“Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of intelligence.” —Edgar Allan Poe
“I’m an idiot.”
Like a complete idiot.
I have nothing coursing through my veins… unless you measure the blood and ask how much of it pumps for her, burns for her.
I have zero things left in my arsenal.
So I give up.
No, fuck that, I don’t give up.
I give her what she needs, what she says she wants.
My soul feels like it’s scraping my insides as I watch her walk out of my house, the house I’ll most likely inherit when I become the new Capo. Del strolls outside like my heart isn’t ready to snap like a rubber band in my chest, slamming against my insides, causing internal bleeding.
She looks up, and her green-eyed gaze takes in the stars while I watch like a complete fool. My body tells me that she wants me. My heart tells me that we have a chance.
My brain, however, jolts us back into the reality we now live in.
I’ll marry her because that’s my duty as the next Capo of these Families. But love? It was never for me, and why should it be? What amazing thing have I done to deserve to have the sort of love my cousins have? My best friends?
They all sacrificed. And this? This is being fucking handed to me on a silver platter with gold oven mitts and diamond-encrusted decorations.
It’s not the same.
Not that I want it to be.
Maybe I just thought my journey would still include something—epic.
I almost laugh because yeah, bullshit, I’m literally hiding behind a giant-ass oak tree watching Del like a friggin’ stalker as she looks up at the sky while Roman comes up behind her.
I keep my growl back.
Not gonna turn into a werewolf, so why worry everyone that I’m going crazy as he wraps his arms around her middle, resting his chin on her head.
My hands shake at my sides as her smile matches his. I’m going through absolute hell while they experience heaven.
I swallow the lump in my throat and try to take a few deep breaths.
I’m the next Capo, after all. I can’t be weak or show weakness, so I know I only have a few human moments left before I give them my back while they most likely kiss under the stars, and I walk back into the house to do my job.
My job is my life now.
My lover.
My past, present, future.
She’s just a girl I’ll put a ring on and smile with during family dinner while everyone else has kids, experiences passion, fights, chaos—I’ll sit there with a perfect smile on my face and pretend that everything’s perfect.
And at night, I’ll stupidly dream of a world where the person I married looks at me the way I’ve always secretly looked at her.
How fun.
A future of self-inflicted torture.
Can’t wait.
Eyes still closed, Del stays that way like he’s her center when all I’ve ever wanted in the last six months is to take that position away from him, even though I know I haven’t earned it.
Does it matter, though? In the end? When she’s his? He’s hers?
No. Every part of my body tells me no. Even the beat of my stupid heart seems to take up the cadence.
Nope. Doesn’t matter.
Because no matter how many gifts I shower her with, how many compliments, the heart wants what it wants.
Mine wants hers.
Hers wants his.
Five seconds.
Four.
Three.
Two.
I smile and lower my head, then I give them the privacy they deserve. Her and her bodyguard.
“Keep her safe,” I whisper. “With your life, Roman.”
And I hear the whisper of his promise in the wind answering, “I will.”
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” —Edgar Allan Poe
I’ve grown up knowing I’d eventually be a pawn. I don’t hate my family; I just don’t love them either.
But Roman, Roman’s always been there for me since the beginning of my attempting to go against my father. It’s been months, and it feels like years.
Now he’s here with me. Seriously? As my personal bodyguard? For King to do that, knowing what I know about him…
I shake my head as Roman rests his chin on top of it. “We should go in soon.”
His whisper wraps around me just like his arms. I feel safe, secure, beautiful as I exhale and enjoy the moment. “I know.”
“It was kind of him,” he finally says.
I don’t want to talk about King because then I feel guilty. He’s strong—one of the strongest guys I’ve ever met other than Roman—so part of me feels horrible that his new reality is watching the man I love stand by my side even after King says his vows to keep me forever.
I’m resolute, though.
I’ve sacrificed everything for this family, for this life. I’m going to keep this one thing for me, especially since my fiancé freely gave it.
King’s gaze has always been filled with lust—with barely restrained passion. I always chalked it up to the fact that he slept with everyone that gave him a sidelong glance. Then, when I got to know him, I found out that there was so much more beneath the surface.
We all have a freaking part to play.
And he plays his beautifully. One might say he acts like a playboy during the day and a monster at night. And they’d be correct.
