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Chapter 1
ISABELLA
I pace the polished wooden floor of the living room in the house where I grew up. When I was younger, I used to think of it as home, but as I grew up, it started to feel more and more like an opulent prison.
Prison Moretti was placed strategically on the banks of the Charles River in Commonwealth Avenue, Back Bay, Boston.
Prison inmates—one. Obviously, a very dangerous one who is also a great flight risk. Hence the top-of-the-line hi-tech security, which consists of ten guards disguised in various forms of grounds workers.
Then there’s the bodyguard disguised as my cousin and a spy disguised as the housekeeper. Keep the prisoner princess in check and in sight at all times.
I stop my pacing for a few seconds with an exaggerated sigh and glance down the hall to where my father, the head prison guard, Marco Moretti’s home office is.
The door is still closed, which means my darling father is late as usual to take me to lunch because of his one-hour conference call.
My stomach growls, demanding its lunch as I missed breakfast. I couldn’t eat, being a bundle of nerves over my big decision—today’s the day I, Isabella Moretti, will stand up to my father.
I am going to take charge of my life. I’m going to look my father in the eyes and say—This is my twenty-first, and I’m going to celebrate it my way.
Oh fuck! I blow out a nervous breath and shake my hands out like a gymnast about to start a complex routine. I think I wasn’t even that nervous when I was about to start a complex routine at the state championships in my final year of competing.
Probably because I knew I wouldn’t fuck that up as much as I’m going to fuck up trying to talk to my father.
Shit, I think climbing a rugged rock face is less complicated than going face-to-face with Marco Moretti and telling him that after my stuffy twenty-first yawn fest of a lawn party, Stacy and I are heading to Vegas.
There, I’m going to get blind drunk, gamble away a small fortune, take in a show, and maybe try my hand at stand-up comedy or singing.
Then I’m going to fuck the first beautiful man I find attractive. Which hopefully will be Stacy’s older brother, Harry, who I hope she can talk into coming with us.
Ah…Handsome Harry…just thinking about him makes me wet and achy down below. Even when I think about his name, I can feel his lips on mine and his hands sliding all over my body.
Head shake and deep breaths! This is not the time to zone out and go back into fantasyland about mine and Harry’s sexy encounter in his parent’s pool last year.
I don’t have time to play with my pre-birthday toy, which my best friend Stacy gave me this morning when she came over to provide me with a final confidence boost to face my father about my twenty-first this Saturday. My heart skips a beat every time I think about my birthday in three days.
This brings my nervous thoughts back to what I have to do today and what I’m about to tell my dear old dad. My dear old formidable dad, while pushing sixty, is still extremely handsome, and probably more muscular and fitter than most men in their forties.
While I can basically get him to do or buy me what I want, he has never budged at giving me my complete freedom. Nope, I have to wait until I’ve finished my studies at age twenty-five.
No distractions, Princess. Remember, staying focused keeps you on track, ahead, and in some cases, alive! I only want what’s best for you, Princess, and trust me, this is what’s best.
Well, I want to stay focused only on something other than my current life for a change. Like having a good time in Vegas and maybe putting an end to my being the only twenty-one-year-old virgin in the state of Massachusetts.
I’m almost twenty-one; I’m sure I know what’s best for me, and that’s not a fucking yawn-fest lawn party. Jesus Christ, I may as well have a bouncy house, clowns, and pony rides.
Oh! Wait, those are actually on the list for all the cousins, kids, and kids of kids. Why the fuck are Italian families so big? The last time I looked at the guest list for my party on Saturday, almost a hundred people were coming, with still another fifty to RSVP.
I hope my father got a good few ponies because of those hundred people, at least twenty were kids. Kids at my twenty-first mid-afternoon birthday party, complete with a champagne fountain and a quartet.
Stacy’s twenty-first was four months ago, and it was awesome. Well, what I was allowed to see was awesome. As the male strippers got there, I was yanked away by my lumbering six-foot-three shadow, James, and dragged back home.
I later escaped and bumped into Harry, who pulled me into a quiet corner to finish what we’d begun a few months before that. But that silly snitch, Lilly, who’s had the hots for Harry forever, told James where to find me, and this time, I got locked in prison Moretti, having to fill in the blanks of our encounter with my imagination.
Since my prison break from Prison Moretti on Stacy’s birthday, my father has doubled down on the watchful eyes that surround me. I can’t go anywhere without a chaperone. It’s like I’m living in the goddamn eighteen-hundreds.
I’ve never even driven a car, although I have a license, and I’ve never been to a campus party, even though I’ve been at college for three years.
I find I’m pacing again, knowing that our housekeeper, Genevra, is probably tapping her foot somewhere at me, wearing down the shine on her secret weapons. The floor death traps are suitable for sock sliding but not for trying to run away or chase someone.
