Chapter 15 RóISE

Miceli's words flay me like a whip, every single one scoring me with dead-on accuracy.

Skin prickling with embarrassment, I defend myself. "I was never in any danger."

"If I had been a different man—"

"I wouldn't have gone with you." Which I don't like admitting, but it's better than letting him accuse me of being too ignorant to protect myself.

"Fucking hell, Róise. You left that club with the most dangerous man in the building."

"Oh, please."

His jaw looks like it's made of rock. "If I had been one of your uncle's enemies and recognized you—"

"You were and you didn't," I say, cutting him off again.

"The Shaughnessy mob and the Genovese Family are not enemies."

It's not what I expect him to say and I should take the pass he's giving me, but I can't seem to stop myself pushing further.

"Tell that to my dad. Oh, wait, you can't ask him either, because just like my mom, he's dead!"

"You say that like it has bearing on this discussion. It doesn't," he says calmly.

Too calmly.

I don't want him to be calm. I want Miceli to feel as out of control and trapped as I do, but he never will.

How can he? He's not only a made man, but he's the underboss. The only person in the Genovese Family with more power, is his brother, the don.

He could have refused this alliance marriage, but he went along because like so many men in the mafia and mob, he doesn't care who he marries. I'm just a walking reproductive system to him.

A way to cement an alliance neither family would trust completely without the promised child.

Because of all the deaths. "Just because we could never prove it, doesn't mean I'm ignorant of who killed my father."

"Who?" Miceli has the gall to ask.

"No culprit was ever identified." Like he doesn't know this. I let every bit of contempt I feel for the mafia show in my face. "But I know who my money is on."

"The Cosa Nostra?" he asks like it's the most ridiculous idea ever.

"Bingo."

"We didn't kill your father."

"How would you know? You didn't even know your people killed my mother."

"Eleven years ago, I was a low-ranking soldier. Six years ago, I was not. I would have known if one of the Five Families took a hit out on your dad."

"He's dead."

"Which is not irrefutable proof that it was at the hands of the Cosa Nostra. If it will make you feel better, I will dig into it further."

I shake my head. "You think I will trust you to tell me if you find out his murderer is one of your own?"

"I'm not going to lie to you about it."

His words have a ring of certainty I can't allow myself to trust, but a tiny part of me…hello, vajayjay…wants to.

"You promise me you will tell me what you find out?" Did I really ask that, like I could trust his vow?

"On my oath as a Genovese."

I suck in a shocked breath. That kind of promise is binding. No matter who it is made to. Man or woman. Enemy or friend.

One of the things my cousins and I learned about Miceli during our research is that he does not break his word. Neither does his brother.

Which might be something to hold onto if it wasn't the very trait that has me trapped in this deal.

"Now, you promise me on the memory of both your parents that you will never do anything so fucking stupid and dangerous as ditching your guards so you can get away to have sex with a stranger again."

"Wow. You went from almost human to overbearing ogre in a single sentence. You're talented."

"This is not a damn joke, Róise."

"No, it's not," I agree with venom. "Two months ago, I was blackmailed into agreeing to a marriage I don't want. To a stranger I wasn't even given the name of."

"Your uncle should not have been so secretive with you. Withholding information is sometimes necessary, but this time it wasn't."

He's preaching to the choir on this one.

"I know why I didn't recognize you, but why didn't you recognize me that night?" I ask, something that has been bugging me. Yeah, the makeup job was sick, but come on. "You can't tell me you didn't know who you were supposed to marry.

"Yes, I knew." He frowns.

"But you didn't recognize me."

"No."

"Of course you knew who you were supposed to marry," I accuse, my anger kindled all over again. "Because you are a man."

"Because my brother treats his family differently than your uncle treats yours."

"Are you saying your sister knew at the same time as her future husband?" I ask suspiciously.

"My father informed her as soon as the agreement was made."

"Did he even ask what she wanted?"

"Not as such, no, but my father made sure she and Raff met and got to know each other. That they liked each other."

I roll my eyes. "What a great reason to get married. They liked each other."

"That wasn't the reason for their marriage but it is the reason my father agreed to it."

"But you and I didn't like each other. We'd never even met when you agreed to marry me." I shake my head, knowing there's no point in going over this again.

"You want to know why I didn't have a clue who I was really fucking that night?"

"Sometimes you're really crude." And sometimes he talks like a literature professor.

A really good looking one.

He ignores my insult. "I barely looked at the file Domenico provided on you. Your looks didn't matter. The fact you're too young for me doesn't matter. My brother wants me to marry you for the sake of our family."

His shrug says, if that's what the don wants, that's what he gets. Duty. Obligation.

"But we don't even like each other." I was yelling a minute ago and now I can barely get my voice above a whisper .

Miceli thinks I'm too young for him? Of course he does. I bet Miceli has been a made man for more than a decade.

I'm not even done with college. I'm an adult woman, but my life experience is light years behind his. Even after witnessing my mom's death.

I've never killed anyone and I never will. I'm not the mobster.

"Again it doesn't—"

"Matter," I finish for him. "But why? You're the underboss. The don is your brother. You could choose your own wife if you wanted to."

"That's not the way it works. Even my brother didn't choose his wife."

"But he did! Everyone knows. He switched Catalina for her sister at the wedding."

