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1
LARA
Hell’s Kitchen
New York City
April 1973
I groan audibly when I see the vile look on the man’s face. It’s the same look that most of the men my father introduces me to give me—the look that gives away their desire to crack me open and suck out my fruit, as if I was a ripe melon grown and harvested for their pleasure alone.
Itsickensme.
“You should be nice to them,” my father scolds later in the day, after I’ve already feigned a headache in order to retreat to my bedroom and avoid the rest of his “business” for the day. Honestly, at the age of twenty-five, it’s ridiculous that I’m still kept on such a tight leash. If I wasn’t part of a mafia family, I’d likely be living in my own apartment somewhere, pursuing a career in the city by day and clubbing by night, like the rest of the girls up there in the Upper East Side. Instead, I’m stuck here.
“It doesn’t do you any good to be so prickly to every suitor I bring to you,” he continues. My father has this way of looking over the bridge of his nose at you that makes you feel inferior no matter who you are.
“Please,” I scoff in response. “As if this is about courting me like some sort of Renaissance fairytale. We both know you’re just trying to keep me here against my will.”
He laughs and it instantly unnerves me. “This isn’t a prison, Lara,” my father says. His voice holds just enough warning in his tone to indicate otherwise. “But we both know you can’t be trusted on your own.”
That’s the biggest bunch of horseshit ever. What he really means to say is that he knows I would try to get the hell away from him if he didn’t have men in his crew watching over my every move, and herding me right back home if I wander too far from the path my father has me sternly set on. Sometimes, I think my father fears me leaving the mafia and turning my back on our family. I think he worries that if I were to ever get out of our life in the criminal underground, I might expose things that should remain hidden. After all, no one leaves the mafia unless it’s in a body bag.
And that’s exactly why he keeps trying to marry me off to some big-shotcapowho could make my father’s drug trafficking operation in the city all the more profitable and less conspicuous. He views me as an asset because I have a pretty face and a body that most of his runners drool over. And he also sees me as a liability if I were to ever succeed in defecting from this life. I don’t know what I would even do with my freedom if I had it. All I know is that I crave it more than anything.
But my fatherisa dangerous man. He was less dangerous when my mother was still alive. At least she tried to soften him, although it was nearly impossible. Now that she’s gone, though, there’s nothing to tame his temper. Some say he’s one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the entire metropolitan area, and has exclusive control of the street trade from Midtown all the way down through Tribeca. Considering how wealthy our family is, I don’t doubt it.
“I wasn’t being prickly. I have a headache.” I know there’s no hope for me to bend his ear or grow any empathy in his hollow chest. The most I can do is keep trying to feign illness for as long as it takes for me to figure a way out of here.
“Well, make sure your headache’s gone by dinner,” he says sharply. “You’re one of the most sought-after women in Hell’s Kitchen. Every attractive single man in the mafia wants you.”
I wish I hadn’t been cursed with my mother’s beauty. I want out of this life. For a few seconds I let myself indulge in a fantasy of forging a new life somewhere else, maybe even outside of New York City entirely. But that moment is cut short when my father grabs me by the fleshy part of my arm and squeezes.
“I know you want to run away from your family and all I’ve built for you and your brother,” he hisses at me. “But I will not see my daughter acting like an ungrateful brat who refuses to marry within her kind. Stop being such a child, Lara! You’ll do exactly as I say without question or hesitation, for the good of the entire family. One of these men coming here seeking to marry you will be the one putting a ring on your finger, and soon, or I’ll see to it you’re relieved of your finger entirely.” Even after all these years of dealing with him, I’m still consistently surprised by my father’s cruelty.
Before I can say anything, my brother steps into the room and interrupts.Perfect timing as always. Loreto shoots me a look of caution and I sink back in my seat to heed it. My older brother has been protecting me ever since we were kids, acting as a buffer between me and my father and ensuring I’m always okay, even when I’m not. It’s been trickier ever since he left home to go and be theconsiglierefor one of the biggest crime families in the city, the Giottiborgata. I envy his separation from the Ricci family and wish I could do the same. Still, his presence is always around at just the right time to save me from the worst of our father’s wrath, just like now.
My face lights up when I see him because Loreto usually always has my back, which is why the words that come out of his mouth now are so difficult to believe. I feel as though someone has jammed live wires underneath my nail beds, because my brother’s reason for intervening right now feels like a skin-crawling betrayal.
“Loreto,” my father says as he nods coldly to my brother. The two of them are most decidedly not the best of friends. “I’m in the middle of a conversation with your sister at the moment. What do you need?”
Loreto’s eyes glance quickly over at the place where our father is still gripping my arm. For a second he looks angry, but then his expression quickly changes to one of a carefully practiced diplomacy. “I think the purpose of my visit might help yourconversationwith Lara along,” Loreto answers. He knows as well as I do that our father never actually converses about anything. Barking directions he expects to be blindly followed is the only thing he knows how to do. “Christian Greco is interested in a possible marriage with Lara.”
“Is that so?” our father asks as a slow grin grows on his face.
“What?” I’m boiling over with anger. How couldmy brother do this to me? How could he help to further our father’s plot to marry me off? And to his best friend at that?
“Christian is one of the fewcaposin the city deeply entrenched in the mainstream business world,” Loreto says. “It’d be a very lucrative arrangement for your own business.” He knows just how to play to the thing that our father loves most—money. “And he’s willing to come here tonight to meet with you about the deal.”
“No!” I shout at him. “I willnotbe meeting with nor marrying any men.”
“Technically you don’t need to meet him,” Loreto says as if we are kids bantering again. “You’ve already met him before.”
“I don’t find this at all amusing,” I pout. “And I’m not going to—”
“Enough!” our father shouts, pushing me into silence. “Christian Greco is a good match and a powerful man. He also has connections in the mainstream financial world that many of thecaposdon’t have the finesse to maintain. Loreto, you can tell Christian he’s welcome to come here to meet with me tonight.” I open my mouth to stupidly protest again, but no words come out, because my father whips his head around to face mine with a look of fury sprawled across it. “And youwillbe here to meet with him, Lara,” he hisses.
I stand up and push the chair out from under me with the back of my thighs before storming out the door and down the hall. This apartment might be huge, but there’s no distance big enough to put between me and my father.