I shudder.
“Are you cold?” Roman asks.
“No, no.” I lick my lips and think back on that moment again.
Something more in that moment.
Something forbidden.
I found myself falling to my knees instantly.
King’s eyes lit up. “See? Isn’t that better?”
“Go to hell.”
“Oh, I live there already, but thanks for the directions. Do you take a left near self-loathing, or is it a right at depression and a drinking problem?”
“Maybe it’s straight,” I challenged. “Through silver spoons shoved up asses and saying yes all the time?”
“Oh, are we shoving things up asses now?” he teased.
I gasped.
“Cute.” He tilted my chin up at him, then tilted his head in such a predatory way I immediately got scared. “So, how will you serve me?”
I was about to call his bluff when I heard footsteps. “Del? Del, are you back here?”
It was my uncle.
Fear slithered up my spine and down again. King must have seen it because his mask slipped. Teasing replaced anger and authority as he stomped over to the door and jerked it open just enough to look at my uncle and sneer. “She’s mine.”
“Wh-what?” My uncle stumbled back.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I not make myself clear? I’m just years away from being your fucking king, sooooo, if I say she’s mine and that I have her, that means you do exactly what, you little shit?”
Nobody talked to my uncle like that.
I held my breath.
He would kill King.
I waited. It wouldn’t be pretty.
Instead, he stayed quiet for a long moment and then said, “I’m so sorry, King. I had no idea you had an interest. I’ll just… can you just make sure she gets home safely?”
I could almost hear King’s growl as he said, “She won’t be coming home tonight… I’m bored.”
“Oh.”
My eyes went wide.
My uncle didn’t even try to protect me. He didn’t demand to see I was safe. All I heard were footsteps as he walked off.
King shut the door and hung his head, then turned to me, eyes locking on. “Tell me everything, leave nothing out. You have fifteen minutes and then—”
“You’re going to fuck me?” I asked.
He frowned, then a ghost of a smile appeared across his face. “I was going to say I’m going to feed you, but if you’d rather—”
“Hey,” Roman nudges me, and I blink, somehow surprised to find myself back in the present. “We really do need to go back inside, plus your fiancé might be looking for you.”
My fiancé.
Mine.
King.
I shudder again. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go back inside.”
We’re greeted with laughter, wine, food, and celebration. I hate it all. I hate that my uncle has the nerve to celebrate joining our families when everyone knows the only reason it’s happening is because the other five want peace, and King, for whatever reason, wants me.
An alliance.
Right.
Because that’s always worked so well throughout history.
I straighten my shoulders as Roman stands a few steps behind me like he knows we have to go back to putting space between us. We’ve kissed, but we’ve never had sex. No time, and quite honestly, I worry what would happen if my uncle caught us. Plus, I want it to be special, and so does he. So we linger, we touch hands, we kiss when we can, and we live this weird secret life that only Roman and I—and my fiancé—know about.
Weird. So freaking weird.
I feel like throwing up as I walk over to King and slip my arm through his. To his credit, he doesn’t stiffen, just looks down at me like he adores me when he knows where I just was.
“Hey.” He kisses my forehead, and his lips linger.
I shiver.
It’s involuntary.
Anyone would shiver when a hot guy kisses them on the forehead.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
Roman clears his throat behind me like he has something caught in it, most likely jealousy even though King’s done more for us than anyone in my own family has.
I ignore the stress and paste a smile on my face. “What are you guys talking about?”
My uncle, the new boss, gets pulled away, and it kills me to think that it was supposed to be me. ME. Not him. And yet he controls it all—yet again, my life is being controlled by a man, by a weak little man. I can’t fight because the army behind him believes his cause is anything other than money and power.
I immediately relax against King’s shoulder.
“Damn, girl.” Izzy shakes her head. “You need a drink.”
“I need so many things,” I mutter. Weeks ago, Maksim came and cleaned house, basically giving my family one choice: join or die. I think it was my uncle’s plan all along, and while I was undercover at Eagle Elite University to gain intel on the Five Families, Maksim, Izzy’s boyfriend, was the only one I could trust.
Until King.
Why did it always come back to King?
