AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Armando,” he rasps, the menace in his voice sucking the oxygen from the room. “Tell your son that if he marks what is mine again, if hetoucheswhat is mine,” he corrects. “I’ll take to his throat with barbed wire.”
His fingers flick at my hand, and I let it fall away. The pad of his thumb brushes the discoloration.
“Am I understood?” He speaks again when my father keeps his silence.
“He was furious at her indiscretion.”
“Am I understood?” Vincent repeats.
“Of course,” my father answers, the irritation in his tone palpable.
Without sparing me another glance, Vincent brushes past me, and they all exit the room. When I’m certain they’re gone, I rush from the room, needing to escape the suffocating space.
three
“Other orifice? Was he threatening to take your anal virginity?” Caterina whispers the word, her face twisted in disgust.
“What else could he have meant?”
She considers my question, her face scrunched in disgust. “Your mouth?”
“Yeah, maybe he meant that.” I swallow my trepidation.
We look at one another skeptically, knowing Vincent was definitely not referring to my mouth.
“Is that expected?” Cat asks after a long pause. “Anal sex?” She shifts on the bed, pushing her backside firmly into the mattress.
I shrug, throwing myself back onto my bed. “I think you’re expected to do whatever the fuck they say. They give zero fucks on whether you want it or not.”
Her face blanches. “That’s rape.”
My sixteen-year-old sister is blissfully ignorant. I used to think she was naïve, a byproduct of her sheltered upbringing. I've come to realize that she chooses her ignorance. She thinks on a scale of light and dark, refusing to contemplate the shadows between. She romanticizes life in all its ugly glory. It’s never annoyed me until this very moment. I want to shake her. I want to make her see that we werebornin the shadows and don’t have a choice. Our father is a career criminal, and whether we want it or not, we’re cast in the same way. The men in our family don’t abide by society’s rules of wrong and right. They’ve created their own laws, and they’re binding to all within the faction.
“I’m sure they’re not all like that.” I don’t shake her. I appease her.
Her head moves up and down quickly, swallowing my lie eagerly. “Maybe Vincent won’t be like that.”
Fat chance of Vincent Ferrari having any consideration for my feelings whatsoever, but I don’t tell Cat that. I smile in reassurance. “Yeah, he’s probably just doing Lorenzo a favor. Maybe he won’t even want to touch me.”
Cat smiles happily. “Did they say anything about me? About what will happen now that Roberto is dead?”
I’ve been waiting for this. She let the conversation stay with Vincent and our impending nuptials for the last hour. But I knew it was eating at her.
Your sister will take your place. She will be offered to Salvatore.
He’s happy and friendly until you cross him, Bianca. Then he’ll slit you from ear to ear, forcing you to smile as he watches you bleed out.
“No,” I lie, hating myself as the single syllable falls from my lips. “They were too consumed with threatening me.”
“Of course.” Guilt passes over her features, and I feel even worse. But I can’t save her from Salvatore. Not without putting a bullet to her head and removing the promise ofherfrom this earth.
“Let’s watch a movie. Distract me from the disaster of the day.”
Caterina forces a smile. “Sounds good. You choose.”
Halfway through the film, my mother walks into my bedroom without knocking. “You’ve had a package delivered.”
“Me?” I ask dumbly, sitting up. “Who from?”
