My throat burns.
When I was a child, Luca was my world. He smelled like espresso, expensive cologne, and the slightest hint of cigar smoke blended into Scotch. He taught me how to swim without fear, to hide so I wouldn't get caught, and how to keep my mouth shut when it was important.
He used to call me Stellina, meaning his little star.
Then the war between the Marinos and the Abruzzos went from simmering to volcanic, and everything caught fire.
My father was Abruzzo. My mother was Marino. They thought love would be enough, and my father even kept Luca's infiltration into the Abruzzo clan a secret, knowing how much my mother loved her brother.
It was my father's greatest hope that the wars would stop and children could grow up in both families without further bloodshed.
But it wasn't that easy. Luca had slipped into the Abruzzo world as a spy. My mother met my father by mistake, and Luca had to explain his role which didn't make my mother stop seeing my father. It was out of necessity that my mother lied to my father about who they really were.
But my father found out. Instead of turning them in to his family, he kept their secret. It was my love for my mother that made my father view the world and his family politics differently.
So Luca smiled at my father's table, drank his Scotch, and held me on his knee. All the while, he reported everything back to his own family.
My father knew it, yet he hoped things would change. When he realized how bad things were getting, how close the Marino fire was to swallowing us whole, he moved us to Italy.
We got a new house and a new set of rules. Instead of calling me Finzia, my parents insisted I use my middle name, Valentina. My father changed our last name, and no one was to know we were Marinos or Abruzzos.
I didn't understand then, but I do now.
Luca hated my father for "stealing" his sister. My father hated the Marinos for using Luca as a weapon. The only thing they agreed on was that the streets were eating all of us alive.
So my father joined the Underworld. He bought into the promise they sold him. He craved a neutral ground, shared power, and a table where Abruzzos and Marinos and every other rival name would sit side by side, sworn to work together. It was the only way I would survive since I had both blood in me.
So my parents earned their seats. They bled for them, vowed loyalty, and within a month, their plane "malfunctioned" and fell out of the sky.
They never determined whether it was engine failure, pilot error, or bad weather. You can pick whichever lie you want. It doesn't change that the only thing left of my parents came back in charred boxes and folded flags.
The only true question is whether it was the Abruzzos or the Marinos who orchestrated it.
My eyes sting. I blink hard and drag air into my lungs until my vision clears. That's why my seat at the table matters. It's why I've swallowed everything the Omni has fed me. I took their punishments without arguing and survived their tests. Once I claim what my parents died for, maybe I can finally drag these families into something that isn't constant bloodshed and retribution.
Seeing Luca makes everything raw. I'm a reminder of the Abruzzo man who "ruined" his sister's life. I'm the product of a marriage he never approved of, and I stepped into the Underworld, refusing to take the Marino side.
And Luca knows about the Underworld. My father gave him the chance to join them, but he wouldn't. Somehow, Luca escaped the wrath from the Omni no one else does. You don't learn of the Underworld and refuse to pledge without dying.
He preferred to keep the war. If he didn't, he would have chosen the Underworld. So he'll say I'm dangerous, unstable, manipulative. He'll tell Zara I'll hurt her.
I won't. Zara has become the sister I never had.
She curses too loudly, laughs too hard, and loves too fiercely. She'd throw herself in front of a bullet for Sean without thinking. But I know she'd also do the same thing for me.
So, I would die before letting anything happen to her.
But Luca won't ever choose to believe it. In his story, there are only Marinos and everyone else. So he'll continue to paint me as a threat Zara needs to cut out of her life if she wants to survive.
I push away from the column, keeping my shoulders low, head bowed, hair falling like a curtain around my face. Too much time passes, and I get antsy. Then my phone vibrates with two new messages.
Zara: My father is here. He's being an ass.
Zara: He won't shut up about you.
A third appears before I can move.
Zara: I told him if he doesn't knock it off, I'll throw him off the balcony. You good with that?
