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“If you don’t want to, then don’t,” I whisper. My heart is pounding so hard that it hurts. “Just let me go.”
“I can’t do that.”
“This isn’t my plan for my life!” I snap at him, the anger suddenly returning at his complete and utter intransigence. “I’m supposed to graduate in two months, and leave Manhattan, just like my father wanted me to! I’m going to Paris, and then I’m going to audition for the orchestra in London, and then—”
I stop suddenly, remembering the first thing he said, when he explained how he knew me. “You said there was a promise—that ourfathersmade a promise. What did you mean by that?”
Luca lets out a long breath. “Will you sit down?” He motions to the bed.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I shake my head firmly. “No.”
“Fine.” His jaw clenches, and I can see the muscles there working as he considers what to say next. “Your mother never told you about it?”
“No.” I glare at him. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“This has to do with how your father died, Sofia. I’m guessing you don’t know the details of that, either?”
I shake my head mutely.
“It’s possible that your mother wasn’t told much, either. The family that our fathers—and now I—work for, didn’t care much for your mother. She was Russian, and so they were suspicious of her. Your father’s boss didn’t approve of him marrying her.”
“I guessed that much.” I’d gathered that from the fact that my mother wasn’t allowed to speak Russian, even at home, the way my father encouraged her to try to blend in, the way she stayed in the kitchen or in my parents’ bedroom whenever the men in suits came to the house. The way the women at the funeral looked at her.
“So it’s possible that she was never even told. She was called to the Don’s office after your father’s death, and questioned about it.” Luca pauses. “You don’t need to know much about that.”
A memory comes back to me then, something that had slipped away in the trauma of the days following my father’s death. My mother leaving me with a neighbor, telling me that she’d be back soon—but she’d been upset. I can remember now that she’d looked as if she’d been crying.
If I don’t come back, call this number. They’ll take her.I remember hearing that whisper, and not understanding it. I remember the sympathetic look on the neighbor’s face.
But my mother did come back. She’d had a bruise on her face and a swollen eye, and when I’d asked her about it, she’d smiled and said that she tripped and fell.
I can feel my blood turning to ice as the realization hits me of what really happened that day.
“No,” I say coldly, staring at Luca. “They didn’t tell her anything. I was just a child, and traumatized, but I remember now. My mother came back with a swollen jaw and a black eye. They thought she had something to do with my father’s death, didn’t they?”
Luca says nothing. He just stands there impassively, his hands in his pockets as he watches the emotions flicker across my face.
“Didn’t they?”I almost scream it, my voice filling the room.
“I don’t know,” Luca finally says. “I was twelve.”
“But you work for him now, you said. The same man my father worked for. What are you, some kind of criminal organization?”
Luca snorts. “We don’t talk about what happened back then, Sofia—what happened to your father and mine—very often. What was done is done. I’m sure they determined that your mother had nothing to do with it, or—” he stops then, abruptly.
“Or what?” I feel as if I can’t breathe. “What would have happened to her?”
His face is emotionless. I don’t know how he can be so calm, while I feel as if my entire world is spinning out of control. “I’m sure you can guess,” he says, his voice impassive.
“He would have killed her. That’s what you’re saying, right? Your boss would have killed her?”
Luca’s jaw clenches again. His hands slip out of his pockets as he strides towards me, his entire body tense once again. “Yes, Sofia. Is that what you want to hear? If your mother had been working with the Bratva, if she had betrayed your father, the Don would have had her killed. As well he should have. There arerulesto this life, Sofia, rules that govern your life, and mine, and everyone who is a part of it! And this marriage is a part of that, too.”
I swallow hard, trying desperately not to cry. And then it hits me.
Don.He’s called the man that he works for theDon, twice now. “You’re mafia,” I whisper, disbelievingly. “And that means—”
“Your father was, too,” Luca says tiredly. “And mine. Sofia, your father was third in command to the Don. He was an important man. The only ones above him were my father, and Don Rossi. And he was my father’s best friend. So when the Bratva attacked, and your father knew he was close to death, he did the only thing he could think of to do for his family. He turned to his best friend, and he extracted a promise.”
