* * *
I couldn’t stop crying. Gianna stroked my hair as my head lay in her lap. She was thirteen, only eighteen months younger than me, but today those eighteen months meant the difference between freedom and a life in a loveless prison. I tried very hard not to resent her for it. It wasn’t her fault.
“You could try to talk to Father again. Maybe he’ll change his mind,” Gianna said in a soft voice.
“He won’t.”
“Maybe Mama will be able to convince him.”
As if Father would ever let a woman make a decision for him. “Nothing anyone could say or do will make a difference,” I said miserably. I hadn’t seen Mother since she’d sent me into Father’s office. She probably couldn’t face me, knowing what she’d condemned me to.
“But Aria—”
I lifted my head and wiped the tears from my face. Gianna stared at me with pitiful blue eyes, the same cloudless summer-sky blue as my own. But where my hair was blonde, hers was red. Father sometimes called her “witch;” it wasn’t an endearment. “He shook hands on it with Luca’s father.”
“They met?”
That’s what I’d wondered as well. Why had he found time to meet with the head of the New York Famiglia, but not to tell me about his plans to sell me off like a high-class whore? I shook off the frustration and despair trying to claw their way out of my body.
“That’s what Father told me.”
“There has to be something we can do,” Gianna said.
“There isn’t.”
“But you haven’t even met the guy. You don’t even know how he looks! He could be ugly, fat and old.”
Ugly, fat and old. I wished those were the only features of Luca I had to worry about. “Let’s google him. There have to be photos of him on the Internet.”
Gianna jumped up and took my laptop from my desk, then she sat down beside me, our sides pressed against each other.
We found several photos and articles about Luca. He had the coldest gray eyes I’d ever seen. I could imagine only too well how those eyes looked down at his victims before he put a bullet in their heads.
“He’s taller than everyone,” Gianna said in amazement. He was; in all the photos he was several inches taller than whoever stood beside him, and he was muscled. That probably explained why some people called him the Bull behind his back. That was the nickname the articles used, and they identified him as the heir of businessman and club owner Salvatore Vitiello. Businessman. Maybe on the outside. Everybody knew what Salvatore Vitiello really was, but of course nobody was stupid enough to write about it.
“He’s with a new girl in every photo.”
I stared down at the emotionless face of my future husband. The newspaper called him the most sought-after bachelor in New York, heir to hundreds of millions of dollars. Heir to an imperium of death and blood, that was what it should say.
Gianna huffed. “God, girls are throwing themselves at him. I suppose he’s good-looking.”
“They can have him,” I said bitterly. In our world a handsome exterior often hid the monster within. The society girls saw his good looks and wealth. They thought the bad-boy aura was a game. They fawned over his predator-like charisma because it radiated power. But what they didn’t know was that blood and death lurked beneath the arrogant smile.
I stood abruptly. “I need to talk to Umberto.”
Umberto was almost fifty and my father’s loyal soldier. He was also Gianna’s and my bodyguard. He knew everything about everyone. Mother called him a scandalmonger. But if anyone knew more about Luca, it was Umberto.
* * *
“He became a Made Man at eleven,” Umberto said, sharpening his knife on a grinder as he did every day. The smell of tomato and oregano filled the kitchen, but it didn’t give me a sense of comfort as it usually did.
“At eleven?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. Most people didn’t become fully initiated members of the mafia until they were sixteen. “Because of his father?”
Umberto grinned, revealing a gold incisor, and paused in his movements. “You think he got it easy because he’s the Boss’s son? He killed his first man at eleven, that’s why it was decided to initiate him early.”
Gianna gasped. “He’s a monster.”
Umberto shrugged. “He’s what he needs to be. Ruling over New York, you can’t be a pussy.” He gave an apologetic smile. “A wuss.”
“What happened?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. If Luca had killed his first man at eleven, then how many more had he killed in the nine years since?
Umberto shook his shaved head, and scratched the long scar that ran from his temple down to his chin. He was thin, and didn’t look like much, but Mother told me few were faster with a knife than him. I’d never seen him fight. “Can’t say. I’m not that familiar with New York.”
I watched our cook as she prepared dinner, trying to focus on something that wasn’t my churning stomach and my overwhelming fear. Umberto scanned my face. “He’s a good catch. He’ll be the most powerful man on the East Coast soon enough. He’ll protect you.”
“And who will protect me from him?” I hissed.
Umberto didn’t say anything because the answer was clear: nobody could protect me from Luca after our wedding. Not Umberto, and not my father if he felt so inclined. Women in our world belonged to their husband. They were his property to deal with however he pleased. I glanced at the now gleaming blade in Umberto’s hand and shivered.
CHAPTER TWO
The last couple of months had gone by too fast no matter how much I wanted them to slow, to give me more time to prepare. Only two days until my engagement party. Mother was busy ordering the servants around, making sure
