Page 77 of Corrado

“The way we want you to.” Kev raised his thick brows when Ginevra almost opened her mouth to tell them right where they could shove their demands. His look shut her up instantly. “This will be good for you, and for us. Surely, you’ve heard of the Marcellos? You must know the family, Ginny. It’s a good match.”

“She knows nothing about that life,” her mother said softly. “Matteo didn’t want me to explain, and we were removed from it all, Kev.”

His gaze drifted to her mother, his lips forming a thin, grim line.

Disappointment.

There was no denying the fact that Kev was his father’s son, Ginevra thought. God knew he looked just like their father, even if a different woman had brought him into the world than the one that gave her life.

Still, they shared similarities.

Like Ginevra to Darren, or even Siena.

The dark hair, the shape of their oval faces, and even the way they all smiled the same. She’d taken her brown eyes from her mother, though, and she was grateful for that in moments like these. Because when she looked into Kev’s eyes, all she saw was coldness. She knew her stare was not the same as his.

“I just …” Ginevra struggled to find her words, to say something that would make these men understand this was not what she wanted to do. It didn’t matter to her that the blood inside her veins said she was the same as them. It didn’t matter that her father—now dead—had once controlled a major mafia family. She wasn’t like them. She never lived like they did. Their way was not her way. “This isn’t my life; I don’t want to do this just because you say it’s what I should do. I’m allowed to make my own choices. I’m twenty-one, and—”

“It’s been decided,” Kev replied dryly.

“And you will see it through,” Darren added for his brother, “whether we have to force you down the aisle, or you walk down willingly. If you think we don’t have the means and the motive to see it through for you, test us, Ginevra. It is going to happen.”

“It will happen.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, using her fingernails to dig into the palms of her hands to keep her emotions under control. These men were horrible. They would enjoy seeing her tears all too much, even if they were simply a byproduct of her anger.

To them, it would be a battle won.

To them, she was just a girl.

A stupid girl for them to use.

“I know you think because you weren’t brought up in the same life as us that you can somehow … escape the same expectations that we were given,” Ken said, making Ginevra wish he would just shut the fuck up, and get out of her mother’s apartment, “but that isn’t actually the case at all. With our father dead, we are expected to carry on his legacy, and make the choices that will further our family in the criminal world. That’s how it works. And you are the thing we plan to use to do that.”

“Do you understand?” Darren asked.

Ginevra bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. “I won’t do this.”

“You will. Or we will make sure you do. You continue to think you have a choice here, Ginny—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Kev let out a sigh. “Now, be nice. It’s just a nickname.”

No, it wasn’t.

It was the name her mother had called her since she was a girl. It was the name her sisters shouted from the other end of the apartment when they wanted her to come help them pick out an outfit so maybe they could finally get their crush at school to notice them. It was the name her professors—which she would no longer be allowed to attend classes, according to Kev—used when they directed questions at her in classes.

It was not, however, a nickname her father gave her. It did not come from the fucking Calabrese. And she didn’t want the rest of them using it.

“Don’t call me that,” Ginevra muttered, keeping her gaze down.

Kev, seemingly reaching his level of patience with her for the day, smacked the wall with his hand loud enough to make Ginevra and her mother jump on the couch. “I won’t say it again after this, but it has been decided. You will marry the Marcello man within a couple of months. We’ll nail down an appropriate date, and let you know. If you run, Ginevra, we will find you. If someone here thinks that helping you get away will help your case, then they will be removed. I won’t tolerate someone going against me—I don’t give a fuck if you are my blood. Do you understand me?”

God.

She hated him.

All of them right now.