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No, I’m not particularly interested in getting married. I can get my physical needs met elsewhere. The idea of a wife has always been strictly about a business transaction. A sacrifice I’d have to make at some point for being the D’Agostino capo.
But if I have to do it… life with Sera might not actually be so bad. And she could do worse than me, too. Mucci is going to marry her off anyway. I’m far from her worst option. I won’t beat her. I’ll treat her well. Her station in thefamigliawill be assured.
Plus, I can please her in bed. My cock stiffens yet again as I think of it. Serafina Mucci would be a challenge to tame, for sure. I wonder idly how experienced she is. Unmarried women in our world are supposed to be pure for their husbands, but I know better than to think they all arrive that way at their marriage bed. Hell, I’ve bedded more than my fair share of young mafia women, I should know.
Sera has a mouth made for kissing. And a body made for fucking. But many men are not up to the measure of such awoman. Experience and pleasure are not necessarily the same thing for the girls of our world.
It would be quite a thing to teach this girl her own body. Quite a thing indeed.
10
SERA
The next few days, I basically don’t leave the house, preferring to work from my father’s office under the protection of his security detail — under the temporary direction of my father’s driver and Enforcer, Stan. Daddy was mad when I told him about firing his old security head without consulting him first. But when I told him what happened, he didn’t push it. The news of my engagement to Antony might have had something to do with tempering his response as well. I hated myself for lying to my own father, but I have to admit, being Antony’s fake fiancée has its advantages.
Just as Antony anticipated, word has certainly gotten around about our engagement. That’s both bad and good news for me, since the longer people believe Antony D’Agostino and I are about to be married, the harder it is going to be to back out of it when the time comes.
Unlike me, though, Antony doesn’t seem at all bothered by that fact. He goes back and forth between conspicuously calling memy darling fiancéewhenever anyone else is in earshot, and teasing me about other potential prospects when we’re alone. His favorite person to bring up is Frank Berloni, the Clevelandboss’sconsigliere. Berloni is recently widowed and rumored to be looking to marry again. “He’s gonna be the hot ticket on the marriage market, soon,” Antony tells me, mock-serious. “He’d be a good match for you, Sera.”
But behind Antony’s joking, I know there’s an uncomfortable kernel of truth. When Antony and I inevitably break off this fake engagement, my father — and more importantly, my mother — will be even more motivated to marry me off ASAP, to avoid there being too much speculation of me being damaged goods. A mafia princess is supposed to be untarnished and pure as the driven snow until the night she marries. But once there’s an engagement ring on her finger, there’s often an unstated belief that the two affianced people are very likely consummating the relationship a little early. So, breaking off an engagement raise eyebrows. It doesn’t happen very often, for this very reason.
The irony of this is, there are probably hardly any girls — excuse me, women — in our world beyond the age of eighteen who aren’t already sexually experienced by the time their family arranges an engagement. So as much as we all pretend otherwise, the horse is already out of the barn, so to speak.
Even more ironic: I am probably one of the few for whom that isn’t true.
Yes, at the ripe old age of twenty-three and a half years old, Serafina Mucci is still, regrettably, a virgin.
I mean, it’s not like I set out to keep my “virtue” (gag) intact or anything. I absolutely reject the notion that my worth is in any way dependent on my purity. That said, I have known since I was a small child that my destiny was to marry within thefamiglia. There was no question of ever choosing someone who isn’t Sicilian, so I didn’t even bother to date in high school, or even during my four years of college. That wasn’t as hard as it sounds, to be honest. The boys I went to school with — even at university — all seemed like such children to me. They spent their timeplaying video games or tossing around a football on the quad, with not a care in the world except trying to impress each other and deciding who was going to pay for pizza that night. They all seemed so much younger than the boys I grew up with.
Boys in our world — who know they are destined to be initiated into a world of violence and power — are expected to be men from a young age. They’re raised to never show fear or weakness. They’re raised to act like men even before they reach puberty.
By contrast, “normal” guys have always been a foreign species to me. It was never a hardship to turn them down when they asked me for dates. Besides, even if I did end up being attracted to one of the guys in my business classes, or someone I met at a party, how would I ever start dating them? How would I explain who the enforcer who followed me around campus was? How would I ever have managed to go back to their dorm room or their frat house, without one of Daddy’s men storming in and pulling me out by force — probably breaking my poor unsuspecting suitor’s jaw in the bargain?
I suppose that if I had ever been genuinely attracted enough to one of them, I might have tried harder. But the upshot is, I have never really had a boyfriend. Or even really been all that attracted to a man.
That is, until Antony.
Damn me. I can’t seem to stop thinking about him.
Days later,I am video chatting with Tina, who is still at the safe house with Mamma and Daddy and starting to chafe under the boredom. I’m sitting in Tina’s bedroom at our mansion for the conversation. Her room is still a pink and purple nightmare, decorated when she was a young teen and barely changed since then. Her cat, Miao-Miao, a lazy white Persian, is sitting on thebed next to me. Miao-Miao has barely left this room since Tina and my parents left, and my sister misses her. I patiently hold my screen up to the cat so that Tina can see her and make kissy noises at the feline, who seems more or less indifferent to the display of affection.
When Miao-Miao has had enough and jumps off the bed, I ask Tina how she, Mamma, and Daddy are doing.
“Daddy’s fine,” she pouts. “He spends all his time fishing with Antony’s brother Matteo. Who is a big grump, by the way. There’s nobody even out here for miles around, but he acts like there’s danger around every corner.”
“Well, he is supposed to be watching out for you all,” I point out.
Tina sighs. “I guess. At least he’s easy to tease. Since there’s nothing much to do here, I’ve been spending most of my time out by the pool. Thank God I remembered to pack some swim suits! But Matteo acts like if he actually looks at me in my bikini, he’s committing some sort of federal crime or something.” She giggles.
“Don’t get him in trouble with Daddy, Tina,” I warn. “Matteo is there to do a job, not to entertain you.”
“Oh, I don’t think Daddy would even notice if Matteowaslooking at me. I swear, Sera, I almost feel like Daddylikesbeing here. I thought he’d be itching to get back to Cleveland. But he keeps talking about how we should be treating this like avacation.” She sticks out her lower lip and makes a disgusted sound. “A vacation would be a trip to New York City to go shopping or something. In fact, Mamma has already made Daddy promise that the three of us could go on a shopping trip to New York when this is all over.”
I suppress a chuckle. Mamma and Tina are unapologetic shopaholics. “I’m surprised Daddy agreed to go with you.”
“What? No, not Mamma, Daddy and me. I mean me, you, and Mamma.”
“Me? Ugh. No thank you.” I like New York, but my idea of a perfect day in the city is wandering around as anonymously as possible, followed by a museum or a show. Not spending hours going from department store to boutique, trying on everything in sight.
