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Prologue
America
There was no one at the front door. That was the first thing that tipped me off that something was wrong. There was always someone at the front door in the Perelli household, or at least someone nearby. A butler. A maid. One of my father’s ‘security guards.’ As I strode into the foyer, though, the house was quiet.
I’d only been gone for a few months. Had he changed routine? No. Jason Perelli liked his routine. He rarely deviated. Even when my mother had died, there hadn’t been much difference on the day of her funeral. The only allowance was that I’d been permitted to miss school to attend the service. I’d gone immediately back the next day—no time to mourn, no halt to my studies, and certainly no extra attention from the man I called my father.
Now, though, there was an eerie feeling to the mansion I’d grown up in. I sucked in a breath and took a step further into the home. His home. Not mine. Because after today, I likely wouldn’t ever have contact with my father again. I’d just come by to drop off my old keys. When my college let out for break, I’d go stay with the guys—Ian, Jensen, and Archer. There was no point in coming back to a home where there’d been nothing but discomfort, distance, and a low-simmering level of fear.
Why fear? Because my father, Jason Perelli, was a mobster. Not just a mobster, butthemobster. If there were criminal dealings in New York, there was no doubt my father had his greedy fingers in each and every single one. Oh, he lived the life of a wealthy businessman. Handsome. Charming. Calculating. Before my mother passed, he’d had the trophy wife and the trophy life. I hadn’t realized it then—what he was—but after the last several years, I began to see the signs. The late nights. The drivers and guards with the scars and tattoos who carried around guns under their suit coats. The packages delivered at all hours of the night.
I’d kept my eyes down and my mouth shut since I’d figured it out, half terrified that there would be a time where I’d do something to truly draw my father’s notice and find myself disappearing like one of the maids who’d been accused of stealing from his home office several years before. I still didn’t know what had happened to Marguerite, and I didn’t want to find out. I just wanted to vanish, fade out of his life, and hope that he’d forget he ever had a daughter.
Just keep your head down, drop the fucking keys on the kitchen counter, and go,I told myself.You don’t even have to see him.
I hurried forward, making a beeline for the kitchen with my keys clutched in my grip. When I got there, I realized that the kitchen, like each room I’d passed to get there, was empty.
Don’t think about it, I urged. Setting the keys on the counter, I turned to go. I was almost there— the open doorway that led back to the foyer and out onto the front lawn and circular driveway was within my sights, but a low moan of pain stopped me. I froze where I was, my head tilting to the side as I listened. Maybe it was just my imagination? I took another step towards the door, but then it came again, and this time it was accompanied by a heavy thud, and another, and another, until the moans turned into sharp cries of agony.
My brows lowered, and the slow growing trickle of adrenaline started to wind its way through me as I stood there. The scraping sound of metal against stone made me jump. My feet padded away from the open doorway, as if drawn by another force towards a door on the other side of the kitchen. I’d been inside it a time or two—it was nothing more than a large garage my father usually used to house his favorites from his collection of sports cars.
My hand fell to the doorknob and I twisted it lightly, my heart racing in my chest. Something told me to stop. That what I needed to do was let it go and take a step back. All I had to do was turn and run the fuck away, but morbid curiosity and a desire to know what he was up to—if I was right—pulsed through me.
Cracking the door open silently, I peeked in.
A man, bloodied and bruised, collapsed on the ground in a heap, his back curled over his middle as he clutched an obviously broken hand. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand as my eyes widened. Each finger looked like it had been separately pulverized. Blood stained his skin, and his nails had been removed. My stomach revolted at the sight, threatening to spew everything I had eaten for breakfast that morning but I held back—somehow.
The stranger rocked back and forth clutching his hand as he cried, tears streaming against his dirtied cheeks. Several slightly cleaner tracks betrayed how much of his anguish had escaped.
Yanking my eyes away from him, I glanced around the room in a hurry. There were several men, all of them standing back and staring down at the man in the center of the room. Normally, there would be cars lined up in this space, but in their absence, the injured man cried and moaned. One of the men on the sidelines held a tire iron in his hand. That must have been what I’d heard before.
“Where is the money, Marco?” My lips fused together in fear, and goosebumps rose along my arms as a cold sweat popped up at the nape of my neck. My head turned slightly as my father stepped into view. A cigar dangled from his fingertips, nearly finished as he sucked on the head and blew out a cloud of smoke right in the man’s face.
The stranger coughed and then began to speak. “P-please, Mr. Perelli, I d-don’t—mi familia—we would never—” Marco’s words were cut off on a cry as my father leaned forward and put the end of his cigar out on the man’s face.
A fresh wave of bile threatened to escape as it pushed up my throat, but I was caught by the scene unveiling itself before me with sickening clarity.
“I’ve had enough of the lies, Marco.” My father dropped his now dead cigar on the ground and crushed it with his boot. “I want my money back, and since there’s obviously no way for you to pay, here’s what I’m going to do.” More tears raced down the broken man’s face, now marred by a fresh bloody burn on his right cheek.
What do I do? What can I do?I started to hyperventilate when my father turned and nodded to the man with the tire iron.He wouldn’t …My stomach turned as two of the other security guards came forward and wrestled Marco to his feet—not that there was much wrestling involved. The bloody man hung from their grip, broken and defeated.
My father’semployeewith the tire iron brought it down on one of Marco’s outstretched arms. The sharp snap of bones breaking had me turning away and stumbling into the wall. Marco’s scream echoed through the house, forever staining every memory I’d ever have of this place. I needed to move, I needed to leave. Call for help, something … anything, but I couldn’t get my feet to move.
Over Marco’s screams, I heard my father continue to speak. “I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to pay a visit to your lovely wife, and I’m going to make her work off your debt. A few years as one of my whores and we should be good—of course, you know what all of my whores are required to do—maybe in a few years, she’ll forget all about the man she was married to, and all she’ll really know are the drugs I give her.”
“Please! No!” Another scream shot through my ears, and despite the sickness churning within me, I had to know. I had to see it with my own eyes. I took a step towards the still-cracked door, just in time to watch my father withdraw a gun from a holster inside his coat and press the barrel of it against Marco’s face.”
“You should have known better than to steal from a Perelli, Marco. I always get my money back.”
I jerked when he pulled the trigger and the sound of the gun going off slammed into me. That movement sealed my fate—the door I’d been creeping at swung open, and one of the men who’d been waiting at the edge of the room, watching, stood in front of me.
I didn’t even think. I turned and fled.
Racing back through the house, my breath pumped in my lungs as I urged my legs to go faster. I slammed out of the front door and nearly fell as I leapt down the front steps and towards my car waiting in the driveway. A moment later, the front door swung open, and my father descended the steps, his eyes dark as they zeroed in on me.
Flooded with gratitude that I’d left the keys in the ignition, I cranked the engine.
“America!”
