Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74035 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74035 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“Yeah.”
“Get out. Now. They’re coming after you. Mario and Gloria will be behind you as backup. Go, go, go!”
I don’t ask him who or what, don’t ask a single damn thing. I drag the two of them out the way we came and toss him in the back of the car. I take the extra second I hope I don’t regret to put her in the front passenger seat instead of behind me and floor it.
CHAPTER TWO
Vivia
I sit in the passenger seat. Stunned.
I don’t know what happened. I hardly know how I got here.
One minute, I was meeting up with the guy I thought I loved. He was acting… suspicious, yeah. But he said something about one of my brothers. My brothers finding out I had an illicit affair is one of my greatest fears, one that had me shaking at the thought of what that would mean. The consequences would be disastrous. Painful. Devastating.
The next thing I know, I saw my cousin Mario and a woman I’d never seen before. And this guy driving the car, apparently one of the Rossi family’s made men… This huge, larger than life, seriously intimidating guy sitting in the driver’s seat handcuffed me and took me out of the club.
I’m in so much trouble I don’t even know where to begin. As a Montavio family sister, I’m not even allowed to talk to men unsupervised and never have been. It was always chaperones, and bodyguards, and “you’re not allowed to talk to that kind.” I’ve known since a very young age that I was going to be married off because the Don of an Italian mob has no greater bargaining chip than his virgin daughter.
Gag.
I told my mom when I was six that I had decided to become a nun. I knew the sisters from the small parochial boarding school I went to. I fantasized about being untouchable, never attached to anyone but God, living among others just like me where no man could ever touch or abuse me.
I was proud of myself for finding a loophole. Nuns didn’t have to get married. The single life never looked so good.
When I told my mother she raised her hand as if to slap me, and when I recoiled, she paused. She shook me instead, shoved me onto my bed, and told me that only ugly girls became nuns, and a pretty girl like me would get married someday to a man that she loved so she could bear him children.
Even at six years old, I knew a lie when I heard one.
Or so I thought.
I stare at Gray, the man I thought I actually… loved. I gave him my heart. I told him things I had never told anybody else. He paid attention to me, and it felt so damn good I gave him one of my most precious possessions: my virginity. I felt empowered when I did because I knew that my father couldn’t use me anymore.
But I knew the cost. I knew my family would, at best, punish and disown me. At worst… I tried not to think of it, but I knew none of the outcomes would work in my favor.
I’m not a rule breaker, I never have been. It took all of the strength and courage I had to go behind my family’s back, and for what? Now this guy, who claims that he’s part of the Rossi family ring, claims something happened involving Marialena.
Did Gray try to hurt my cousin?
I’ve been used. Manipulated. And after all I’ve been through… He must’ve used me to get at her somehow, to get at the Rossis—
“Oh my God, how fast are you going?”
No response. He only focuses on the road and pushes the accelerator harder. The car almost vibrates and my stomach plummets.
When the car accelerates, my musings come to a stuttering halt. This man sitting next to me, this Dario guy, is driving faster than I’ve ever driven in my life, and it is terrifying. He’s terrifying.
I’ve never met him before, but it’s no surprise he’s a new inductee to The Family. I knew Leo betrayed them, and their bylaws state they have to induct a new member within a year of losing one. I know the laws so well I could recite them. The Rossi family’s rules are nearly identical to the Montavios’.
I glance at Dario. An Italian name, yes, and he has classically Italian features, but I’ve never seen him before.
I… would know.
I watched as my cousins and brothers grew into adulthood, no longer gangly and arrogant teens with too much pocket money and too many adult responsibilities.
I watched them, all of them, my brothers and cousins, as their scant beards grew fuller and their jaws hardened, and their eyes grew calloused and steely under the weight of what they did. What was expected of them. We all were united by heavy-handed, authoritarian patriarchs and a too-short childhood. Some of us bear those scars better than others.