Page 669 of The Tempted
Eternal Temptations
By
Janine Infante Bosco
Chapter One
Everyone loved him.
The way he walked.
The way he talked.
The clothes he wore.
The smile he adorned when he was victoriously acquitted time after time—crime after crime. In the public eye he was cocky, arrogant, a man confident in his ability to beat the odds. To me he was just the man I fell in love with when I was sixteen years old.
Victor Pastore was more than what society thought he was. He was more than a criminal, not just a notorious gangster conquering the streets of New York, he was my first love.
And my last.
I lost my love somewhere along the journey. He became the kingpin and the Vic I knew, the man with a big heart and bigger values, that man died. If I had to put a time stamp on when it happened, I’d say it was right after Michael Valente was murdered. Michael was my husband’s underboss and he and his wife, Maryann, were our best friends. Michael, or Val to most, stepped into the line of fire when a rival organization tried to take down Victor. Val sacrificed his life for Vic’s and my husband could never make peace with that. His mission in life no longer was to keep rising but to seek revenge for the blood of his brother.
Everything else faded including me and our two girls. He severed his relationship with our eldest daughter, Adrianna, by sending her boyfriend, Anthony, who was also his enforcer, to jail. He planned to have Anthony avenge Val’s death in prison but the man he thought was responsible, someone they called the G-Man, was transferred. At the time Vic’s connections didn’t run that deep. Anthony spent three years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit and never got the chance to commit the one Vic sent him to do.
He barely paid any mind to our youngest, Nicole, and I started to think of that as a blessing in disguise. Nikki pushed forward with no validation from her father, made a life for herself without Victor hovering over her. I reasoned that since he didn’t have a hand in her happiness then he couldn’t rip it away like he did with her sister.
I tried to make sense of Victor’s actions, especially after we found out that Adrianna was pregnant but there was no talking to him. That’s when I mourned the man I loved and realized I was married to a stranger.
Adrianna and Anthony lost that baby and each other.
Victor lost his daughter.
And me? I watched the foundation of our marriage crumble.
It’s grueling to watch your child suffer, knowing your husband ultimately caused every bit of her pain. Adrianna not only suffered a miscarriage but the heartbreak of losing Anthony. She wound up meeting someone, and though her heart was elsewhere she found solace in the attention Vinny provided. A part of me thinks if Victor would’ve stepped up, Adrianna wouldn’t have been looking for someone to pay her attention and lick her wounds. But then I wouldn’t have my beautiful grandson Luca, I’m a firm believer that life works in mysterious ways.
For a brief pause after Luca’s birth my Victor came back to us. He took one look at that little boy and his heart grew ten times in size. Luca became Victor’s chance at redemption and I even started to think he’d be able to repair his relationship with Adrianna. A baby is one of life’s most beautiful blessings and Luca’s birth was just what our family needed to mend.
I’ll never forget finding Victor in the corridor of the hospital, staring at Anthony as he watched Luca through the window of the nursery. I looked into my husband’s eyes and saw regret, something he never expressed in all our years together.
Anthony was there when Adrianna went into labor and he never left her side. He watched that boy take his first breath and when we arrived at the hospital we found him in the hallway looking at the boy, wishing he was his. He may not have been Luca’s biological father but God made him his dad.
Things started to look up for our family; Victor was around more, spending quality time with the girls and Luca. He was still on the rise, his empire grew both financially and in power making him the ultimate mob boss and his organization trumped all others.
I foolishly believed he put his quest for revenge behind him.
Like everyone else I believed he was invincible, his empire indestructible. Victor Pastore would reign over the streets he loved forever and I’d be the woman standing in his shadow, perfectly content with him having his glory, knowing he wasn’t the type of man you held back. I watched Victor soar to the top and knew my place was to be the one who grounded him when he needed the reminder that beneath the Teflon he was a husband, a father and now a grandfather.
Then the call came that Val’s wife had tragically died in a car accident, leaving their son, Michael, the sole survivor of their family. Vic harbored guilt that he didn’t step up and take care of Mike and Maryann after Val died and so he thought he could make up for that by bringing Val’s son into the fold.
Victor was opening a new night club called Temptations and his plan was to give Mike a legit opportunity to make something of himself. He wanted to bring him back home, have Michael manage Temptations and hoped to fix another broken relationship. I commended him for trying to do the right thing, even if it took him a while to figure out what that was.
My husband was repairing the relationships he severed bringing hope back to our family.
Life was good.
But it usually is before it turns bad.
