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I groaned. “Mamma! I’m jet lagged!”
“Don’t undo all the good work you did tonight by skipping out on your obligations.” She kissed me on the cheek and wished me goodnight.
“Hey, big sister,” Luca said, sitting on my bed. He eyed the gun on the bedside table, but didn’t say anything.
“Hey, squirt,” I said, elbowing him as I sat down. “Thanks for not letting me know what was going on.”
He was the spitting image of our father. “I didn’t want you to get involved,” he answered. “You got out, unlike the rest of us.”
“You’re the heir, Luca. How do you intend to keep Mamma and Sofia safe when the other families, let alone the other gangs, realize what dire straits we’re in?”
He leaned his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t have a good solution, but I still don’t like dragging you back into this.”
I snorted my derisive laughter. “You were about to sell Sofia! And you’re getting bent up aboutme? I have money. I have resources. I have my own fucking lawyer who’s reviewing the contracts tomorrow. What capability does she have to look after herself in that pool of sharks?”
Remembering my mother’s entreaty about attending mass the next day, I pulled out my phone.
Ginevra: I have to go to mass before brunch tomorrow.
Rian: We’ll meet you there.
Ginevra: No need. I’ll meet you at Baldino’s.
Liam: We’ll meet you at mass.
When I looked over at Luca, his eyebrows were sky high. “A group chat already?”
I shrugged. “They’re family now, aren’t they?”
He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me into his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ginevra.”
“Can’t change it now, Luca. We just have to make the best of it, and make sure Mamma and Sofia are safe.”
“And you,” he added, rubbing the top of my head like we did when we were kids.
“Pretty sure those handsome Irish boys will handle my protection just fine. They strike me as the possessive type.”Whether I like it or not.
Luca laughed and allowed me to change the subject to less fraught topics.
Alexi stared,fury radiating from his clenched fists, as I stood across from my father in the dawn light. He hadn’t accepted my induction into the family at sixteen, and he didn’t seem any more amenable to accepting my oath in the backyard twelve years later.
It didn’t matter. Bringing me back into the family as a captain, as an authority figure and my father’s right-hand woman, was part of the price I’d extracted for selling myself to the Irish. Luca stood to my father’s left, Alexi to his right, and then my father’s four remainingcaposin a circle around me.
My father’s black suit blended into the dark that surrounded us. He gestured for me to give him my hand. I extended it to him, palm up. He pricked my right index finger with a needle, then smeared the blood on a card with Saint Genevieve painted onto it. I lowered my hand, letting my blood drip onto the ground while he lit the card on fire and passed it to Alexi, on his right. The men passed the card around the circle, as I once again swore an oath of silence to my family.
“As burns this saint, so will burn my soul. I enter alive and I will leave dead. I will take the secrets of our family to my grave.”
My father sighed sadly when the card made its way back to him, letting the early morning wind scatter the ashes between us.
He wrapped his fingers around my upper arms and kissed me on each cheek. “You have always been part of this family, and now I am proud to call you mycapo. We are one until death.”
The men standing around me repeated the vow. “One until death.”
Twelve years ago, I’d taken the same oath, covered in the blood of the high school kid I’d murdered in cold blood after my father retrieved me from a Russian flesh auction. Ten years ago, I’d graduated high school and packed my bags the next day, escaping to California. Three days ago, my sister called me begging for help, and here I was once again. There would be no escape, norealescape, this time. Fine. Whatever it took to keep Sofia safe.
“One until death,” I whispered.
Luca was the first to pull me into his arms. “Welcome home, big sister.”
