Page 6 of A Bride for the Mafia King

“Absolutely.”

He pulls the car to a stop at a red light. The sunlight shining in through the window allows me to see the full expression on his face – not just ambition, but fear; not just strategy, but desperation.

“How much of this is about him? About what he’s done to me?” I ask softly.

His jaw flexes but still he gives no answer. But I don’t need one. I know my brother well enough to read him like a children's book. I can see the truth in the way he looks over at me, the cold fury hidden behind his eyes. He knows, and he's not going to stand by and let it happen again.

Exhaling heavily, my chest aching that he had been pushed to make such a decision on my account, I say, “You're doing this to get me away from him.”

He looks at me then, his eyes softening slightly, “I am doing this to protect my own. You. The Family. All of it.”

“And the answer to that is giving me to someone just as dangerous as the man you're getting me away from?”

The light turns green and his eyes move back to the road ahead as the car accelerates, shifting through the gears to get up to cruising speed once more.

“It’s not the same,” he says. “He isn’t the same.”

“Do you know that for certain?”

“What I know is that De Mello likes his girls young and stolen. He gets off on making money from using them and disposing of them. Tolya Ivanovich, on the other hand, has done everything possible since he came to power seventeen years ago to put an end to sex trafficking in Chicago.”

He glances over at me again, keeping one eye on the road, “If I do nothing, it won’t end well for you, or for me.”

Sinking back in my seat, I suddenly feel exhausted. I can’t help but admit that he's right. Maybe it is an escape after all.

Selfish as it is, part of me wants to go, wants out. Distance from this bloody, cruel world of power plays and death. If I marry Tolya it will mean safety, of sorts. It will mean the Don won’t be able to reach me. But it also means I’d be locked in this life forever.

I never asked for this. As a girl I dreamed of art school, of apartments far away in New York City. Being someone entirely different, far from here.

I remember telling Nico that I would never marry a mafia man. How he laughed at me and patted me affectionately on the head. He has always known what I’ve never been willing to accept, that I was born into this life and that it is the only thing I'm destined for.

“I never wanted this life,” I murmur, my voice soft.

Nico takes his hand from the gearshift, reaching over to squeeze my own. “I know.”

With a deep resounding sigh I accept the facts, I’m a game piece in a game of chess. This deal will give Nico the one thing he needs to win that game. Checkmate.

“I’ll do it. I’ll marry him.”

Chapter Three

Eva

Nico’s Estate, Four Days Later, 2:42 pm

Asoft knock on the sounds on the closed door.

“It’s open,” I call out.

In the reflection of the mirror, I watch Nico step inside. His pantsuit is freshly pressed and pristine, no indication of worry reflecting within his expression.

None of this is what I envisioned for myself. The dress is simple, elegant, floor-length, with long sleeves and a modest neckline. White, of course—a classical symbolic gesture to the clean slate of new beginnings.

The irony is laughable, I think to myself. Clean slate. There’s more blood on the hands of the men around me than within my own veins. And here I am, a pawn within those blood-stained hands.

I stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror, clasping the second of my pearl earrings—one of the many things I inherited from our mother. To my surprise, my hands don’t shake. I feel calm in spite of the fact that it’s my wedding day.

Taking in the woman staring back at me in the reflection, I barely recognize myself. My dark hair is curled and pinned in an elegant updo, my dark eyes appearing nearly black in contrast to the bright white of my dress. The control and resolve present—that of someone who chose this life.