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CHAPTER ONE
“You can’t bestow wisdom on idiots. I would know. My dad told me that every day until I realized it was me, I was the idiot. God love him.” —King Campisi, Capo dei Capi
Bella
There are three things you absolutely need to know about me.
One, I have a short temper, compliments of my dad.
Two, my dad is, to put it mildly, one of the most powerful mafia bosses in Chicago.
Three, I hate ham. Can’t stand it, which brings us into four.
Okay, so I meant four, whatever.
And four, I despised Ivan De Lange with every fiber of my soul. If he was on the side of the street limping, you best believe it was because I ran him over with my car, my bike, and then a stolen tricycle for good measure.
He wasn’t making matters easier by picking a fight during family dinner in front of everyone.
More yelling commenced from inside the house. I winced.
And now you’re all caught up.
I’m Bella Abandonato, college sophomore at one of the most elite universities in the nation, spoiled princess, hell of a cookie lover, and this is how I destroyed my enemy: one chocolate chip at a time.
Damn, too much? And was I really trying to do my manifesto while Ivan cornered me in the yard next to the giant tree he’d pushed me out of when I was fifteen?
Yes.
Was it the same tree I shoved his head against? Also, yes.
I had no problem feeling guilty when it came to him, and he had no qualms about being guilty when it came to me.
“You’re an idiot,” I said with purpose and a strong sense of conviction. I wanted to carve it into his skull so that every time he saw his own face in the mirror, he’d remember like the complete dumbass that he was.
An idiot.
See? Not that hard, and sometimes for people like him, from his Family, reading may be tough, but for him it’s literally something that makes a person wonder, can he even see words?
Ivan leaned in, too close, way too close, his green eyes penetrated mine in a way that was so severely uncomfortable that I wanted to trip him then grab the closest object and hold it high over my head. He’d of course tell my family and it would be a whole thing, the last thing we needed was more war between the Families anyway so we’re taught at an early age, not to necessarily play nice, just not to get caught by any of the bosses from any of the Families.
Ivan was cruel when I first met him at fifteen, when he came into our lives and decided to start working for the Families, not that he was really given a choice as an orphan. I’d been warned to be nice because he didn’t have any parents left, but he just wore his anger so much on his sleeve that the first thing he said to me when I offered him some homemade cookies was he didn’t eat poison then looked me up and down and said. “You should probably cut back anyway, am I right?” He’d pinched my side and what followed was me slamming a plate against him, cookies flying everywhere and blood everywhere that, till this day, nobody’s really sure where it came from.
Then again, I was in the Cosa Nostra, Italian mafia blood ran through my veins, my heart pulsed with it each beat it took and I knew that I’d either live a seminormal life or I’d be the one to wreak havoc.
I had nothing but amazing experiences around me, if you counted all of the… er, attacks. Listen, they wanted to live normal lives too, but when you’re five of the most powerful and richest Families in the underground, people tend to want to take your throne or stop air from getting into your lungs.
It was a thing.
When I was little, my dad, Nixon Abandonato, a badass in his own right and boss of the Abandonato Family, would tuck me in with my blue unicorn, kiss me on each cheek and tell me how he met Mom. “You see, our Families were at war, and her parents died a bloody death, but her Grandpa never gave up and put her into hiding, and I’d loved her for forever and never forgot her, but we were from two Families who should have never connected… blood spills when there’s envy.”
“What’s envy?”
“Means you want what someone else has and want to…” Uncle Chase walked into the room and mimed a slit across his neck.
At the time, I thought he was just being goofy, but my dad said something mean to him in Italian that I later found out meant really bad things.
That… was normal.
