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He’d help us bury our psychopathic father.
1
Amara
“But I don’t love him, papa,” I whispered as I stared at my father, knowing my words fell on deaf ears but I said them anyway. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure why I was so shocked that this was happening. “I don’t know him.”
In our world—the dark and gritty, ugly and brutal one that was ruled by the mafia—arranged marriages were common. The women didn’t have to know the men they were to marry. They didn’t have to love them or even like them.
They just had to obey because this was all done to strengthen ties between families.
But this wasn’t a marriage to a fellow Italian mafia house, which had always been the norm.
This was me being given to Nikolai Petrov, second born son to Leonid Petrov, Pakhan to the Petrov Russian bratva.
Nikolai Petrov.
It was a name I’d heard my father speak before as I eavesdropped on his meetings, on the phone calls he made inhis office in the weeks leading up to this conversation. He’d beat me with his belt if he’d known I’d been listening to his private meetings, but when I’d heard my name mentioned, tying my life to a man I didn't know, a man who was more than likely the exact same breed and cut from the same cloth as all the other monsters surrounding me, I’d taken notice and didn’t care about repercussions if caught.
My father, Marco Bianchi, had his hard eyes set right on me, his jaw looking even more severely cut as he ground his teeth. Me questioning anything he did was an affront to him, an offense. Because I was nothing but a lowly daughter good for nothing but pawning off to secure my father’s power even more.
His expression told me plenty even though he said nothing.
“He’s crazy, papa,” I said low, my tone desperate, not knowing anything about Nikolai, but I didn't have to know him to understand the type of male he was and where he came from. “He’s a Russian.” Those three words seemed like the most logical explanation for him being a lunatic.
I knew enough of our world that it wasn’t as if the Cosa Nostra was friendly with the Bratva, certainly not close that they’d pawn daughters off to sons. Yet here we were. Here I was.
“You’ll do what I say, girl, and thank me afterward,” he clipped out in Italian. His tone said that was the end of it and there would be no other questions asked.
My father wasn’t an affectionate man, in fact, he’d never told me he loved me, hadn’t hugged me, shown me any kind of caring or nurturing touch in my eighteen years. I’d come to accept that although I was his flesh and blood, he saw me as nothing more than a commodity. Something he owned. Something he could use to up his status as underboss.
He was the king and I was a pawn in his game of chess.
My father flicked his hand toward the door, a silent, “get out”.
I felt my shoulders sag forward, and hated myself for showing any kind of weakness in front of him.
I left and shut his office door behind me and leaned against it, feeling my mother’s gaze on me. I lifted my head and stared at her. She stood down the hall wringing her hands together, a horrified look on her face.
Fernanda Bianchi was as much a prisoner and board game piece as I was. She, too, had been given to my father when she was barely eighteen, their marriage arranged, my mother forced to be with an older man who treated her like nothing but a vessel for his heirs.
We were all just tools, bargaining chips to them.The weaker sex, as they called us.
My fifteen-year-old sister, Claudia, had a spirit that I wish I’d possessed, a fire in her veins that I wanted for my own, and a freethinking mind that I envied. She didn’t care about rules or traditions no matter how many times Father scolded her, or Mother talked to her. She lived by her own rules, and as much as I loved her for it, I also worried for her and the world we lived in. If a woman couldn't be submissive to the men in our lives on their own… it was beaten into them.
Then there was my twenty-one-year-old brother Gio, who was just as ruthless and coldhearted as our father---as every man in the underworld kingdom--was a prisoner, too. He’d been warped and twisted up, indoctrinated into all things mafia that it’s just who he was now. But even the life he led, the rules and expectations for his life hadn’t made him evil. Not truly. Not yet.
“Passerotta.”Sparrow.
It was the nickname my mother and brother had given me when I was a child because they said I fluttered around constantly, little wings taking me from one place to another.
My mother’s voice was soft, submissive, and I heard a hint of sympathy laced in that lone word. Although I knew she probablydidn’t want this life for me, she didn’t say otherwise. My father had shaped my mother into the woman who stood before me; softly spoken, eyes always diverted to the ground when he was in the room, her appearance always perfect.
I wondered how she could find any happiness.
I knew he hit her when he was mad, when she didn’t do what he said, when he wasn’t happy enough with… anything.
“Mamma,” I choked out and covered my mouth with a hand, refusing to cry even though my eyes watered. I was an adult, an eighteen-year-old woman who was crying and rushing to her mother for comfort. And I felt no shame in that.
