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CHAPTER 1
Eleanna
“Go! Ready yourself, the dress we chose!” Mamá turns from me to Mia, “Help your sister with her hair.” Mia groans, but Mamá ignores her, grabbing my hand before I get to the foot of the stairs. She squeezes. “This is it, Eleanna,este es tu momento, bonita. Go!”
This is your time.
My time.
I can’t help but smile as I take the stairs. I fight the surprisingly strong urge to run. I am a Delgado. A mafia princess does not run up the stairs. Still, I pass my sister who is dramatically stalling and stomping in protest.
I change quickly into the cream lace dress Mamá and I bought for this occasion. Not white, because that would be a bit too on the nose, even for us traditionalists. The stretchy lace hugs my body tighter than anything I have ever worn before, but the high neck and almost-elbow length sleeves keep it modest. It is much shorter than I’m used to, however, and I feel a bit naked as I look at my reflection.
“How do you look smokin’ hot and also look like a littleabuelain church, at the same time?” Mia says from my closet.
“Mia, can you not, just this once?” I plead, suddenly feeling a bit less confident and mad at myself for letting my seventeen-year-old grouch of a sister get to me.
“Here. No moreabuelavibes.” She says as she hands me a pair of strappy gold high heel sandals I wore at our cousin’s wedding. They have a three-inch spike that is much too edgy for this occasion, which is technically just tea. When I hesitate, Mia lifts an eyebrow at me in the mirror. I take the shoes and feel some pink arriving on my cheeks. “Ugh,” She throws herself on my bed behind us. “I cannot believe you’re actually excited about this!”
“So you’ve said,” I sigh as I try to tame some flyaway hairs on the top of my head.
“It’s the end of your life, Ellie! Now it’s just brunches and babies and whatever else boring crap mafia wives do, shut up in their mansions all day.”
“I disagree,” I shrug, not really wanting to have this conversation for the thousandth time.
“Seriously, it’s archaic and barbaric. Our whole life, I mean. Not just the arranged marriages part. Do you know how ridiculous it is that I don’t have my own cell phone?”
“I’ve survived, you will too.” I mumble, twisting a section of hair with my curling wand. My long, thick, straight brunette locks are heavy, but I’m hoping the Texas humidity will help my hair stay in waves.
“You’re a freak, though,” She sits up, looking guilty. “No offense.”
“Offense taken. Is it so bad to want this?” I gesture to the walls of my giant, beautifully decorated bedroom. “To want what Mamá has, Tía Lucia has, what our abuela had and her mamá before her?” Her eyes grow wide as she looks away.
Still, it shuts her up. As it should. We’re sitting in a mansion, surrounded by the absolute best of everything. We’ve never wanted for anything in our lives. Well, she’d argue the exception is maybe a cell phone, I guess.
We are fiercely loved by our huge family. We have always had each other, our brothers, and so many cousins and second cousins, it’s like we were born into a whole town. A town of criminals, sure. But every industry is dirty at the top and we happen to reign over many.
Her attitude is ridiculous. We have power, privilege, access and influence. Which was fought for and protected fiercely by generation after generation of Delgado men. Men who fought their way to power in Spain, and traveled West, then North. Spanish men who have all but taken over the entire American South. We have a rich tradition of family and loyalty. We have honor. And within all that, we come from a long line of seriously strong women.
I know what Mia isn’t saying. While we’ve always been surrounded bypowercouples, that doesn’t necessarily meanhappycouples. I know many arrangements don’t end happily ever after. But that’s why Mamá has been preparing us for this our whole lives.
My sister catches me fighting with baby hairs at my part that want to stick straight up like a mini, wispy mohawk. “Want me to spray—“
“No,” I reply, too loudly.
“Oh, right. Allergic. Sorry. Geez.” I don’t correct her about my hairsprayallergy. I try to hide my overreaction. She moves on. “I know you want to be a wife and mamá, Ellie,” She huffs, pawing through my jewelry drawer. “Iknowit, but I don’tunderstandit.”
“You will eventually.”
“We’ll see…” She says slowly, suddenly very interested in whatever she sees out the window.
“What is it?” I ask, trying not to sound as nervous as I feel.
“Men, of course. Big men in tailored suits, surrounded by even bigger men in all black, getting out of big black armored cars. As freaking always.”
“Do you see Dario? Or Z?” My voice sounds a bit squeaky, but I can’t help it. Luna and I have gone back and forth about who my match could be since we met at a wedding when we were fifteen. Our list is not very long.
As the niece of the TexasJefe,daughter of his second, my match will be with an eligible man with connections and power. Or, hopefully, a younger man on his way to such things. Could be a leader in an altogether different organization or a general of ours from another state. I am hoping for the latter.