"One day, when I trust you not to share what you learn from me with your uncle, I'll tell you a story about Catalina and Severu."

"You don't trust me?" I mean, I know I don't trust him, but that only makes sense.

Why wouldn't he trust me? I'm not part of the organization. I have nothing to gain by betraying him.

"You're the niece of our rival. Shaughnessy might be arranging this marriage to gain information about our family."

"My uncle wouldn't do that." Uncle Brogan might see us as pawns on his chessboard, but not as cannon fodder. "If I were a spy, you'd kill me. Mamo told me what your cousin did. Uncle Brogan knows about it too."

And doesn't care because in his words, "There's nothing for you to be afraid of. You're not going to betray Miceli or his family."

He's got that right. Everyone in New York knows what the Genovese do to traitors and death isn't the worst of it.

"You might not even know you are doing it."

"Thanks so much for thinking I'm that easy to dupe." What a superior jerk. "I might not be as old as you, or as experienced, but I know what it means to betray a secret."

His gorgeous face shows nothing, certainly not belief. "A lot can be learned in normal conversation."

"Which would require my uncle talking to me. That's not as common as you think it is. Remember, I didn't even know your name until the morning we signed the contract."

"But you do talk to your cousins."

"He's no closer to his daughters than he is to his niece." Is the De Luca family really that much different from ours? "If you distrust me so much, why are you going through with this?"

"I told you, the alliance is good for the Genovese Family. Besides, I won't be telling you anything I don't want your uncle to know."

"How do we make a marriage work when we don't trust each other?"

"The same way everyone else in our families have done. We work at it."

"By we, you mean me." The walls are closing in again, but they have been since that day in my uncle's office.

I should be used to feeling like this by now.

"You'll have to make the most changes in your life, yes." There's no apology in Miceli's tone.

He's so darn complacent. And sure of his view of the world. Was my dad like this with my mom in the beginning? No way. My dad was never like this.

"And that's why what I did in Portland was necessary," I say helplessly.

The look he gives me is incredulous. "In what way was anticipating our wedding vows necessary?"

"Do you hear yourself? You sound like a Victorian spinster. We weren't anticipating anything. I was choosing my own partner to have sex with for the first time."

"You were a virgin!"

"I know exactly how much sexual experience I have and I also know that there was no way I was getting married without having had sex with at least one other guy."

"At least?" The tendons in his neck look ready to snap. "What the fuck does that mean? You're not letting another man touch you."

"Oh, so you were a virgin too that night?" I don't give him a chance to reply. "Of course you weren't. You were just another Cosa Nostra leader with the same double standard as every other made man."

"What double standard?"

I've heard the term, a voice that could cut glass , but never really understood it until this moment.

"The one where it was okay for you to be out on the prowl for a one-night-stand, but you're now having a tantrum because you learned the woman you're supposed to marry was doing the same thing."

"You planned to give what should have been mine to someone else."

I do not believe this guy.

"I didn't owe you my virginity." I jump up from my chair and shout, "My body was and is mine!"

"That might be true, but it doesn't justify what you did in Portland."

Might be true? Is this guy for real? If I took his knife and stabbed him with it, would anyone really blame me? Would they ?

"I know you're not stupid," he says, offering the words like a panacea. "But what you did that night was."

There it is. The screw he's determined to twist. But he's wrong.

"It wasn't though. Not for a normal person. And that night I thought that's what I got to be." I'd done everything I could to have one, solitary night of normalcy.

And it backfired spectacularly. He assigned Allessio and Zoey to stick to me like glue because of it. Now, even the parts of my life that were normal won't be.

"Going home with a stranger isn't smart, for anybody."

"You did it."

"I was armed. Were you?"

"You know I wasn't."

I hate that he is right. I created a fantasy in my head of what it meant to be normal and try to live it out for one night.

But I didn't do it in complete ignorance. "I did my homework. There are no mafia or mob ties in Portland. No one knew me there. It was my one chance to taste freedom."

"That taste of freedom could have cost you yours." He pauses to let that sink in.

Even though my stomach churns with the reality of what could have happened, but didn't , I glare back defiantly.

"As for the lack of a mafia presence," Miceli says, sounding like one of my professors. "The Hades Brotherhood took over territory there recently, but the bratva were looking for a foothold already."

I suppress a shiver. Like the mob, some bratvas have a code of honor that doesn't allow human trafficking. Others don't.

"And we have ties with the Greek mafia now. Even when the Cosa Nostra doesn't have a presence in a territory, that doesn't mean we don't have influence, or even people on the ground."

"I know that now." Do my grandmother and cousins know?

They will after I tell them. Among the women in our family, when it comes to information, it's share and share alike.

He nods. "Good. You need to stop living with your head in the clouds and accept your life for what it is."

"You sound disgustingly like Uncle Brogan."

Miceli shrugs his broad shoulders. "Accept the bodyguards with grace, or I'll tell your uncle about Portland." Miceli lets that sink in.

Blackmail: the one toy in the made man's closet he never hesitates to take out and play with .

"He'll make sure I don't have to worry about you slipping the leash again," he continues with unnecessary detail.

"I'm not a dog!"

Miceli's jaw sets implacably. "The bodyguards stay with you."

"Why did I even bother trying to reason with you?"

"Yelling at me like a harpy isn't reasoning."

"If I was a harpy, I'd carve that black stone you call a heart right out of your chest."