Broken and Powerful

Chapter 5

WARNING: Mentioning suicidal tendencies/ actions

STEFANO

Stefano slammed the door in his office with a loud smack that made the walls shake. That girl infuriated him! He helped her and she dares to say he wanted something out of it. He saved her from her abuser!

Then she demands to know a reason for his actions. He would have killed any of his men if they talked to him that way but he let it slide since she had been through so much.

So he tells her the truth and what does she do? Accuse him of lying!

He placed his hands on his office desk and leaned over with his head down. Was she that broken she thought she was unsavable? What does that even mean?

Stefano grunted before sitting down at his desk and pulling up the cameras for the hospital wing. After clicking through a few different files, her room pulled up, and there she was laying in bed. She looked peaceful as she laid down with her eyes closed. She must be asleep.

He took a moment to appreciate how beautiful she looked. Her dark brown curls sprawled across the pillow next to her.

He remembered when she first turned towards them on the porch. The way her brown eyes turned hazel in the sunlight with the shadow of her long eyelashes made her even more stunning. Her skin was tan and her face was so soft looking he nearly reached out to touch her face.

At that moment he thought he saw a bruise on her shoulder that was peaking out over her sweater but instantly shook it off. She was too beautiful for anyone to lay a hand on.

Now he knew what Jerad had done to her over these years and anger filled his body. When he saw the damage done to her beautiful skin he felt himself freeze in shock. How could someone so innocent-seeming have been put through such horrors?

He thought he knew his men better but he guessed wrong.

How could he let this happen?

Snapping out of the thought he leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head while looking at the other screen that still has her information pulled up. When he first read this when he got back home, he was shocked, to say the least.

She was 25 years old. Her parents were deceased as of three years ago, which he supposed must have been when she moved in with Jerad since they have been together for four years.

He clicked on the file and looked deeper into their deaths to find out it was a car accident. Her parents were drug addicts and the father passed out while driving and drove off the road into a house. Thankfully the family wasn't home so nobody else was hurt.

Stefano remembered seeing it on the news when it happened. He remembered the anger that coursed through him at the smaller gangs in town that dealt the drugs that eventually killed people.

Although it was hard, he stuck to his moral code of never letting his men deal drugs. He even wiped out a few of the selling gangs for selling too close to his territory.

He saw firsthand what drugs did to people and their families so he never let them get close to those in his territory.

He clicked out of the tab and looked at the rest of her file again. This part made his eyes open wide again as he read over the document. She had been an MMA fighter from when she was 18 years old until she disappeared from matches when she was 22. She had won most of her fights but lost roughly 12 over the years. Most of them were from when she first started.

Stefano wondered if she started because her parents were into drugs and she wanted to get away from them. And if she was so good at fighting, why did she stop?