“Everything okay?” he asked.
I forced a smile. “Yeah.”
“Good.” He stood, and for a moment, our eyes met again. His mouth tightened in a way I didn’t understand, then he turned and left.
I peered down at my hands, torn between excitement and disappointment. Wiggling my fingers, I wondered when I’d get an engagement ring. Fina had gotten hers immediately when our parents had decided on the bond.
But maybe this time, they’d wait. It would be frowned upon if an engagement was made public so shortly after Fina was saved.
I stood and headed over to my bed. I grabbed my stuffed animals and tossed them to the ground, then removed a few embarrassing posters of horses from my walls. After I’d removed a few too-frilly dresses from my wardrobe and tossed them on the stuffed animal heap, I hurried downstairs to grab a garbage bag. Danilo wanted someone as poised as my sister. If I wanted him to want me, I couldn’t act like a little girl anymore.
Returning home after ending my engagement to Serafina felt like admitting defeat. Few of my men knew of the cancelation yet. If it had been up to me, I’d have kept the matter under the rug for a while, but Father had insisted we tell our Captains.
That’s why I’d called for a meeting first thing after I returned to Indianapolis. I had ten Captains who were responsible for different areas of the business. One of them was my cousin Marco, who happened to be one of my best friends. His father had died a few months ago from the same cancer that was slowly devouring my father. They’d both been chain smokers since their teenage days, and both paid the bitter price for it.
I flipped open the Zippo, then closed it. I’d stopped smoking six months ago exactly because of this, but I couldn’t part ways with the lighter that my grandfather had given to me for my fourteenth birthday.
I cleared my throat, realizing my men had been staring at me and waiting for me to say something. I’d called them in, after all. They sat around the long glass table in my office, their eyes on me. I was the youngest, even Marco was almost a year older than me. When I’d started holding meetings in my own house and no longer in my parents’ mansion, I’d made sure to keep my office as modern and functional as possible—glass and sleek black wood. I wanted to show my men that things would change now that I was in power, and outward appearances always were a good start. My father had been a good Underboss, but I had to find my own style of ruling.
I pushed up from my chair, preferring to stand so I could have a good view of everyone.
So far, only Marco knew of the engagement debacle.
Steeling myself, I told my men about the canceled engagement. Their reactions ranged from surprise to approval. None of them seemed to consider it a bad thing.
My oldest Captain nodded. His white hair showed his age, that of a man who’d served as a Captain in Indianapolis for longer than I had been on earth—a fact he’d sometimes let show in the beginning. “It makes sense. They can’t expect you to marry someone the enemy has defiled.”
I gritted my teeth. My first instinct was to contradict him and tell him the truth—that I hadn’t canceled the engagement but my fiancée had.
Instead, I nodded, too proud to admit defeat. Marco didn’t say anything, nor did he react. I went on to tell them about my engagement with Sofia, and as expected, my men accepted the bond. For them, all that mattered was that our territory got the recognition it deserved. Women were interchangeable if they had the expected status. It wasn’t uncommon for girls to be promised at an early age, even to older men, as long as the wedding was postponed until after their eighteenth birthday.
Despite their acceptance of the bond, a bitter aftertaste remained in my mouth after telling them. I’d always been glad to have a bride my age. Serafina and I would have had at least a few things in common. We knew the same people from our shared social events. Apart from that, Serafina and I shared our outward poised behavior. We could have made a marriage work.
I doubted Sofia and I had anything in common, certainly not now. She was a little kid. When I’d seen her pink room with the pony posters on her walls, I’d considered canceling the whole thing, but again my pride stopped me. I wanted to marry someone high-ranking, someone close to Dante to establish my power even more, and that left only Sofia.
Soon the discussion turned to our usual updates regarding drug trade and the Bratva problem.
I was glad when the meeting was over. Only Marco remained to have a drink. We played a round of darts while having a cold beer without saying a single word to each other. Marco knew me well enough to recognize my need for silence.
Eventually, after my second beer, I leaned against the pool table in my man cave—as my mother always called it. “What do you think?”
Marco slanted me a look and took a deliberate sip from his drink. We were often mistaken for brothers because of the similarities in our looks. Same brown hair and eyes, and the famous strong Mancini chin.
He gave a shrug. “It’s a messed-up deal. You realize neither Emma nor Sofia will be happy if they find out you and Samuel struck an agreement to marry each other’s sister.”
Emma would be devastated. Sofia probably wouldn’t
