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Our family might play at being part of New York City high society. But we weren’t, and eventually, we all needed to come to grips with that.
“Is Luca why you called me here?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine why. Luca and I had class together, and he hadn’t mentioned anything. Not that he would have. Luca had his own secrets, and even his relationship with Ingrid was not going to change the way that my cousin held his cards close to his chest.
My father exhaled audibly before reaching for a piece of paper on his desk. The sight of a familiar crest at the top of the page caused me to stiffen.What the hell was my father doing with my acceptance letter?
All my muscles stiffened.
“When were you going to tell me that you’d been accepted?” His index finger skimmed over the top of the paper, but his eyes were trained on me, looking for my reaction. “I thought we’d discussed this already?”
“We did.” In the fall, my father made it clear that Harvard was off the table. Though my uncle Dom had attended, my own father didn’t see the point. As spare, he believed I needed to be in the city under his thumb. Not that I had any intention of following my father’s orders.
He looked at me, his eyes dark and narrowed as though he knew exactly what I was thinking. “I took the liberty of declining this on your behalf.”
“What?” The anger that I normally kept at bay ignited in my stomach. “Why would you do that.”
“Why would you defy me?” His anger matched my own. That was one thing that I did get from my father. My younger brother was always jovial. It drew the ladies to him, and he loved it.
While my father could appear easy-going, when he felt as though he’d been defied, the mob enforcer started to peek through. My father was the person who ensured that my uncle’s will was done, and that meant he had a heavy, sometimes violent, hand.
“I didn’t know that choosing to go away to college was such a defiance.”
His nostril’s flared, and I knew that he was pissed. “When you told your mother and I—”
“Mom was fine with it. She knew about the acceptance, and she told me that I should go.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course she did,” he muttered.
No one defied Marco Blanchi except for my mother. Ivy Blanchi was a formidable woman who’d grown up rough. She loved my brother and I fiercely, and when she felt my father was coming down too hard, she stepped in.
Normally, it worked.
Except, for whatever reason, my father refused to let me leave the state.
He released a long, suffering sigh before leaning back in his chair, a pained expression on his face. “Eli,” he said, his voice soft, “I don’t want to argue with you about this.”
“Then, allow me to go. There’s no reason for me to stay here.”
“Why Harvard? Columbia is in Manhattan. I won’t make you live at home if that’s what you are worried about.”
“Because I worked hard to get into Harvard.” Going away to school was the only thing I ever wanted. Love for my family ran deep, but I was tired of carrying the weight of the next generation on my shoulders.
Luca should be the one whose life was dictated by the mob, not mine. And yet, the family all worried about Luca’s volatile nature. That was why my father did not want me to leave the city, and why I was determined to get gone.
“What if I make you a deal?”
“A deal?”
He nodded.
“You never make deals.”
To the outside world, Marco Blanchi was a ruthless businessman who’d helped to grow Blanchi industries to one of the largest private equity firms in the nation.
And now, he was willing to make a deal with me. He might be my father, but even I was surprised.
“You’re my son, and I want you to be happy.”
I shook my head. “Then, why even do all of this? Just let me go. Boston is like an hour away.”
