I was on the sofa in our library, reading, when a knock sounded. Lilly head rested in my lap and  our mother stepped in, her dark blond hair pulled back tightly . Mother was pale, her face drawn with worry.

“Did something happen?” I asked.

She smiled, but it was her fake smile.

“Your father wants to talk to you in his office.”

I carefully moved out from under Lily’s head and put it down on the sofa . She was small for an eleven year old .

“Am I in trouble?” I didn’t know

what I could have done wrong. Usually Lily and I were theobedient ones; Gianna was the one who always broke the rules and got punished.

“Hurry. Don’t let your father wait,”

Mother said simply.

My stomach was in knots when I arrived in front of Father’s office. After a moment to calm my

nerves, I knocked.

“Come in.”

Father sat behind his  deskand and the mahogany shelves filled with books that Father had never read, but they hid a secret entrance to the basement and a corridor leading off the premises.

He looked up to me “Sit.”

I sit-down chairs across from his desk and folded my hands in my lap.

“The Bratva and the Triad are trying to claim our territories. They are getting bolder by the day. ”

Confusion filled me. Father never talked about business to us. Girls didn’t need to know about the finer details of the mob business. I knew better than to interrupt him.

“We have to lay our bond with the New York Familia to rest and combine forces if we want to fight back the Bratva and the Triad.”

Peace with the Familia? Father and every other member of the Chicago Outfit hated the Familia. They had been killing each other for decades and only recently

decided on ignoring each other in favor of killing off the members of other crime organizations, like the Bratva and the Triad.

“There is no stronger bond than blood. At least the Familia got that right.”

I frowned.

“I met with willo yesterday.”

New York mob?

It was still referred to as the Bloody Thursday. And Father wasn’t even

the Boss. He was only the adviser to Fiore.

“We agreed that for peace to be an option we had to become family.”

Father’s eyes bored into me and suddenly I didn’t want to hear what else he had to say.

“Cavallaro and I agreed that you would

marry his oldest son Luca, the future leader the Familia.”

I felt like I was falling. “Why me?”

“willo and Fiore have been talking on the phone several times in the last few weeks, and Vitiello wanted the most beautiful girl for his son. Of course, we couldn’t give him the daughter of one of our soldiers. Fiore doesn’t have daughters, so he said you were the most beautiful girl

available.”

Gianna was just as beautiful, but she was younger. That probably saved her.

“There are so many beautiful girls,” I choked. I couldn’t breathe.

“There aren’t many Italian girls with hair like yours. Fiore described it as golden.”

Father signed.

“You are our door into the New York Familia.”

“But, Father, I’m fifteen. I can’t marry.”

“If I were to agree, you could. What do we care for laws?”

I gripped the palm so tightly, it were turning white, but I didn’t feel pain.

Numbness was working its way through my body.