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That’s not what I want. To get where I want to go, I’m smart enough to know that I’ll need wisdom, passion and power. More wisdom than I have now, for sure. The bloody mess I left in the other room is proof.
More passion, too. Daddy says I have ‘heart,’ but he just means when I start something, I follow through. And that I can be ruthless. There’s more to passion than blind rage. I know too well, that’s just what happens when your passion hits the limits of your power. It breaks out as rage.
I have no power at all, and no prospects of getting any.
Ever since I was little, I tried to do what Daddy told me. Even before I knew any better. I learned there was a pattern, but it was Daddy. How could I say ‘no’? When I knew it was bad, I still tried to do it. Like this thing I’m doing now.
Daddy told me what he wanted done, and I did it. But this is what he always does to me. He sets me up. First he makes me feel like I need to prove myself to him. And I’m always too eager to do it. And then I do what he wants, but I go too far.
It all turns out bad, and then Daddy puts the blame on me. But it’s his fault, not mine. He knows what I’m like.
That’s what happened with Gianni.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ilove my brothers to death, maybe a little more than is strictly healthy, even, but I’m not blind or dumb. With those two goofballs pulling the levers of power, the whole business will be one hairpin turn away from flipping into a ditch and turning into a smoking wreck.
Like it makes any difference what I think or what I know. And like anyone in the family or outside it would give two shits for my thoughts, anyway.
In our world, power in the family doesn’t pass down to the most talented or the most deserving. Not even, in my case, to the eldest. Only if you happen to be a boy. So the only way that I could get anywhere near the power in a family would be if I married a first-born.
The curse of being the ‘princess’ in the third level family is, there are only two men I can realistically marry up to. Alessio, the eldest of the Fortuna family, is dreamy hot, with the hands and eyes of a killer. But he’s never going to look at me.
I wouldn’t even stand a chance with his dark-eyed, muscular brother, Bruno.
Images of both of them have made my stomach flutter and flip and caused my thighs to clench, and generally drenched my pillows in the middle of the night often enough. But that’s no more than fantasy.
In my dreams I might lure the wicked sons of the Fortuna family into torrid twists and sweaty tumbles all night long, but in the real world? Forget about it. They will be sure to marry up to the Puccis, or into more powerful families from another city. We may be the next family down the ladder from the Fortunas, but we’re still a long, long climb below them.
We’re a third-rung mob family in this town, and there’s no way for us to move up. Not without all the Puccis and the Fortunas dying in a fire. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it, it’s just not doable. Not by me, at any rate.
I’m not proud of that side of me, but it is me and I have to be honest with myself. My future looks bleak and miserable enough already. I have to look it in the eye. See it all for what it is. I can’t leave myself exposed and open to bad surprises.
No, it seems like every time Daddy needs to do something he can’t face or he doesn’t want to do, he dumps it on me. That way he can always blame me for how it turns out. Dispassionately, I start to wonder if Daddy would have stuck to the plan. No, I’m certain he would have lost it with Gianni and made way more of a mess of him than I did. Paulo, too.
That’s why he sent me. I’m his surrogate.
CHAPTER FIVE
So, I’m waiting in the bright and airy entrance foyer. All marble and pale wood, accented with a few pooling splatters of blood. The heavy wood front to the house door bursts open. Enter contestant number two, the Crespi son and heir.
I’ll leave the big double doors to the lounge half open behind me. Just for long enough that he’ll get a teasing glimpse of the scene inside.
Paulo Crespi, the older son, growls and struggles uselessly as Gino shoves him in from behind. Loose beige leisurewear is not a good look on him, even with the scarlet piping. Pumped and red in the face, his thinning black curls have a wet sheen.
As soon as he sees me, he leaps straight for me. His bracelets shake and the oversized polished stones shine in the heavy rings on his thick fingers as his hands stretch out. From behind his back, Gino just grips him tighter.
Paulo tries to shake him off, but Gino is much bigger and he’s very strong. Impotent and helpless, Paulo hisses. He spits a long, filthy trail of gob on the marble tiled floor in front of me.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Benedetti mignotta?” Then his eyes fix on the doorway behind me. Before he can spew out a longer list of Sicilian and Italian words for ‘whore,’ his face drains white.
He falls quiet as his eyes flick back and forth between my face and the doorway.
More clumps and thumps from the doorway as Minky shoves Paulo’s little brother Armando into the hall. He kicks the door shut behind him.
There’s a leer in Minky’s voice. “Your other guest for the show-and-tell, ma’am.”
Minky doesn’t use my name. A real pro. In case there’s a camera or a recording device. A phone or a gadget they might miss later on in the cleanup.
