There’s no escape from him. He’s been my obsession since he stepped into our place in New York.
Handsome.
Reserved.
Proper.
A villain beneath a polished shell, wearing a sharp suit, altered to fall over his broad shoulders, muscular arms, and athletic body in sublime perfection, pointing to his enrapturing masculinity.
He looked scary to some people––we all heard about his bloody past––but he didn’t look scary to me.
I would’ve stepped naked into a lion’s den if that lion looked like him.
I would’ve packed my things and run away if the getaway driver looked like him.
I would’ve killed for him if he asked me to.
That first day, I couldn’t come to my senses while he acted as if I wasn’t even in the room.
Men accompanied him, and I knew even back then that he wasn’t a regular suitor, someone my mother would pick up at one of our fancy gatherings, some wealthy boy, or a mafioso eager to hold her purse to get into my grandfather’s good graces.
He didn’t speak to my mother that day.
Dinner was set in the big dining room. The lights were dim, and the flowers were fresh. Our most expensive silverware opulently glinted around the table.
Appetizers adorned porcelain trays, and we all sat around the table––my mother included––but the new men––our guests––were led straight to Giorgio’s normally off-limits, special meeting room.
We all knew to stay away from that room.
Conveniently located in the other part of the house, it served as a home office, a boardroom, a reading room, a cigar lounge, and, occasionally, a body disposal chamber when things got heated and arguments couldn’t be settled any other way.
It had a second exit in the back, where sometimes, as I snuck up to the alleyway leading there, I saw men dressed in black, speaking mostly Italian, carrying large packages––bodies––to their bulletproof cars.
That was the business we were in.
And it’s the business we have been in our entire life.
And the new man––Callum O’Hara–– was about to strike a deal with us and become one of us.
The meeting didn’t last long, but waiting for his return to the table felt like a lifetime.
That evening happened shortly after celebrating my eighteenth birthday, and I was convinced I was a grown-up woman, so I wore my best dress.
A long black sleeveless dress with a small ruffle at the neckline––the most demure dress Sylvia could find in my closet.
That dress might’ve been perfect for a funeral, but it served a higher purpose that day, so no one dared to critique it.
Strangely, Sylvia was more concerned with what I wore than what her daughter did.
Bianca got the message, too, and went for something bland and unassuming, a gray two-piece––a shift dress and a matching jacket.
She pulled her hair back into a bun and accessorized her outfit with a delicate platinum necklace with a diamond-encrusted cross.
She looked as if nothing in the world could make her smile, but I knew her better than that.
Up at the corner of her eyes, her mask began to peel off, and satisfaction glinted like a pot of melted steel.
She was ecstatic, fervent, euphoric.