Now it was like this weird marriage of the Families from Sicily to the ones in the States. My second uncle took my father’s place out of freaking nowhere, and everything seems to be fine again, but I know it is only a matter of time.
Maybe if I keep telling myself it will be okay—it really would be?
Maksim shoots me an indifferent look, and I have to stifle a laugh. I love that guy. He struggles with dissociative identity disorder. Sometimes you get the cold, let’s kill everyone Maksim; other times, you get the playful let’s go shove King’s head in a toilet Maksim.
Back in the day, everyone just assumed he was moody or had anger issues until they realized that it was something entirely different. And I love that Izzy just rolls with it.
When he isn’t ‘himself’ and doesn’t remember things, she just hugs him, kisses him, or, um, seduces him and—surprise!—Maksim is totally fine again.
In a good way, she is his drug, his constant.
I envy them.
I want to be able to grab onto Roman now, but he’s already walked off and is shadowing my uncle, laughing at his jokes, patting him on the back like the father he no longer has.
I bristle.
I don’t want to.
But it bothers me.
It always has.
I mean, good for him, he’s working his way up; it’s what he’s always wanted, but still…
“So…” King elbows me. “What do you say?”
“To?” I make a face. “Sorry, I was distracted.”
“Mmmm.” King smiles down at me. He’s so ridiculously good-looking that I truly don’t understand what he sees in me. He has perfect hair that just seems to fall across his forehead like he came out of the womb that way. His green eyes are always laughing, crinkling at the sides; his straight white teeth are only hidden by a huge smile, full lips, and a small dimple that only shows up when he’s really laughing hard.
Rare for him.
But when it happens?
Rainbows and unicorns shit themselves when that man smiles. I swear on all that’s holy.
“So?” I ask, clinging to him probably more than I should.
My uncle glances over and smiles his approval.
I want to flip him off.
King pulls me closer.
He smells like every hot guy should smell—like sexy spices and deep vanillas, mixed in with something so masculine, I want to close my eyes and meditate.
I don’t, though.
That would be weird for someone I’m not in love with, right?
“Everyone’s in the movie room.” He squeezes me. “Let’s go get wasted; I wouldn’t even be opposed to getting high at this point if your uncle keeps looking at me like that.”
“Just kill him.” Maksim shrugs. “It’s not hard.”
Nobody responds.
Izzy pats him on the back. “Maybe when it’s not the engagement party, baby.”
“Oh.” He nods. “I guess that makes sense, but it’s not like he’s contributing to society in any way.”
He’s not wrong.
God, I love Maksim.
“True.” Izzy steers him away from my uncle, any sort of weapon—like the knives by the catered steak and chicken platters—and down the hall.
We walk in silence, and I can finally take a deep breath as we reach the movie room.
Everyone’s there.
At least everyone my age.
The second generation of the mafia.
All the heirs.
Serena and Junior are currently making out on the couch—how is she able to kiss him plus hold her wine over her head and not spill it? Legendary.
Russian boss Valerian and his wife Violet, who just so happens to be Chase Abandonato’s daughter, are playing ping pong—he’s losing and not happy about it. He takes another shot of tequila, making everyone around them laugh.
Ash, Chase’s son and Violet’s brother, is currently getting frustrated with the Apple TV remote while his fiancée Annie shakes her head and looks heavenward, then grabs a bottle of vodka and trades him so she can figure out whatever movie they want to watch.
And that leaves us.
The rest of the younger generation has already gone to bed, though we all know they’ll sneak out to find us once everyone leaves or once they’re all too tired to pay attention. Half of the siblings are in high school and want to experience life to its fullest; the rest are jealous of both and still sneak out with teddy bears in their hands and thumbs shoved into their mouths.
Except after the thumbs come out, they almost always ask when they can start fight training or if blood really is hot when it comes out of someone’s body.
I only know because of the few times I’ve stayed over—it happened before my very eyes.
The difference, though, between these families and mine?
It’s love.
As simple as that.
They fight. They kill. They protect.
But in the end, it’s all to protect the love they have for one another.
My now-dead dad? My uncles? My family? They’ve done all those things, but in the end, it’s about money and power.
What a sad existence.
“We are NOT watching John Wick again!” Ash roars above my thoughts.
“He’s hot!” Annie says.
