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“Yeah,” interjected Gabby. “I don’t quite understand the rationale behind you staying a virgin. First off, that doesn’t fit with the values of our culture. Mafie women are supposed to get married and have families. If you’re going to be a badass boss, then go all the way. Why hold yourself back over something that doesn’t even make sense.”
“Hear, hear! I second Gabby’s suggestion. I say you do what you want. Rule your clan and get married to Tatum. See!” Star clapped her hands excitedly. “Problem solved!”
My mouth dropped open. Okay, now they were taking things a bit too far. I appreciated their enthusiasm over me becoming the first woman sef, but they were going off the rails with ideas about me having everything.
My family’s history was a prime example of how you couldn’t have everything.
“I can’t have everything I want.”
Star’s eyebrows slashed down low.
“Why not?” she asked somewhat hostilely.
“Umm, because the world doesn’t work that way,” I replied in a somewhat defensive, high-pitched tone.
Suddenly, I saw the tide turning. I sensed my answer wasn’t going to go down well.
I wasn’t wrong.
Gabby jumped to her feet, fists slamming down on her hips, and asked irritably, “Why not?”
I licked my dry lips. When she asked in that challenging way, the question tumbled around in my head like tennis balls in a dryer. Why not? Why not? Why not?
Hedging, I said, “Because…it’s…not expected of me?”
Okay, that was not the most convincing answer.
“Woman, you need to broaden the way you think,” Star said in the tone of a woman with far more experience than her seventeen years. Perhaps she was mimicking her mom’s tone or something.
“No, I’m serious, Clara. You blow our minds with the idea that a woman can become the sef of her own clan. You tell us that, oh, you can be the boss, but then you pull back and say, no, you can’t have a husband. Puh-lease. That’s scrambled logic. You can’t stuff it back into the Pandora’s box you’ve opened.”
My expression shifted to a grimace as I contemplated her words. When she said it like that, it did sound illogical. This young, overprotected teenager, who’d seen nothing of life, called me out, and I had no good response. But they had a point. If I could become the leader of my clan, then I could get married and have a family. Sure, it wouldn’t be easy, but with the right man, it was doable.
My father had imposed this rule out of fear, out of the desire to protect me, out of a drive for me to succeed. He’d been wounded by my mother. We’d both been burned. Besides giving me my brother, I loathed my mother for her weakness and duplicity. He also feared that if I got married to a mafie man, from either my clan or another clan—because several clans were vying to usurp our position—I would lose my power to my husband.
But there was nothing to fear from Tatum. He was consilier of the most powerful mafie family in the world, but he wasn’t greedy. Part of my training as a boss was to learn how to read people. Yes, Tatum could be ambitious, but his ambitions were personal. He was ambitious for the safety of his family. He was ambitious for the happiness of his sister. But he was not ambitious to overthrow Alex or abandon him to start his own clan. No, I would’ve instantly recognized those kinds of ambitions.
Truth be told, if I were ever brave enough to have a man, Tatum would be perfect.
My heart sank.
My father’s dictum wasn’t only about protecting me from a grubby, greedy man.
Regardless of how tempting it was to buy into their argument, I had to be realistic. My mother’s betrayal was living proof you couldn’t have everything. If my father couldn’t, and he was a man, how could I? If it was only a question of my father’s stubbornness, I would figure out a way to have what I wanted once I became boss, but there was a greater existential question at stake.
I’d seen my family destroyed by my father’s neglect, by my mother’s subsequent infidelity. Their combined sins ripped our family to shreds, still reverberating through us years later.
No, there was no getting around it. I could become the Virgin Queen, but Tatum and me?
We’d never be together.
