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I keep my eyes on her.
The way she dips her head, the way her chin drops, and her eyes stay on the ground even though she can’t see any of us through the thick clouded frame of the cubicle. The way her fingers dig into her palms. I can feel her holding her breath from my cubicle. I can feel it because of the visible way in which her clavicle protrudes like it will break out of her skin.
Broken, that’s what she is. I am sure that when I will trace her skin, I’ll find ridges from poorly patched shards, like a broken mug glued carelessly and hastily together by a kid trying to outsmart his parent.
She is trying hard to look defiant, seeing no one is taking the bidding price for her. I’m guessing it will start dropping from one hundred thousand dollars to a number so worthless someone might take pity and take her home like she was a lost dog.
“One hundred thousand dollars for this one,” the auctioneer reminds us, just in case we might have forgotten or didn’t hear him the first time.
Now it will go down if someone doesn't do something.
Or so I imagine. I have never been to these functions. I’m simply applying the rules of the business world. It isn’t that she is not worth more than that. If we’re being honest, no one exhibited tonight can compare to her. There is something striking about her. Like that good feeling you get about a property, even when it is nothing but debris. Even if the owner of the property sees it as having no value.
We want the gain, we have guessed the market value by just looking at it, but we will play the seller’s game till we get what we want.
I fiddle with my signet ring on my index finger with my thumb and glare at Claudio sitting across from me, in a black dress shirtand pants, with a brown leather holster strapped around his upper body. He glares back with black hooded eyes.
I should not be here. We should not be here.
If not for the godforsaken Mancusos, with their marriage proposal. Fucking crazy family, if they think I will come on board as a son-in-law. As if I would give my loyalty the same way I would to my family.
Their desperate need for heirs is about to cost me.
I didn’t think that was what the meeting would be about. I thought it would involve some underground business considering the urgency my father had attached to it, even though I knew it wasn’t anything that needed cleaning up with bullets. While I am the apex weapon for that, I will never do business the Mancusos way. They’re not to be trusted. Power drunk, recklessly disrespectful of human lives. They do not just go after their enemies but everything and everyone around them. They took innocent lives on their last operation because a partner decided it was time to end business with them. To get him through his grandchild, they’d blown up a school bus full of schoolchildren.
Assholes.
That is not the kind of family I want to marry into. We can do business, but no way in hell I’m joining our empires in marriage. A marriage between Mancuso’s only child and heiress, Vittoria Mancuso, and me, the heir to the Gaeta empire.
I can afford to get myself out of this situation because my family is heavy enough to tilt the scales. But the Mancuso family is still trouble.
The Mancuso family is undoubtedly king in the underworld, but there are people higher up than him the kingmakers. We, my family, are the Kingmakers. We have infiltrated the political system, and we twist and tweak politics to our liking. We say who gets power and how much of it. We decide who stays at the top of the food chain and for how long.
And as the underboss to the Gaeta empire, I can afford to twist and bend. But as with everything, wisdom is profitable to direct.
Everyone had already agreed that the marriage to Vittoria wasn’t a bad idea, giving their blessings before asking for my opinion. Fuck it. They invited me to tellme, Massimo Gaeta, about my wedding.
What my father wasn’t expecting, what none of them was expecting, was for me to say I had fallen in love with someone else, and that’s the person I want to be married to. That I had already given my word. In the underworld, for men of substance like us, for a man like me, our word is everything. I never take it back. I could say I have eight balls and they’d believe me immediately, no need for proof. But saying I had fallen in love was the most impossible thing they’d ever heard.
Knowing the Mancusos, I knew they’d bite. They don’t take no for an answer, but no one tells me what to do.
The silence that ensued in my father’s study when I refused was total. Eyebrows raised to question my reason for giving up such a merger, but no one dared pressure me They’ve seen how I get when I’m in love with something, anything.
It is the first lie I have ever told. I don’t talk if I can’t speak the truth. I have always felt lying is for the weak. No one intimidates me enough, and also, I don’t give a sparrow’s fuck about anyone, so I do not worry about hurting their feelings with the truth.
So I lied. Not just that, I went even further and told a second lie. That the nonexistent woman I’m so in love with, who made me turn down a business merger like the one presented to me, is engaged to me. And that lie is one-half of the reason I’m in this exhibition, surrounded by men like Louis Mancuso.
I’m no saint, but this is not my kinda place.
The other half of the reason I’m here is that I had said I would bring my fiancé to the family dinner a few weeks from now.
And as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I was fucked. That I had to make it happen. My words hold a weight, so if I say I will do something, I will, and I never take it back. If I say I have a fiancé I’m in love with and that I will bring her to the family dinner, then I sure as hell have a fiancé that I will be bringing to the family dinner. The love part is something to worry about, but I’ll think of that after I find my fiancé.
While this might not be the most conventional way to make a marriage proposal, this appears to be the best solution rightnow. I will own her for as long as I want. She will do what I command her to do without questions, not to mention without drama. For my peace of mind, this is the best way out and she fits the profile. I want Vittoria as far away from me as possible. I can barely stand being around people, period, but she is a different breed of nasty.
When Claudio suggested this idea, I almost threw my whiskey glass at him. But, after sleeping on it, I find that it’s a one-size-fits-all kind of deal.
“A hundred thousand dollars,” Mr. Auctioneer groans into the microphone.
