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Chapter One – Giselle
If there was one thing, one rule, one law I’d been taught since birth, it was that family was everything. You were always loyal to your family, even if doing so was hard. If you were loyal to your family, if you gave them your all, you were a good person, no matter what other sins you committed or how many people you might kill.
I used to think my father was a good man. I used to respect him, revere him in the way all daughters did.
But then something changed. I grew up, and I learned what a shitty person he truly was. Honor and loyalty to family? Apparently the street only went one way, because he could make demands of me no one else could, and I was forbidden from doing the same to him.
Take now, for instance.
I’d just gotten home from school and was in my room, at my desk, starting my homework—I always did my homework first thing, even if it was a Friday, which today was. Get it done, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about it.
My father knocked on my door before walking in. He didn’t need to knock; the door was already open, so he could’ve walked right in. I turned away from my desk, holding onto a pencil, and when I saw him, I smiled at him. “Hey, Daddy,” I said.
Miguel Santos was an impressive, intense man. Usually in a suit, with pitch-black hair and equally dark eyes. His skin was darker than mine, too; he always said I took after my mother when it came to my color—and my hair. Mine was a beautiful golden hue. He and I, we were like night and day.
He’d just turned forty, but he didn’t look like he was forty. He looked younger than that, and I wasn’t stupid; I knew he could charm and smile his way out of anything, especially where women were concerned.
“Did you have a good day at school, mija?” he asked me, his hands now stuffed into his suit pockets.
I nodded. “It was fine.” It was school; I didn’t know what else he expected. I had some friends, but none I ever brought around here. None I ever hung out with after school or on weekends. I knew my father would never approve of me having close friends who weren’t, let’s just say, in the business.
No, I was a cut above the rest, and because of that I could not stoop to my classmates’ level.
And dating random boys? I think my father would have a heart attack if I brought home a boy named Chad. Now, that didn’t mean I didn’t let myself daydream about it every now and then, wonder what it would be like to go to a school dance with a handsome boy on my arm, but at the end of the day, I knew I had a duty. My father would choose who I would marry, and it would undoubtedly be someone who could bring something to the family business, whether it was money or connections or whatever else.
Some girls might hate the prospect, and some days I did, if I was honest. But I tried to be a good girl, a good daughter. After all, we were all we had. It was just me and him.
“There is something I need to talk to you about,” my father went on, his black eyes lingering on me in a way that made me slightly uncomfortable. A heaviness sat there, and it made me think whatever this was was something I might not like.
“What is it?”
“A potential business partner will be stopping by later tonight. I will need you to be showered and clean, and dressed in something nice.” Everything he said, he said so matter-of-factly, and yet that didn’t stop me from wondering what this was all about.
Usually my father didn’t let me in on his business meetings. I was kept in the dark as much as possible. It wasn’t my brain he wanted, not my brain that mattered most to him; it was the fact that I was a girl who would make a man not unlike him a fine wife someday.
“Daddy, I don’t understand.”
“His name is Rocco Moretti, and it is very important that I get him on board. He has the manpower I need to protect the runners.” My father had built a whiskey empire, but that wasn’t how we made our money—not all of it. Most of our money came from more illegal activities, and having money ensured we had the power and the capability to pay off or blackmail anyone we needed to.
Running an empire was a bloody business, especially when that business was mostly criminal.
My father studied me. “He has… requested your company tonight, and you will give it to him. I don’t know how long he will be here, but I trust you will do whatever he wants. Don’t disappoint me, Giselle.”
How could I look my father in the eyes and deny him? How could I say no? Listening to him, blindly following everything he said had been drilled into my head since the day I was born. I didn’t want to spend any time with any business partner of his, and yet I couldn’t say no.
“Do you understand what’s needed of you tonight?”
I swallowed, and I hoped I hid my trepidation. It took me far too long to say, “Yes, Daddy.” I wasn’t stupid. I knew what this meant. There was no way this Rocco Moretti wanted to play cards with me or watch a movie. No, when it came to men, they always wanted one thing.
I’d been told I couldn’t just give my body away to anyone. That my father would be the one to tell me who I would marry, and therefore who I’d give myself to. I just assumed that my gift, my virginity, would be saved for that man.
Guess I was wrong.
So, after my father left my room, I got ready. I did what a good daughter would do. I didn’t fight about it, didn’t swear up and down that I didn’t want to do it. I kept my mouth shut and got dressed in a light pink gown that clung to my body tightly, pretty sequins on the bosom area. I curled my hair, did my makeup, made myself as presentable as I could possibly be.
I stared at myself in the mirror once I was ready, ran my hands down the sides of my dress. The reflection staring back at me looked wide-eyed, young, and innocent. The truth was that I hadn’t been innocent in many, many years. I knew how to lie, watched my father run his business, and I knew that sometimes you had to make tough calls.
I also knew how to kill. These hands of mine were not clean. I might be a princess, but I was no fairytale princess. If anything, I was a mafia princess, ready to do what I had to in order to make my father happy.
