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“Marriage contracts simply can’t be legally binding anymore,” I argue. “That has to be a thing that went the way of the dinosaurs in the ‘60s.”
“Dad wouldn’t have negotiated it if that were the case,” he says with a frown.
Marco frowns a lot these days.
For a split second, my heart aches for my older brother.
He was only twenty-eight when he was suddenly the head of everything. The legal business. The illegal business. Dad was a healthy man, and no one expected him to die.
Then again, I was only twenty-two when I became a mom so…
I guess no one got what they were hoping for.
Life has a way of doing that, I guess. Not in the sunshine and roses ‘everything works out in the end’ type of way.
No, for people like us, it’s mostly the ‘die-or-go-to-jail-for-a-long-time’ way.
Or, in my case, have a baby when you’re still a baby, and spend your life trying to hide her from her father, because if he finds out…
I shiver. That’s the other reason that I’m here begging my brother to call it off.
Elio cannot know about his daughter.
Because if he finds out, I think he’s probably going to kill us both.
Marco, however, thinks our family’s dwindling resources will be enough to keep Elio and his goons at bay until I can figure out the evidence that we need to prove that Elio and the rest of the Rossi family had our parents killed.
I think this is a terrible plan.
He has entirely too much faith in me, our security, our Aunt Rosa, and our ability to pin the murder on Elio and his siblings.
I have faith in nothing anymore. My only hope is to keep my daughter safe. And you can’t do that based on faith.
“Marco. This is a shitty plan.”
“Language, Caterina.”
I do roll my eyes then. “I’m a grown woman. I’ve had a literal child. I can cuss if I want to.”
“Not if you’re going to play the part of a good Italian wife you won’t.”
I’m pretty sure that Marco’s ideas of a ‘good Italian wife’ are based on mob movies and Grandpa’s tales of mob life in the ’60s, but I don’t point that out.
To my knowledge, which is based on the internet and no other experience, Italian women have moved into the modern world with the rest of us.
Then again, families like ours and the Rossi’s go way back in history so…
Maybe old habits die hard.
“Luna will be just fine,” he says with a genuine smile.
I don’t return it.
He notices and the smile fades. “Caterina, seriously. You think that I would let my favorite niece come to any harm? If Elio finds her, he’s a dead man,” Marco says with a drop in his voice that makes me shiver.
Sometimes I forget that my brothers, while being my brothers, are also gangsters.
And they can be pretty freaking scary if they need to.
