Page 4 of Diary of a Mafia Princess

Dear Diary,

Today I learned nothing ruins family bonding faster than a Mafia don at the dinner table.

Watching my younger sister dance around the kitchen with a wide smile and laughter on her lips never got old. Her long dark hair curled down her back in messy waves, and there wasn’t even a swipe of makeup on her cheeks. Every freckle on her nose stood out, making her look about five, at least to me, even though she was actually more than a decade older.

She was a different girl than the one I’d stolen away in the night twelve months earlier.

Mrs. Wilson waved me over, and I dropped my dirt-smudged tool belt at the door to her modest three-bedroom home, deep in suburban middle-of-nowhere. She smiled at me kindly, as she spun Isabella beneath her arm and then handed her off to me.

“I need to finish making dinner. Dance with your sister.”

An old Elvis song, one of Mrs. Wilson’s favorites, played through the speakers, and I grinned down at Izzy’s upturned face. “You’re in a good mood for someone who was at school all day.”

She smiled and took my hand, twirling under my arm more easily than Mrs. Wilson’s, since I was at least a foot taller than the elderly woman we rented two bedrooms from. “I know! We had a math test today and everything. It should have been the worst day ever. Elsie and the others spent all of lunch moaning over how bad their lives sucked.” She raised a shoulder in a shrug. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ll do math tests all day, every day, if that’s the worst thing I have to do.”

The smile fell off my face. I knew she was thinking about the months she’d spent as a child bride. Trapped in a house. Maybe even thinking about the fact she’d tried to kill herself, believing that was the only way out.

A shiver ran down my spine just thinking about how close I’d come to losing her. How I’d sat at her wedding and watched her cry as she’d said her vows. How I’d let my father’s underboss take her home as his property, even though she’d only been fifteen years old.

It had gone on far too long, and for that, I would never forgive myself. It made me sick every time I thought of it. Which was often.

She poked me between the eyebrows. “Stop it. We’re here now. Safe. I’m good. None of it was your fault, and you’re going to need Botox if you keep frowning like that. We can’t afford it anymore.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Turning over a new leaf, working a legitimate nine-to-five job, and supporting a teenager didn’t exactly leave much money left over for forehead fillers.

Or anything else, really. I was lucky to have found us a roof over our heads, considering we’d walked away from my father and all of the Guerra business holdings without a cent to our names.

I’d be forever grateful to Mrs. Wilson, who had only wanted to rent one of her spare rooms to a nice elderly lady who could be some company for her. But I’d seen her ad on a local noticeboard, and even though Isabella and I didn’t fit the description on her ‘Roommate Wanted’ flyer, we’d turned up on her doorstep anyway.

If it had just been me, I was pretty sure I would have been straight back out on the street.

But Mrs. Wilson had taken one glimpse of Isabella’s tortured eyes and the bandages on her wrists, and I’d seen the mom in her come to life.

For the last twelve months, she’d been exactly what Isabella needed. A mother, grandmother, friend, and confidante all in one.

I often wondered if Mrs. Wilson’s grown-up kids, who didn’t call or visit often, actually realized how good they’d had it growing up in this house. How lucky some people were to never know anything other than dancing to old Elvis songs in the kitchen, while hot food, lovingly prepared, bubbled away in the oven.

Before she died, our mother had never been particularly warm. We had a housekeeper, Virginia, who had tried her best, and I loved her for it. She’d make our favorite foods and shoot us proud smiles when we’d come home with good grades our parents didn’t care about because straight A’s were just an expectation and didn’t deserve celebration.

But she’d always been under the watchful eye of our father, who had never let her get too close. She’d be scolded for making us soft if she tried showing us any affection.

Maybe it was too late for me now, in my thirties, to be mothered. But it wasn’t too late for Izzy. And I was damn determined she was going to have the childhood she deserved. Even if it meant living in this one-stoplight town. Even if it meant breaking my back on worksites, earning shit money, and paying taxes like the people I’d once thought of as schmucks.

I no longer thought that. I hated the past version of me who had.

He was an asshole.

I missed things from our old life. I couldn’t deny that. I looked a hell of a lot better in an Armani suit than I did in a bright-orange work shirt with “Johnson’s Earth Movers” printed on the back.

But my sister safe, going to school, and happy was worth more to me than my preference for Italian leather shoes. I still heard a car backfire and ducked, assuming it was gunfire. I was too old and had seen too much to ever stop that. But Isabella could learn to have a normal life, I was sure of it. All I had to do was keep my father and his men away from her.

“Luca?” Mrs. Wilson called over the crackly crooning filling the air as thick as the scent of her stew. “Did you happen to check the mailbox on your way in? I was expecting a package from my sister. She wants me to knit her granddaughter a new beanie and is sending me the wool.”

I twirled Izzy to the kitchen table where her homework was spread out and turned back to Mrs. Wilson. “I’ll go check now.”

She smiled at me. “Take a flashlight. It’s dark out.”