in seconds we were restrained, striped off all our weapons. The hostage laughed as much as the pain allowed him to.

We found out later that he had taken the same course as both of us, disobeyed a direct order and killed a disloyal member.

It all started to make sense. "So Miller thought that if he let you live you would no doubt turn out to become worse than the man you brought home." I concluded.

"Very good." Alex commented. "They took the man to deal with and decided to send us to a higher authority to be dealt with because we were too much to handle."

"And that's how we ended up here." Victor added.

"Although they didn't give us a grand welcome, they gave us something much more painful. When we arrived we were pushed and prodded by Nicholas.

Then we were handed over to Luke since Antonio was busy, he gave us a chance to live if we beat him in combat. Two against one, what were the odds we were going to lose?"

200-1. Luke and I were trained by the very best. If he challenged them then he was no doubt bored and was looking for some excitement.

"We were proven wrong, he beat both of us to pulp, in fact he would have killed us if Nicholas didn't intervene. We were kept in the torture room for days without proper care, Nicholas was kind enough to slip in food for both of us once a while."

"One day, he was accompanied by Luke who said it was decided that we could live if we could prove our loyalty again."

"That's the long story short of how we ended up here."

"Wow." I replied.

"Now, how did you get here?" Victor asked, still playing with my bikini bottom straps.

"Unfortunately my story isn't as long or sorrowful as yours. I'm Antonio's daughter, I was born into this life."

"You're what?!" Alex asked, totally surprised.

His brother simultaneously asked, "Antonio has a daughter?"

This time he removed his hands completely from my clothing.

"That's what I said." I answered both of them. "Is something the matter?" I asked seeing their mouths still open in surprise.

"No, you see that's not the answer we were expecting. We thought maybe you were Luke's girlfriend."

I laughed. This was not the first time someone had come to that conclusion, we got that a lot.

"If you're referring to my reaction the other day, that happened because Luke is my best friend, the brother I never had but we're not in a relationship." I used my fingers to quote the word, relationship.

"Okay. Do you mind giving us a hand so we can come out of the water, my body is getting wrinkled." Victor asked, nicely.

I stood up from the egde of the pool and extended my arms to both of them, then it clicked. I quickly withdrew my arms and laughed.

"You really think I would fall for that?" I asked.

"What in heaven's name are you talking about?" Victor answered innocently but his brother's expression gave him away.

"I should give you a hand so you can pull me into the pool and take off my bikini! That's why you were playing with it! You were studying the knots!" I pointed an accusing finger at Victor, I was really angry now.

"Busted." Alex surrendered. "We weren't going to do it anyway, not after hearing that you're Antonio's daughter."

I folded my arms across my chest and gave him the look that said 'speak for yourself.'

I walked away and made myself comfortable on one of the reclining chairs, slipped on my shades so I could tan.

Moments later they joined me and sat on the other chairs.

"We're sorry, Ophelia." Alex pleaded.

I didn't reply.

"We were just joking." Victor added.

"We're going to do anything you want us to do, we promise. Please forgive us." Victor pleaded.

Remember that saying 'don't make a promise you cannot keep.' The twins just made that mistake now.

"Anything?" I asked.

"Anything." They replied.

"What about your parents, you never mentioned anything about them."

They thought they could fool me. I asked how they got in the Mafia but Alex only told me how they made it to HQ.

Their eyes held a certain agony as they looked at one another. It told me I had them in a very tight spot.

"Can we not talk about it now?" Alex asked not meeting my eyes.

"Sure." One important lesson I'd learnt in the mob business was not to push people. It must have been a very emotional subject for both of them.

I handed them the bottle of sunscreen so they wouldn't get sunburned. We tanned, made a lot of jokes and argued.

The sun started setting gradually and it was time to go back into the mansion. I put on the extra shirt and short I brought with me and packed my beach bag. Then we started walking home. I had laughed a lot, so much that my side hurt, and my cheeks hurt from smiling too much. The twins had pretty much become my two new best friends in the Mansion.

They escorted me to the hallway then they stopped abruptly.

"We should get going." Alex said.

"Why?" I asked, puzzled. They always made sure I got to my room safely.

"No reason. We just remembered something we've got to do."

I let them go, then I turned to walk down the hallway. That's when I saw it, the reason they were so eager to leave.