Chapter 1

I was reading on the chaise longue in our library three years ago when a knock sounded. Liliana's head was on my lap, and she didn't even move. Our mother's dark blond hair was pushed back securely and fastened in a bun at the back of her head as she entered through the dark wooden door. Mother's face was furrowed with stress, and she was pale.

 "Did something happen?" I asked

She grinned, but it was a fake one. "Your father requests a conversation with you in his office."  She said. 

I laid my book down on the chaise after carefully stepping out from under Lily's head. She pressed her legs close to her body. Although I was just five feet four, I wasn't particularly tall either, and she was little for an eleven-year-old. In our family, none of the women were. As I approached Mother, she averted her eyes. 

"Am I in serious trouble?" I was unsure of what I could have done wrong. Lily and I were often the ones who followed regulations; Gianna was the one who consistently disobeyed rules and received punishment. 

“Hurry. Keep your father from waiting" Mother only said. 

The moment I stepped in front of Father's office, my stomach was in knots. I knocked after taking a moment to calm my anxieties.

"Come on in."

I walked in while carefully guarding my face.

Father sat in a large black leather recliner in front of his mahogany desk. Behind him rose mahogany shelves stacked with volumes that Father had never read, but they also concealed a door that went to the basement and a hallway that left the property.

His grey hair was pulled back as he looked up from a stack of sheets. “Sit.”

I tried not to nibble on my lower lip as I slumped into one of the seats next to his desk and folded my hands in my lap. Dad detested that. I awaited his first words. He was looking at me with an odd expression on his face.

"The Triad and the Maquese are attempting to annex our areas. Every day, they act with more bravado.Although we're more fortunate than the Las Vegas family, who also has to cope with Mexicans, we can no longer disregard the menace that the Russians and the Taiwanese pose."

I became perplexed. Father never discussed business with us. The finer points of the mob world weren't anything that girls needed to be aware of. I should have known better than to interject. 

"If we wish to defeat the Maquese and the Triad, we must put our dispute with the New York Familia to rest and bond together."The Familia is at peace? The Chicago Outfit's other members, including Father, detested the Familia. They had been murdering one another for years before deciding recently to stop and focus on eliminating the members of other criminal groups, such as the Maquese and the Triad.

"Blood is the strongest kind of tie there is. The Familia at least got that right."

I grimaced.

"Blood-born; born. blood-stained vow. Their tagline is that."

I nodded, but my perplexity just deepened. 

"Salvatore Vitiello and I had a meeting yesterday."

Father had a meeting with the boss of the New York mob, the Capo dei Capi? It had been ten years since New York and Chicago had a meeting, and the last one had not gone well. Even so, people continued to call it Bloody Thursday. Father wasn't even the boss at the time. He was only the Consigliere, Fiore Cavallaro's advisor, who oversaw the Outfit and the associated criminality in the Midwest. 

"We decided that in order for peace to be a possibility, we had to unite as a family."

I found myself instantly unwilling to hear anything else that my father had to say as his eyes drilled into me.

"I and Cavallaro arranged that you would wed his eldest child Damon, who would later become Capo dei Capi of the Familia."

I had the sensation of falling. "Why me?" 

"In the recent weeks, Vitiello and Fiore had spoken on the phone several times. Vitiello wanted the most attractive female for his kid. Naturally, we were unable to offer him the soldier's daughter. Fiore claimed that you were the most attractive girl available because he doesn't have any daughters."

Gianna was younger and just as attractive. That probably kept her alive. 

I choked up and said, "There are so many gorgeous girls." I was unable to breathe. Father gave me the impression that I was his most valuable possession. 

"Italian girls with hair like yours are uncommon."

"It  was characterized as golden by Fiore." Father laughed. You are our gateway into the New York Familia, she said.

"I'm fifteen, though, Father. I am unable to get married."

Father made an arrogant motion. "You could if I agreed,' he said.

"What do laws matter to us? " 

I held the armrests so firmly that my knuckles turned white, but I felt no pain. My body was becoming increasingly numb. 

“Salvatore was informed that the marriage would have to wait until you turned eighteen, though. Your mother insisted that you finish school and be of legal age. Fiore succumbed to her pleading."

My father was informed by the Boss that the wedding would have to wait. My future spouse would have snatched me up right now if my own father had been around.

My spouse.

Over me, a wave of sickness swept. I only knew two things about Damon Vitiello: whenever his father retired or passed away, he would take over as the boss of the New York mob, and he earned the moniker "The Vice" by squeezing a man's throat with his bare hands.

I was unsure of his age. My cousin Bibiana was compelled to wed a man who was 30 years her senior. If Damon's father hadn't already retired, he couldn't be that old. That's what I was hoping, at least. Was he unkind?

He had broken a man's neck. He will be the mob boss in New York. 

I whispered, "Father,Please don't make me marry that man," I begged.

Father's face became more serious.

"You'll wed Damon Vitiello. On that, Salvatore, his father, and I shook hands. You'll treat him well as a wife and act like a proper lady when you see him for the engagement celebrations."

"Engagement  celebration?" I repeated. My speech seemed far away, like though a fog had obscured my ears.

"Sure, that. It will offer Damon the chance to see what he stands to gain from the arrangement and is a terrific approach to forge relationships between our families. We don't want to let him down."

“When?” Although I cleared my throat, the lump persisted.

"When is the wedding reception?"

"August. There is no set time yet."

It was in two months. I simply nodded.

