Page 8 of Deadly Alliance
"Are you out of your fucking mind?!"
It’s my mother. Serafina Genovese is a woman who prides herself on her immaculate composure. She is the picture-perfect mafia matriarch, always dripping in diamonds, her dark hair perfectly coiffed, her voice never rising above a cultured,terrifying purr. But right now, she sounds like a feral animal trapped in a snare.
"Lower your voice, Serafina," my father’s deep, gravelly baritone rumbles from behind the closed double doors of their private suite. "The guards will hear you."
"Let them hear!" Something else hits the wall, a heavy thud, maybe a book or a paperweight. "I don't give a shit who hears! You are not doing this, Orlando! You are not giving my baby to that psychotic butcher!"
I press my back against the cold, silk-papered wall of the corridor, my breath turning shallow.My baby.She means Lucia.
I don't mean to eavesdrop. In a house full of hitmen and secrets, knowing too much is a quick way to wind up at the bottom of the San Marco river with your lungs full of dirty water. But my feet are rooted to the floorboards.
"It wasn't a request, Serafina! It was a decree from Don Salvatore himself!" My father’s voice is rising now, cracking with the impotent rage I saw in his study just last night. "The Russians are moving on the port. Salvatore demanded a blood alliance to hold the line. He ordered a marriage between our family and the Vellutini. He gave me no fucking choice!"
"So give him a daughter!" my mother shrieks, her voice breaking into a hysterical, jagged sob. "Give him Noemi!"
The words hit me with the force of a physical blow, driving the air straight out of my lungs. I close my eyes, the back of my head thumping softly against the wall. A cold, nauseating numbness begins to spread outward from my chest, freezing the blood in my veins.
"He didn't ask for Noemi," my father growls, though he sounds exhausted. "He specifically asked for the youngest. He asked for Lucia. He did it to spit in my face, Serafina. To prove that he could take the best thing I have."
"I will kill myself," my mother hisses, the hysteria dropping into a chilling certainty. "I will swallow a bottle of pills and die in your fucking bed before I watch you dress my twenty-year-old daughter in white and hand her over to a man who slaughters people with his bare hands. Cassio Vellutini is a monster! He’s a mad dog! He will break her, Orlando. He will tear her apart just to hurt you, and she is too soft to survive him!"
There is a long, suffocating pause where the fate of my entire existence is being weighed against the tears of my mother.
"Serafina..."
"No! Listen to me!" My mother’s voice is a desperate, venomous whisper now. "Lucia is meant for a good match. A peaceful match. She is meant to marry a man who will respect her, not a volatile prick who leaves a trail of corpses wherever he walks. Noemi is the one with the mouth. Noemi is the one who likes to fight. Let the two of them tear each other’s throats out! But you will not sacrifice my baby to save your territory."
My baby.Notour daughters.Just Lucia. The golden child. The perfect, obedient doll.
And me? I am the meat they are willing to throw to the wolves so the rest of the flock can sleep soundly.
"If I go back to Salvatore and swap the bride," my father says slowly, his voice laced with dread, "Cassio will see it as an act of war. He asked for Lucia."
"Then you make him take Noemi! You are the Don of the Genovese family, Orlando! Act like it! Tell him it’s the eldest or it’s nothing. But I swear to Christ, if you let that animal touch Lucia, I will burn this house to the ground."
I don't stay to hear his surrender. I already know what it sounds like.
I push myself off the wall and walk away, my footsteps are silent on the thick Persian runners. I don't run. Running is for prey, and I refuse to be hunted in my own home. I retreat to my bedroom, locking the heavy door behind me, and walk straight to the adjoining bathroom.
I turn on the cold-water tap, gripping the edges of the marble sink so tightly that my knuckles turn bone-white. I stare at my reflection in the mirror. My dark eyes are wide, and my pupils are dilated with a mix of terror and pure rage.
Cassio Vellutini.
A violent shiver wrecks my frame.
I have spent the last two years listening to the whispered horror stories of what the young Don of the Vellutini family does to his enemies. I’ve seen the aftermath of his temper. I’ve seen the body bags being carried out of warehouses, dripping blood onto the pavement. He doesn't have a heart, only a fucking ledger, and he balances it with bullets.
And now, my parents are conspiring to chain me to him.
It takes three hours for the summons to come. Three agonizing hours of sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at the wall, listening to the rain beat against the glass panes of my window. When the heavy knock finally sounds at my door, it’s not Enzo or one of the guards.
"Noemi," my father’s voice barks through the wood. "My study. Now."
He doesn't wait for a response. I hear his footsteps retreating down the hall.
I stand up, smoothing the wrinkles from my black wool trousers and adjusting the collar of my silk blouse. I am preparing for an execution, so I might as well look the part. I walk down the sweeping staircase, past the armed sentries who look everywhere but at my face, and step into the suffocating, cigar-choked air of the Don’s study.
My father is standing by the fireplace, a glass of amber scotch gripped tightly in his meaty hand. He looks ten years older than he did yesterday. The permanent scowl on his face has deepened into a mask of exhausted bitterness.