“Agree!” Serena comes up for air. “Did you know that he actually ends up killing around seventy—”
“Veto!” Maksim suddenly yells.
Valerian grins. “Same!” A ping pong ball goes flying, hitting him square in the face. “You did that on purpose!”
“It slipped?”
Tank, a made man and former FBI agent, walks in then stops, his fiancé Kartini at his side. “I feel like this is a bad time?”
“It’s always a bad time!” Ash yells. “When Keanu cock blocks you!”
“Wait, you know Keanu?” Tank asks.
“IT’S A MOTHERFUCKING METAPHOR!” Ash screams.
“She’s pregnant.” King nudges me and whispers, “Annie, because of his past and whatnot, he’s been… emotional, not to mention more difficult than usual.”
“Isn’t that her job? You know, being pregnant and all?” I whisper back.
“One would think.” King chuckles, and then his face falls as if he realizes that isn’t going to be his future.
“Let’s go make a drink.” I elbow him.
He looks down at me. His eyes sad, dark. “Sure, whatever you want.”
That’s the problem.
I want him to be happy.
And I’m afraid that he thinks he needs me for that to be so.
“I don’t suffer from insanity but enjoy every minute of it.” —Edgar Allan Poe
Drama, always the drama with my family, and I really wouldn’t want it any other way as I watch Del completely fall into step with the girls. Naturally, they win, and John Wick is the movie of choice. Fucking Keanu Reeves and his inability to age. He’s a vampire. I know it.
I just need to prove it… you know when I’m not busy killing people and trying to stay sane while participating in an arranged marriage.
Truth, stranger than fiction. See also: My life.
“Such bullshit,” Ash says to my right while Junior grunts his agreement.
I smirk to myself. “Like you guys can talk, you’re getting sex on the regular, so what if Keanu turns them on? Just think about what happens when the movie ends.”
I really shouldn’t have said that since all it does is make me think of all the sex I’m currently not having when a year ago, I was asking my twenty-three-year-old tutor if she liked it when I pulled her hair.
“Sex,” Maksim says matter-of-factly and then starts to smile—correction, he smirks like he’s about to teach a sex-ed class and get fired in the process. “You know, it’s really interesting if you—”
“What the hell is wrong with people not understanding the whole boundary thing with sisters?” Ash wonders out loud. “At least Valerian’s stopped being—”
He stops talking.
We look in the direction he’s looking as Valerian has Violet pinned against the wall, her legs wrapped around his waist.
“GET A ROOM!” Ash shouts.
I sigh while Maksim pats Ash on the back. “You’re turning red again.”
“Why does nobody respect the rules?” he asks nobody in general.
I have no answer for him because I’m completely distracted by the beautiful girl laughing with Serena and Annie on the couch.
They’re watching Keanu like he’s the second coming.
And I can’t bring myself to be pissed about it—not when she’s smiling like that, not when she seems freer than I’ve ever seen her.
I can’t think back on that moment—the one that solidified our relationship—where I told her father I would keep her and promised to kill anyone in my way, including her uncles.
I’m pissed her father saw a way into the Families that was almost too easy. Thank God he was dead—no love lost there, but the Buratti Family still wanted too much.
Myself included.
They wanted me. At the end of the day, I was also part of this bargain.
Whatever it took, though, to keep her safe.
She never told me if he put hands on her, but I could only imagine a man like that most likely saw nothing wrong with hitting a woman. I may be a son of the mafia, but one thing our parents always made sure we knew…
You respect women.
Your mom.
Your sister.
Your aunts.
The woman on the street selling her body.
It doesn’t matter who they are or what they do.
It’s your job to honor them.
Now that doesn’t mean a whole ton of us didn’t sleep around, but we were never cruel, and every single girl knew what they were getting: a piece of mafia ass.
I smile again as she throws her head back and laughs at something Serena says while pouring her another glass of wine.
It’s impossible to be sad in her presence even though I want to be. I want to feel all my feelings. All of them. Even if they hurt so bad I can’t breathe.
It’s so hard when you want something and have a forced proximity of a choice that will never end with anything good.
It’s like watching everyone around you full of joy and wishing you could be the same but knowing it won’t ever be okay.
“So…” Maksim elbows me, then grabs hold and pulls me to the side. “How are things?”
