She was a dental assistant now out in the suburbs. Made good money. Had a hot dentist boyfriend.
Maybe I had to use whatever I could to get ahead.
I began to pack. I hadn’t made up my mind, but I knew it would be easier. Uncle Roy wasn’t taking no for an answer, and Dad wasn’t going to stand up to his older brother. Dad was a Valentino man, loyal to the family until the end, though he wasn’t even a Capo. He was a midlevel soldier running a single strip club, and maybe he could’ve been more if he hadn’t been broken by the family and fallen deep into a bottle.
I heard a noise outside my door. Dad leaned against the doorframe and looked at me, not coming into my room. That was one of our rules—my room was off limits to him, so no matter how bad things got, at least I knew I was safe in here.
“You okay?” he asked.
I shrugged and folded a pair of jeans. “About as okay as anyone can be when they’re getting sold to a stranger.”
He grimaced slightly. “It’s not like that. Roy’s doing what he’s got to do for the family. I’m doing it too.”
“You marry Dean then,” I snapped, glaring at him.
He frowned a little and looked away. I guessed he wasn’t too drunk yet—otherwise he would’ve met my gaze and called me a mouthy slut or something like that.
“I know you don’t want this,” he said. “But think about how much money you can make if you stick around. Stay with him for five years and walk away at thirty. You’ll be rich and young enough to start over.”
I dropped my clothes and leaned forward. I hated the way they kept talking about this, like I wasn’t whoring myself to a mafia Don, like it was rational to marry a man for a million dollars per year. It was easy for them to make me do it, since they wouldn’t be the ones waking up in a stranger’s bed each morning and going to sleep with him each night.
It wasn’t their world getting flipped on its head.
I never should’ve told them about the deal. It came out after, when Uncle Roy was going to beat the shit out of me for not living up to his unreasonable expectations, as if I’d throw myself at some stranger just because my uncle told me I should. I told him to keep him from hitting me, and it worked—but as soon as his eyes lit up, I knew I was completely screwed.
I wanted to scream and run away, but Uncle Roy would catch me and drag me back.
It’s happened before. Not to me, I kept my distance from Uncle Roy, but to his daughters.
I didn’t want to become like them. Quiet, obedient. Terrified.
“I don’t want to be rich,” I said, which sounded stupid. “I just want to make my own choices.”
“Too bad,” Dad said and sounded almost sorry. “You’re doing this. For the family.”
Those words, for the family. They justified a lot in my father’s mind.
He left me then and I finished packing.
I didn’t have any options. Not here, anyway, not with Uncle Roy downstairs talking to my father, making him think that this was for the best for everyone, including me. It didn’t matter if I hated this, if I hated the mafia, if I blamed them for my mother’s death and didn’t want to end up just like her. It didn’t matter that the family drove my father to drink and turned him into a wreck and a shell of a man.
None of it mattered, except for the family.
I finished packing and went downstairs. Dad didn’t look at me as I walked out the door with Uncle Roy. I wanted to say, not even going to come with me while I get sold to your boss? But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“You’re making the right choice,” Uncle Roy said as I shoved my suitcase in the back.
I said nothing as I sat down next to it. He hesitated, but shrugged and got behind the wheel.
I stared out the window as we left the city and drove out to the Main Line.
My whole life was spent in Philadelphia. I was a nobody girl from a messed-up family, the daughter of a minor soldier. I had no future, not really. I had no money, no prospects, and so much baggage, guilt, and anger that I didn’t know what to do with that I spent most of my time wandering the streets at night trying to decide what the hell I wanted from life.
Sometimes, I thought about traveling. I thought about leaving Philly for the first time in my life and going somewhere else. Maybe I’d visit Ireland, or Italy, or Germany, or anywhere but here. I could go to school like Monique and get a degree.
Or I could tend bar in some tiny Alaskan town as far away from my family, from the mafia, from my mother’s ghost as I possibly could. That wouldn’t be so bad. I liked the cold.
Instead, my uncle drove me to a massive mansion hidden out in the woods on the outskirts of the Philly suburbs and parked out front.
He turned and looked at me. His eyes narrowed as he took me in, eyes flitting down the front of me and back up.
“Dean’s important,” he said. “So you will be respectful, not your normal self.”
“And what am I normally?” I asked.
“Mouthy,” he said.
I showed him my teeth. “And you’re a fat asshole,” I said.
He grimaced. Good, I wanted to piss him off. He wouldn’t hit me right in front of Dean’s place. He wouldn’t risk injuring the goods before the sale was made.
“Get out,” he said, and opened his door. He slammed it behind him as he stormed up
