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One week of waiting. And then it’s time to marry my worst enemy.
And the father of my child.
The driveback to our townhouse is quick. I live close enough to the main house that I’m easy to get to if needed, and so that the security that Marco pays for can easily zip back and forth if required to.
Hans, my personal bodyguard, is German, unusual for a mafia hire, but he’s a great guy and a fantastic bodyguard. I wave at him as we walk in. He waves back; he and his wife are expecting a little girl in a few months, and he’s been asking a lot of questions about Luna’s birth in order to prepare to be supportive.
I love that. It’s exactly the kind of father a kid needs.
After I settle Luna in for bed, I pour a glass of the prosecco that I’m trying to bring to market and go out to my balcony. I linger, just for a minute, and grab the locket that I never take off.
Its only contents are a picture of my mom and me.
“I miss you, Mamma,” I whisper at the sky.
My mother was a ray of sunshine. She had been against the marriage contract with Elio from the beginning and had onlyagreed when the last of her uncles was thrown in jail, right before I was born.
I wasn’t certain what the exact terms of the contract were. My dad and Elio’s dad had come up with them while they were out drinking and carousing in Atlantic City, of all places, and they had ensured that neither one of their families had access to the safe deposit box.
A brilliant plan.
My mother thought so as well. She berated both of them, but at the time, I hadn’t been born yet. The deal was to have Giovanni Rossi’s first son marry Antonio De Luca’s oldest daughter.
Who turned out to be me.
To my knowledge, Marco still hasn’t seen the original document, and neither has Elio. The location of the original contract is still a mystery.
But the terms aren’t.
The Rossi family runs a shipping empire. They import luxury goods from every corner of the globe, but mostly through Europe.
Those goods come into ports that were, at one time, staffed by De Luca workers. The De Lucas would then take the goods, along with anything else that showed up in those crates, and turn them into cash, which the Rossi’s would get a cut of.
A healthy cut of goods that were both legal and illegal.
The Rossi family is Italian. Like, Elio and all of his siblings except one were born in Italy and they only have citizenship in America because of some slick dealings and greased palms.
The De Lucas, via my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, came to the United States around the turn of the century. At first, we did quite well; there’s a whole section dedicated to us in The Mob Museum in Las Vegas. I’ve never been, but Dino says that it’s a hoot.
Then, along with the rest of organized crime in America, the feds got smarter than we were, and one by one, De Lucas filled up prisons from sea to shining sea.
With the lack of manpower came a decline in our ability to be the pin in the Rossi flow of goods. We still have a solid presence on the docks in the Port of New York, but it’s nowhere near what it used to be.
My dad and Elio’s dad must have been drunk on some prime shit, reminiscing about some old times, in order to dream up this ridiculous arrangement.
With the unification of the families, the Rossi’s agreed to only use De Luca docks and De Luca distributors to sell. This is a terrible plan because the amount of goods that Rossi Industries brings in would vastly overwhelm our workforce.
I have no idea what Elio gets out of this deal.
Well... I did once. I grimace and sip my prosecco.
Me.
There was a time when Elio and I would have been good for each other. I was a wide-eyed girl, just starting my junior year of college. He was handsome; he was my brother’s age, and they had been friends since grade school.
I can’t remember how handsome he is.
Physically, I’m capable of remembering. I see his unusual grey eyes every time I look at my daughter’s face. I see the slope of his cheeks, the tilt of his nose. There’s no doubt that she has Elio’s face.