“Focus on yourself,” I say through clenched teeth, irritated that he can see through all my bullshit without even trying.
He rolls his eyes, so typical of Maksim. He’s either dead serious or belongs on SNL, nothing in the middle. “Yeah, okay, I’ll just do that because it relieves so much stress focusing on myself.” He glares. “Plus, I’ve got Izzy. I’m fine. I’m happy as a clam that just shit out a pearl.”
“That’s not the right phrasing.”
“What? They technically shit pearls.”
“I think what you mean to say is a clam that makes a pearl, like a baby.”
He stares me down then goes, “Nah, that’s not it. Hey Ash, do clams shit pearls or make them?”
“Duh, they shit them,” Valerian says, coming up for air long enough to actually speak words rather than maul his wife’s face.
“I WILL SHIT YOU!” Ash yells, then throws a cup in their direction like he’s ready to start a war all over again.
“Dude, they’re married. Let it go,” I advise.
Maksim just shakes his head. “Shouldn’t we be more concerned about his mental health than mine? She’s barely six weeks pregnant, and he’s picking a fight with everyone. Yesterday he yelled at the rooster.”
I do a double-take. “You have roosters now?”
“Not us, them. Chase finds it soothing in the morning, but really I think he did it just to piss everyone off, Ash included.”
I really have nothing to say to that, so I don’t say a word. I just shake my head and let the chaos around me implode to the point that hours later, everyone is either sleeping, watching TV, or having sex in some random part of the house I won’t ever visit again.
And of course, there’s Del.
She’s the only other one still up, sipping her wine, watching something on the giant screen in the theater room.
I’ve been with everyone but not really with them, not present, just watching things unfold, calculating, wondering what my future might look like since my responsibility will be all of this.
Sure, Ash is one of our leaders, and he always will be when it comes to the second generation of the mafia, but as far as authority?
That’s all me.
The pressure gets so intense sometimes I just want to run.
But what good would that do? Would that help my cousins? My best friends? Would that have saved Del all those months ago?
The answer is a resounding no.
So running would be to save myself, and from what?
Everyone dies.
Everything ends.
I can’t stop it, just like I can’t keep myself from breathing.
I rub my eyes, exhausted as hell, and join Del on the couch.
I don’t look at her left hand, the same one that wears a diamond ring my family may as well have shoved onto her finger the minute we realized what we had to do.
It wasn’t romantic.
I wonder then, how will she tell our story? If she could tell it her way?
If we have kids, maybe when we have kids, will we say it was an arrangement, or will she lie about a beautiful story where the king saves the queen?
“You look tired,” she says without even looking at me.
I snort. No shit. “I’m always tired.”
“I bet.” She nods her head like she knows, then turns to me. “You really should sleep more.”
I want to kiss those full lips so bad it’s physically painful to sit still. I watch her instead. I look into her green eyes, and I tell myself that in another life, this would be the moment, you know the one.
The one where you kiss the girl. Confess your love. Tell her all the amazing reasons you want to spend your life with her and pray to God you have enough time to spend with her until you burn in Hell for all the sins you’ve committed.
I’m silent.
I stay silent.
I watch her.
I finally sigh and find the words. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
She smacks me across the chest. “Not funny, King.”
“I’m fucking hilarious.” I rub my nose again, then my eyes.
She reaches for me, and then she’s holding my hand, rubbing her thumb back and forth, back and forth over my skin. It almost burns, maybe because I’m burning for her. “Sleep, King.”
“I don’t know if I can.” I yawn, trying not to stare at the three-carat diamond on her left hand yet powerless to look away because I am tired, and I do want her, and that ring represents a claiming I’ll never have.
“You can.” She consoles me. She heals me. She makes me feel both brave and whole and doesn’t even realize it as she gently rests her head on my shoulder, still rubbing my hand, and sighs. “Sleep. With me.”
It’s not the invitation I expect nor want.
Typically, a guy would be like, hell yes, let’s sleep together, but somehow this is better. I’m closing my eyes with my heaven while praying to God she keeps hell away for just a few hours while I rest.
She may not love me.
But I vow to love her enough for both of us.
“Until the end,” I whisper.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I lie.
Until the end.
Until the end.
Until it ends.
Amen.
