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A few more moments of silence, then Ray nodded.
“Okay, okay. You can have my daughter,” he sighed. Then, looking up at me, he said, “But she must marry you. Only you.”
“Oh, I—” I began to protest, but my father interrupted.
“Done! So glad we could reach a mutual understanding!” He got to his feet and held out his hand to Ray, who also stood up so he could shake my father’s hand. “We will arrange it around Jimmy’s schedule for the week and get back to you. I would like everything to be settled by Saturday morning.”
They said their goodbyes as I stood there dumbfounded. How did I go from breaking up a potential shootout to marrying Ray’s daughter, whom I had never met? I only knew he had a daughter. I had seen her at the funeral we went to a long time ago, when Ray’s wife died. The only image I had in my head was of her crying by the side of the casket in a black dress. She had been so young at the time, so small and fragile.
How was I possibly going to marry someone I didn’t know?
My father walked Ray and the guards out of the room then turned back to me with a heavy sigh.
“Well, that went much better than expected. Thanks for stepping in there, Jimmy. I knew coming here for the meeting was a good idea. You are a better negotiator than I will ever be.” He reached forward and clapped his hand on my shoulder before he sat back down on the couch. I remained standing.
“Dad, did you just agree to have me marry some stranger?” I asked, not for clarification exactly, but needing to point it out to him all the same. He nodded.
“Yeah, it’s a great deal. It will unite our families, and it secures so many future business deals that I can’t even begin to count. This is going to be perfect,” he insisted.
“For you, maybe. I don’t want to get married, Dad. There is a reason why I’m not married yet.”
“Patrick waited until he was about your age to get married,” he offered, and I rolled my eyes at him.
“He waited that long because he had been dating Lori since high school, and they didn’t feel the need to make it legal until they could afford the wedding they wanted. That’s why their wedding cost nearly a million dollars, Dad. I don’twantto get married. I haven't dated the same girl for more than three months. I work far too much to put time into other people. I thought you, of all people, would understand that.”
I began to pace, heading over to the windows and looking down at the city below. It was a heck of a view, and it usually made me feel better, but now it didn’t. There was a ball of nerves in the bottom of my stomach that didn’t seem to go away no matter how much deep breathing I did.
“It will be fine,” my father assured me, coming over to put his arm across my shoulders, the closest he ever got to a hug. “You’ll give her a place to live, provide her with whatever she wants, keep her happy for a few years, and if it doesn’t work out, you get a divorce. At that point, all my deals will be set, and we can blame it on a bad match, with neither Ray nor me at fault. Having a wife is really not as difficult as everyone says it is.”
I highly doubted that.
Women were complicated. They weren't like keeping a house cat. They needed time, effort, and understanding. They needed someone to listen to them and support them, someone to care for them both emotionally and physically, and I was nowhere near being up for that challenge. I worked over eighty hours a week. I owned a condo but paid other people to take care of it for me. I basically only slept there and came right back to work. Even then sometimes I slept on the couches in the office instead of going home. I doubted Ray’s daughter would be okay with that lifestyle of a husband.
That is, if she even agreed to marry me to begin with.
Chapter 2
Natalia
Thingsathomehadbeen really weird the past few days.
My father was a solitary man at best. He never talked to me about what he did because he wanted to keep me out of his Mafia lifestyle as much as possible, especially after my mom had been killed in retaliation for something he had done. I knew it still ate him up inside even though he put on a good face. He had to. He was in too deep to get out and survive. He was stuck where he was, and he was dealing with it.
But that didn’t mean he wanted me involved.
At one point he suggested I change my last name, but I refused. No matter what he got into, I was proud to be my father’s daughter. He loved me and took care of me, and we held each other together after my mom’s death. I took on a homemaker kind of role and stayed home with him even after I graduated high school to make sure my father was taken care of.
But over the past week, he seemed really off. He was moping around the house when he was home, and most of the time he was drunk. I hated when he drank, but I also couldn’t tell him not to. He was my father. He was a grown man who could make his own decisions, and normally he didn’t drink much. But this week, he smelled like a brewery.
The other weird thing was the way he kept looking at me, like he might burst into tears at any moment. I couldn’t figure out what it was that made him so sad. Had I done something wrong? Was he thinking about Mom too much? He did that sometimes. He would look at me and tell me how much my mother and I looked alike. I knew it bothered him. It also bothered him that I barely remembered her. I was only four when she died. All I had to go on were pictures.
The final straw was on Saturday. I was sitting in my room at my easel that I set up by the window. I had an amazing image of a bumble bee in my head, and I was busy laying down the background in different shades of blues and oranges when my father knocked on my door.
“Come in!” I called to him, and he entered, carrying under his arm a large purple box tied with a beautiful white satin ribbon. He walked over and set the box on my bed, then stepped back as if he were afraid of it. I narrowed my eyes at him, and he smiled his false “trying to make things better” smile. At least he wasn’t drunk today.
“Hey, Daddy, what’s this?”
“It’s… ummm… I… It’s a gift. Please… open it.” He motioned to it, and I stood up slowly, a little afraid of what was inside. Knowing him, it could be anything.
