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It’s not something I ever worried about before. My family isn’t senior enough that a serious marriage proposal was likely to come for a daughter. I always assumed I would either stay single, or I would just find somebody for myself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mikey has on a face like cold granite as he drives me in the limo to the Fortuna’s house. His eyes peer out of the rearview at me. From deep nests of wrinkles, his glint flashes back at me often on the way. He hardly speaks on the whole journey.
Climbing into the hills, it gets darker as we pass through more and more trees. Then Mikey turns though a high pair of iron gates, mounted on ancient piles of stone, and the car crunches slowly up the Fortuna’s long drive. The trees here are even more dense as they cluster around us.
Finally we come out to a wide clearing and the dark turrets and spires of the old house loom over us. Mikey stops by the dried up stone fountain, fingered with dark green smears, in front of the huge stone steps up to the tall entrance. Pointed gothic arches and spires of the house reach up, dark and high, out of thick winterberry, barberry, and ivy. The tips jab ominously into the low thunderclouds.
“I’ll miss you, Miss Lucrezia.” Mikey calls me by my full name, but I’ve always felt so close to him, I don’t think I would ever mind what he called me. He wouldn’t ever want to hurt me. In fact, he’s been like a round-the-clock personal protection detail and bodyguard for me as far back as I can remember.
It hits me now that I’m not going to hear my full name anymore. I’ll miss hearing it from Mikey.
“I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again, Mikey.” A lump in my throat nearly chokes off the last part of the sentence.
“I wish what you said was true, Miss Lucrezia, but I can’t see it happening.” He clears his throat before he goes on. “You be careful among those Fortunas, miss. That big old house, and they’re all men there. You know the reputations they all have.”
I certainly do. Carlo, the youngest and the man I’m supposed to marry, is said to be a reclusive genius. He looks smoking hot, in an evil genius kind of a way, and he was famously a double math major in college as well as a chess champion. More famously, aside from being a member of one of the most brutal families in the Seattle underworld, he’s also has cold-eyed killer skills as a martial arts expert.
Mikey tells me, “Never forget that the Fortunas took your family’s power long ago. However they might seem to you now, they will stop at nothing to keep it.”
As he holds the door of the limo open for me, Mikey bends his head to tell me in a confidential whisper, Don’t ever let your guard down with them. Not with any mafia man, Miss Lucrezia. Not completely. I’ve been one from birth, so believe me. There’s a side to every one of us you can never fully trust.
Mikey waits while I bang the huge knocker on the big wood double doors. Standing alone with my random assortment of cases on the top of the stone steps, I shiver. Not only from the chill on the breeze.
There’s no answer. A childish thought scurries around my head; maybe there’s nobody here. Maybe I’ll have to turn around and go back home after all.
Alone with my pile of cases, I get an unwelcome sense that I’ve stepped out of the comfort and safety of my previous life. All of Daddy’s protection slips like a soft, warm blanket off my shoulders and my back, leaving me in the cold gray morning air.
That’s all gone now. Just a few moments away, but that was then. This is now.
I look up at the house. The breeze lifts my hair and makes me shudder. When Mikey said, However they appear to you now, I thought that he meant they could appear friendly. Welcoming.
Enjoying the dream for a moment while I can, I already know that it’s a false hope. At the top of the steep steps, the heavy black paneled double doors remain firmly shut. Nobody rushed out to meet me. The only open arms here are the hollow stone arch and the spread of the huge old trees surrounding the house. It all looks ready to swallow me up.
I knock again. The double door clicks and clunks and half of it pops inward, an inch away from me. It’s not open, but it’s unlocked. Of course, it creaks like the gate of a vampire’s castle as I heave it open.
Turning to wave to Mikey, I call out as brightly as I can, “Onward and offward.” The familiar comfort of the limo crunches and fades into the distance, back up the drive as Mikey drives away. Will I see him again? A lump jams in my throat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Awoman’s stern, weary voice floats out of the dark interior of the house.
“Wait in the hall. I’ll be with you shortly.”
Completely alone now, on the cold, echoing tiles of the huge entrance hallway, I get my first sense of being in enemy territory. No one here is going to protect me. Nobody here would be afraid of Daddy, like everybody in my life has been, up to now. My previous life.
I’ve been exiled into a dark kingdom, a place where dreams grow in the gloom and tangle into a seventies or eighties horror movie. High arches, dark corridors, and shadowed doorways all set off trembling voices moaning in the back of my head, Don’t go there!
Fear of Daddy kept every man away from me. I’ve never even been properly kissed. Some grasping fumbles and wet trembles aside, I’ve hardly been touched. Nobody was prepared to brave Daddy’s wrath and vengeance to come near me.
Now I’m here like a sacrificial lamb, delivered for a wedding nobody wants. Here, I’m alone, anything can happen to me. With my consent and agreement, or without it. Nobody would know or care.
Dark thoughts curl up and down my back and stalk around my mind. And I’m so inexperienced that the thrills intrigue me. I want something, anything, so much that it seems worth risking everything for a breathless moment, a searing touch. Anything.
All the security I ever knew, all the protection that I grew up with has gone, left me behind. I’m feeling more completely exposed than I ever thought I could.
A hollow sensation deep in my gut calls out for what feels like the first time, in fear and dread. I don’t know what it is to live without the cozy wrapping of untouchability around me. I feel helpless and unprepared. I don’t believe that I’ll ever feel completely safe again.
