Page 7 of The Kingpin’s Bride

I was so young and someone’s mother in every way that counted.

The night Mama died started like the others. She stumbled in a little after midnight, pupils blown wide, scratching at her arms. Camilla was asleep in the small crib I’d moved into my room so I could reach her faster. I was at the kitchen table trying to finish a scholarship essay I knew I would never use.

Mama mumbled something about needing to lie down. I watched her disappear into her bedroom and told myself she would sleep it off like always. An hour later, a strange silence.

I found her on the floor beside the bed, lips blue, a needle hanging from the crook of her arm. The spoon and lighter were on the nightstand like an unfinished ritual.

I don’t remember screaming. I only remember dropping to my knees and pulling her into my lap, the same way she had once pulled me close under a restaurant table when I was ten. Her body was cooling. I pressed my ear to her chest and heard nothing. I shook her. I begged. I told her baby Camilla needed her. That I needed her. That she couldn’t leave us alone with him.

Mama never opened her eyes. I held her until the sun started coming up and my legs went numb underneath her weight. At some point I made a promise against her hair, voice cracked and raw.

“I’ll protect her,” I whispered. “I swear on everything left. Camilla will never end up like us. I’ll keep her safe. Even from him.”

Dario arrived mid-morning, summoned by the building manager who had finally gotten tired of the smell. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom, looked at Mama’s body in my arms, and exhaled through his nose like he was mildly inconvenienced.

“Fucking waste,” he muttered. Then his eyes moved to me, kneeling on the floor with my dead mother, and something colder and more interested settled into his expression.

“Guess it’s just you and me and the kid now, huh?” He stepped closer, toeing Mama’s limp hand out of the way. “Don’t worry, Morena. I got plans for you. Big ones. You’re worth a lot more than she ever was.”

He smiled then, the same smile he had given me the night he put the cheap ring on Mama’s finger. Camilla started crying from the other room, small and insistent. I carefully laid Mama down, smoothed her hair one last time, and went to my sister. Dario watched me the whole way, calculating.

My eighteenth birthday started with Camilla throwing up on my only good shirt and ended with blood in my mouth. Dario came home early for once. That should have been the first warning. He walked in carrying a small grocery-store cake with cheap plastic flowers on top and a bottle of something strong. Camilla was in her pajamas, sticky-fingered and talking on the living-room floor. I had been trying to get her to eat the last of the rice cereal before bed.

He set the cake on the table and looked at me for a long time.

“You’re eighteen now,” he said. “Time to start earning your keep.”

I knew what was coming. I had felt it building for months in the way his eyes lingered, in the casual touches that lasted too long, in the comments about how I was “wasted” on books and scholarships.

“I got the full scholarship,” I said quietly. “It covers everything. I can work part-time and still…”

“You’re not going.” His voice was flat. Final. “I told them you’re declining. College is for girls who don’t have responsibilities. You have responsibilities.”

Camilla chose that moment to pull herself up on the couch and crow “Renaaaa, I wanna play!” like it was the most important thing in the world. My heart clenched.

Dario stepped closer. The smell of his stupid cologne mixed with whatever he had been drinking.

“I’ve been patient,” he said, softer now. “Gave you time to grieve your mother. Let you play house with the kid. But I’m done waiting. You’re just a tool, Morena. Have been since the day I put that ring on your mother’s finger.”

His hand came up and cupped the side of my neck, thumb stroking once over my pulse. I jerked back so hard I nearly tripped over Camilla’s toy.

“Don’t.”

Something ugly flashed across his face. The next second his palm cracked across my cheek hard enough to snap my head sideways. Pain exploded through my face. The copper taste of blood filled my mouth where my teeth cut the inside of my cheek.

Camilla started screaming immediately, high, terrified, the kind of cry that meant she had never heard that sound before and didn’t understand it. Dario grabbed my jaw and forced me to look at him.

“You think you’re too good for me?” he snarled. “You think some scholarship makes you special? You’re nothing but leftover goods from a dead whore, and I’m the only reason you and that kid have a roof.”

I tried to shove him off. He was bigger, heavier, meaner. He slammed me back against the wall hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Camilla’s screams got louder.

Then, just as suddenly, he let go and stepped back, breathing hard. He dragged a hand down his face and laughed once, low and bitter.

“Fine,” he said. “You don’t want to be owned that way? Then you’ll earn on your back in a different way. Or on a stage.”

I stared at him, cheek throbbing, blood in my mouth.

“There’s a club,” he continued. “After Dark. High-end place. Owned by one of the Morettis, Santino. They pay very well for pretty, untouched girls who know how to look scared and grateful. You’re going to dance there. Starting this weekend.”