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“Can you handle being tied to a Montrelli for the rest of your life?” He was teasing, but his words were serious.
I leaned against the window seal and looked out over the elaborate gardens as the sun warmed me, my father paid a hefty price to maintain as I thought over Stefano’s question. I’d never been the type to answer for the sake of answering. “Honestly, I’m not sure.” I pulled away from the window and rested against the back of my desk chair so I could face Stefano, “It does sound dull and boring, but if she’s attractive in the least, then it might be tolerable. It’s not like I’m going to be asking her advice on how to run the family business. She’ll just be the trophy wife that will get me into a position to be the Don of all of Chicago.”
“That’s going to be a tough position to stay on top of. Most will see you as the person to take out so they can have your space in the world,” Stefano warned, taking a seat across from me. “You’ll be the most marked bull’s eye.”
“That’s a good point, but I’m not going to worry about that at this stage. There are a few more bridges that must be crossed before that happens.” I sat down and glanced through the stack of messages on my desk. “Well, we’ll find out tomorrow when I get to meet my fiancée.”
CHAPTER3
Bria
I glancedaround the room I’d lived in my whole life and then down at my packed stuff, hoping I wasn’t leaving anything behind. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. That my father was making me go through with this awful idea.
Marrying the enemy was bad enough, but the fact that he had wanted to send Carina to them was something I would never let happen. I currently wasn’t speaking to my father after our meeting had gone south. The rage inside me boiled, and even though I hated my father for this, I wouldn’t disrespect him. Silence was the only course of action.
I’d been a good soldier, a good daughter and volunteered and would never regret that, but that he thought he could send Carina as a peace offering pissed me off like no other and he would never gain my forgiveness. To top it off, my father had spent years watching me earn my place through bloody hard work as I did everything he asked and more.
Only then for him to dishonor me and have such little faith and demand to make a peace offering with another crime family instead of letting me inherit all I’d worked for, well, I was disgusted with the man.
I hadn’t run to our mother after, despite wanting to see her to discuss his horrible behavior. Our relationship had been strained for years, since I started an active role in my father’s business. I knew she wanted to keep me as a mafia princess like Carina, but that wasn’t the life for me. I wouldn’t have honored the family in that role, I wasn’t subservient to a man. A don was one thing. Every soldier had to have a leader. That was something I could understand.
But here I was, forced right back into the princess role. The role that smothered me as a child, and now as an adult, I would be sold off for an illusion known as peace.
My position as underboss voided in one motion, as my ‘husband to be’ would undoubtedly be handed my job I had spent years working to achieve.
Once he’d made up his mind, there was nothing I could do about it. I had tried everything. I didn’t take this lying down. I did utilize a little of the mafia princess attitude. I had argued, bargained, and tried to reason with him, but besides being ruthless, my father was also stubborn.
There was a knock on my door, and I fully expected it to be Carina. She’d been upset ever since I’d told her why our father had called me into his office the previous day.
Just like me, she’d been unable to believe the news, and I could understand why. I’d left out the part where Father had planned to send her in the first place, however. I had to protect her once again. She would have been furious that I was taking her place.
Either way, the family business would be going to the Romanos. Once a man entered the fold, I would no longer be needed. No reason to let her know our father was the bastard the city believed him to be.
Poor Carina. Sometimes life gave us prime examples for we were the only family each other had. Our mother was a useless puppet orchestrated by our father. That had never annoyed me like it did now. I’d never seen Carina so sad and too much had happened in our lives for this to be the one to potentially break her. Her tears were so heavy after I told her that she stained my shirt as she hugged me. I hadn’t shed one.
I worried what she would do here all by herself? Wait for our father to use her as a pawn and marry her off as well? I didn’t know what my future was going to look like, but I knew one thing, I would never let Carina be hurt by our father’s decisions. I would keep her safe even after my last name changed. Even if I had to move her into my new home. I would battle my husband and make his life a living hell if I had to. I wouldn’t ever stop protecting my sister.
I always knew our father wasn’t a kind man, and marrying me off was an example of that. If he found some way to profit from us, to benefit from the daughters he didn’t want, he wouldn’t hesitate to ship us off. I guess deep down I’d hoped that he would still be a father and protect us, but the wool had been pulled from my eyes and I saw the truth. There would be no coming back from that.
Carina wouldn’t become a victim of his cowardice. Father truly thought he was protecting me with this arrangement, that was the only thing that kept me from pulling my own gun on him. Our family loyalty died for me the moment he planned to sell Carina off like cattle.
In a typical mafia, family was at the core. Carina should have been one of father’s most precious treasures. Family was everything, but our family wasn’t like that, at least not in the years since Tony’s death. My father had a good poker face, I would give him that. I’d believed him as I spent years molding myself into his underboss, only to find out that I was disposable to him.
It didn’t matter what he thought, I was going to be the good daughter and marry a stranger just to keep peace in the family. As long as it was me and not fragile Carina, then I could bear anything the Romanos threw at me.
I was moving my luggage to the door when I heard another knock.
“Come in.” My voice was low and full of dismay. As the doorknob moved and someone entered my room, I turned to see who it was, and I couldn’t help the way my eyes widened in surprise.
It was my mother. She didn’t often make personal visits to our rooms. I saw more of my mother at business dinners than I ever saw her around the house.
Up close for the first time in a while, I really looked her over. Mother was always done up, her hair styled to perfection and make-up fixed to hide the years of stress caused by being married to a mafia don. My father’s position and lifestyle had aged her.
While she’d been a caring, if not overly involved, mother before, losing a child had made her into the cold woman she was now. Before she’d been a beautiful woman with a warmth that she now lacked. As I stood and eyed her, I realized who was I to judge? Tony’s death had changed me as well.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her. “I’m supposed to be leaving soon.”
“I know,” she whispered in a raspy voice.