Reading romance books was one of my favorite pastimes.I had pictured my wedding in my head. It had always been in my mind that it would be a time of joy and love. empty aspirations of a foolish girl.

So I can still go to school, right? What difference did it make if I graduated? I would never work or attend college. I would be limited to simply warming my husband's bed. My eyes pricked up and my throat tightened even more, but I forced myself to hold back the tears. Father detested it when we became unruly.

“Yes. You attend a Catholic all-girls school, I informed Vitiello, which appeared to please him."

Naturally, it did.

I couldn't risk getting close to boys in any way.

Is that it, then?

I appeared to be in a trance as I left the Office. My fifteenth birthday was four months ago. I was happy since I had felt like my birthday represented a significant step toward the future. Stupid me. Before my existence had even begun, it was already over. Everything was made for me to decide.

***

I was unable to stop crying. My head was in Gianna's lap, and she was stroking my hair. Only eighteen months separated her from me when she was thirteen, but now those eighteen months were the difference between freedom and a life in an unloving prison. I made a concerted effort not to be angry with her. She wasn't to blame. "You might try speaking with Father again. Maybe he'll have second thoughts," Gianna murmured softly.

"He won't." 

"Mama might be able to persuade him, I suppose."

"It's  absurd to think that Father would ever defer to a woman's judgment."I responded pitifully. 

"Nothing anyone could say or do will make a difference. Since Mother sent me into Father's office, I hadn't seen her. She probably couldn't look at me because she knew what she had doomed me to."

"But  Freya..."

I stood up and wiped my face clean of the tears.

Gianna's eyes were the same brilliant blue as the cloudless summer sky that I had when I looked at her. Her hair was red, as opposed to my pale blond hair. Father occasionally referred to her as a witch; that wasn't a compliment.

"On that day, he shook hands with Damon's father."

 "They met?" 

That is what I had also pondered. Why didn't he inform me about his plans to sell me off like a better whore while he was meeting with the leader of the New York Familia? I shrugged off the anger and hopelessness that were attempting to escape my body. 

"Father told me that," I said

Gianna remarked, "There must be something we can do. 

"No," I said.

"But you've never even spoken to the man. You have no idea what he looks like! He might be elderly, obese, and unattractive. "

"ancient , obese, and ugly. I wished those were the only aspects of Damon about which I needed to be concerned."

"G****e him, then. Internet-accessible images of him must exist."

Gianna stood up, grabbed my laptop off of my desk, and sat down next to me with our sides touching. 

We discovered a number of images and articles about Damon. I had never seen someone with such icy gray eyes. I could easily picture the way those eyes must have stared down at his victims before he shot them in the head.

Gianna exclaimed with awe, "He's taller than everyone." He was; he was a few inches taller and more muscular than the person next to him in every photo. That likely explains why he was referred to as the Bull by certain individuals behind his back. He was referred to in the publications by this moniker and was described as Salvatore Vitiello's heir. Businessman. conceivably outdoors. Salvatore Vitiello was known to everyone, but no one was foolish enough to write about it. 

Every picture shows him with a different girl. 

I fixed my attention on my future husband's impassive face. He was described in the media as New York's most sought-after bachelor and heir to hundreds of millions of dollars. It should read, "Heir to an imperium of death and blood."

Gianna grimaced. "Girls  are flinging themselves at him, my God. I guess he has good looks."

 "They can have him," I muttered angrily. In our world, a charming appearance frequently concealed a monster inside. The elite females noticed his wealth and fine beauty. They believed the bad boy aura to be a prank. His predator-like charisma won them over because it exuded strength. They were unaware that beyond the haughty smirk lied blood and tragedy. 

I got up quickly. "I must speak with Umberto." 

Umberto, my father's devoted soldier, was close to fifty years old. He also served as mine and Gianna's bodyguard. Everyone's every detail was known to him. Mom referred to him as a controversy monger. But Umberto was the one who, if anyone, knew more about Damon.

***

Umberto continued, honing his knife on a grinder as he often did, "He became a Made Man at eleven." The kitchen was filled with the aroma of tomato and oregano, but it didn't soothe me like it normally did.

"Why eleven?" I asked, attempting to maintain a steady tone.

The average Mafia member didn't completely initiate until they were sixteen years old. "Is it because of his dad?"

Umberto stopped moving and grinned, flashing a golden incisor. "You believe that because he is the Boss's son, he has it easy? The decision was made to initiate him early because he killed his first man at the age of eleven."

Gianna shrieked. "He's an evil monster."

He shrugged, Umberto. "He is exactly what he must be. You cannot be a pussy if you are in charge of New York." He grinned pitifully in apology. "A wuss."

"What happened?" I ask. I wasn't certain if I actually wanted to know. How many more men had Damon murdered in the nine years after he killed his first one at the age of eleven?

Umberto stroked the large scar that extended from his temple to his chin as he shook his head. He didn't seem like much and was thin, but my mother informed me that few people could cut through anything faster than him. He had never engaged in combat before. I'm not sure. I don't know anything about New York.

I tried to get my mind off of my nausea and my overpowering worry as I observed our cook as he made dinner. Umberto looked over my face. "He's a good find. Soon enough, he'll be the East coast's most powerful man. He'll look out for you."

"And  who will defend me against him?"  I het up. 

Umberto remained silent since the solution was obvious: after our wedding, no one could shield me from Damon. Not Umberto, and if my father felt like it, not him. In our society, women belonged to their husbands.

They belonged to him, and he could do with them as he wanted.