Page 36 of Bene

“This is delicious,” Senior praised.

“Isn’t it? Wasn’t sure what she was doing at that college, but this is a good sign,” Mario replied to his father. “Might even dare to say it was worth it.”

Senior turned his gaze on Vanna, and nodded. “Not sure how much longer you’ll be attending there, but while you do, I need you to cook for me more.”

Across the table, the man’s wife—and Mario’s mother, Gemma—did her best to keep a straight face, and not roll her eyes. Barely. Vanna might have been offended about that on another day, but she kind of got it.

Men were praising another woman’s cooking at her table, and no Italian woman took very kindly to that. To her benefit, Gemma was attempting civility, and politeness. Vanna couldn’t say she would do the same if she were in Gemma’s position. Not that anyone gave her a choice. Mario called the week before, said his father wanted to spend more time with her, and he agreed with the promise she would cook them all something to eat the next week.

Well, that turned into this. A table full of people from their Camorra clan. Vanna killing herself in the kitchen. And now a woman across from her who looked like she had finally found her limit with all the compliments going around that were not directed toward her, or her cooking. Just perfect, really. This night couldn’t get any worse than it already was, surely.

She would usually enjoy someone praising her cooking considering the effort that went into her attending George Brown College for their amazing culinary program. A program that would, essentially, guarantee her success in her chosen field once she finished, and went on to apprentice under a chef in the city.

Unless, someone else stopped her dreams.

Considering some of the offhanded remarks Mario made over the course of the dinner, to his father and the other Camorra men attending, Vanna was beginning to think he intended to do exactly that. Cage her into this life, somehow, and keep her with him.

Across the table, Mario watched her with a smile playing at the edges of his lips. She could tell without him even needing to say it that he was enjoying this night. It was almost as if he had been able to show her off, like some trophy he’d been keeping hidden from the rest of his family and his father’s people. As if they hadn’t known Vanna her entire life, and now they were getting a fresh look at her on Mario’s arm.

Up until now, Vanna had felt forgotten by a lot of the clan. The little orphan teenager who had been taken in by the boss and his wife but had never really been favored or put on display for the rest of the clan like Mario had been as their son. In that moment, during the dinner, it felt like everything changed, and Vanna hadn’t seen it coming.

She hated it.

All of it.

And yet, the only way she could continue to have the freedom she did, like going to college, living on her own, and more … was to feed into Mario’s nonsense. It was his word in his father’s ear, after all, that allowed her all she had and could do.

Vanna didn’t want to play with fire.

“Thank you,” Vanna said to Senior when he stared at her expectantly, waiting for a reply to his earlier praises. “I love cooking.”

And she did.

Before her father died, cooking had been a way she spent one on one, quality time with her dad. Because she didn’t have a mother to teach her any useable skills, like cooking, the job fell to her dad, and it was just her luck that he enjoyed it, too.

Then, after his passing, cooking became the way Vanna coped a lot of the time. Baking cookies at two in the morning when she couldn’t sleep because she kept dreaming of getting the news about her dad … well, it got her through it.

The people at the table didn’t care to hear that, though. Nothing about her father, or her life then mattered because then they might look at her as though she was nothing more than Adam’s child. His blood, determined to ruin their clan and life the same way he and his father had once done, even if that had never been her plans.

“Back to business,” Senior said, waving a hand as Vanna stood to clear the plates with Gemma’s help. Just like that, the men at the table went back to discussing their plans to take over several road construction rackets the following year after a few deals they’d pulled in this summer. “And bring me in a drink, love.”

Gemma nodded to her husband.

Mario looked Vanna’s way expectantly, clearly wanting the same. He didn’t outright ask, but the raise of his brow when all eyes turned on the exchange between the two of them, and his quiet, “If you wouldn’t mind, of course.”

Yes, she minded.

She wasn’t his.

Nor was she a maid.

Vanna still smiled. “Sure.”

The men had no issue with discussing business while the women milled about, even a few of the wives of other men attending the dinner. So was the Camorra way—not entirely unheard of for a woman to control, or even head, the family should the time call for it. That didn’t mean women weren’t highly controlled in the Camorra, because they were.

Far too much.

Women were held to a far higher standard than any man. And things a woman would be punished—or even killed for—a man would be praised for doing the same. Funny how that worked, except it wasn’t really funny at all.