Chapter 27 MICELI

Being able to read people is the difference between life and death in my world.

But right now, I can't read the expression on Róise's face.

"That's good to know." Her tone says it's anything but.

Why? Because thinking the worst of me makes it easier for her to keep hating me. I may not be looking for a fairytale love story, but I'm also not looking for a wife who actively despises me.

It's time for Róise to let go of some of her resentments.

"Regardless of how either of us feels about it, our marriage is a way to end the hostilities." Her parents' deaths devastated her. "It's a way to help protect the children in both our syndicates from going through what you did when your mom died."

Her dad's death isn't on the Cosa Nostra, but I will find out who ordered the hit. I can't keep Róise safe if there's a potential threat out there I don't know about.

"Isn't the pursuit of peace holy?" I ask, when she remains silent.

She rolls her eyes. "We're back to that?"

"Yes." My future wife is not going to refer to our marriage as damned.

I'm not a demon, even if some of my enemies think I am.

"At the cost of one life?" she asks sarcastically. "It's Biblical anyway."

"Two."

Oh, she doesn't like hearing that. Interesting. She can say she hates me all she wants but she doesn't want to marry a man who considers it a sacrifice .

Leaning back in her chair, she crosses her arms, unknowingly plumping her breasts upward and increasing the amount of cleavage on display.

She looks at me with accusation. "You could have refused."

How hard would it be to rip that pink jumpsuit right off her?

"My life is forfeit to the greater good of la famiglia . To refuse to do my duty would be a betrayal of my family and my don."

"I don't consider marrying a stranger a duty. It's the result of blackmail. Plain and simple."

That's the first hurdle we have to get over. "Yes, pressure was brought to bear, but women in mafia families are raised to believe it is their duty. Your cousins understand this. Why don't you?"

"How do you know my cousins believe that outdated garbage?"

"It's not garbage. We all have a role to play in keeping our families strong."

"You mean the syndicate."

"It's one and the same."

She huffs out an exasperated breath and jumps to her feet. "Let's go for a walk. If I have to listen to more lectures it can at least be in the spring sunshine."

I shrug, unwilling to argue over something so trivial and follow her to the French doors.

But when we get there, I stop her from going outside. "Let Allessio clear the area first."

"Are you kidding me? There's nothing out there but my backyard and the bay."

"A sniper in a boat—"

"Would be too unstable for accuracy. Alerting you to his intentions without a better chance of success would be stupid."

"Not all killers are smart." But she is. "Where did you learn that about the boat?"

"My dad. After my mom died, he told all of us girls because we didn't want to play outside anymore."

"And you believed him." It's not a question.

"I trusted him. But after he died, I looked it up because Fiona refused to leave the house at all. For a long time, the only place she would go was the backyard."

Allessio gives the all-clear signal and I open the door for Róise. "Does she see a therapist?"

Róise looks at me incredulously. "Don't tell me you let your people see therapists."

"If they need to."

"But what about…I mean how does that work when they can't talk about the stuff that probably bothers them the most? "

"There are several qualified mental health professionals in the Genovese Family." Most of their clients are not mafia though.

We allow it, but therapy is not popular and I don't know of a single soldier or high ranking made man who has been. But even my father understood that children deserve whatever kind of healthcare they need.

Carlotta is the first adult in the family I know of to attend therapy. Catalina goes now too. At Sev's insistence.

That is not something our father would have encouraged.

Róise is silent as we walk across the large lawn toward the water.

Finally, she speaks. "My father wasn't like Uncle Brogan, or my grandfather. Dad was the strongest and smartest man I ever knew, but he didn't see people as pawns in a criminal game of chess."

"Explain."

"Dad promised me when I was twelve that I would never be forced to marry someone for the sake of the mob."

That's unheard of. Her father was the oldest son and would have been the next boss if he hadn't died first.

His daughter should have been the first woman in the family promised in a political alliance. "Why?"

Why would he make the promise and why would he feel the need to?

"My grandfather and uncle signed a contract with the mob in Ireland for my sixteen-year-old cousin to marry a stranger. I had nightmares about it happening to me. Every night. Terrible dreams of being dragged up the aisle to marry a monster."

"Why did it terrify you so much? Mick Fitzgerald is a good man."

"He's a good mobster. A good father, but is he a good man?"

"You tell me."

"He could be. And that's not the point. I'd never met Mick. The monster was the marriage, not the man."

And now she's being faced with that monster, only it's marriage to me.

"So, your father promised not to force you into an alliance marriage?"

"He'd already refused on my behalf. That's why Kara was chosen." The guilt in Róise's tone causes a weird sensation in my chest.

That's where the nightmares came from.

Even without her dad telling her, Róise knew that as the daughter of the heir, she was the one that should have been promised in the alliance. Her tender age of twelve would have been no barrier.

Marriage arrangements are made at birth in some families. Her cousin was only eighteen when Kara married Mick Fitzgerald .

My sister finished college before entering her alliance marriage and no child of mine, whatever their gender, will be pushed into marriage before they're twenty-one.

"Dad didn't tell me that though," Róise continues. "I only learned it after his death. When I heard him arguing with my grandfather it was about any future marriages, not the one to Mick."

When had she heard? "Do you listen in on mob business often?"

If so, how is she still so innocent?

"It wasn't mob business. It was my life."

Another misdirect rather than answer and not accurate either. Her grandfather would have considered the marriage nothing but mob business at that point. She was too young for it to be anything else.

"Do I have to worry about you spying on me?" I turn from the view of the bay to face her.

"For my uncle?" she asks with insight I'm starting to realize should be expected. "No. For myself?" She shrugs.

"If both your father and grandfather promised you would not be used in a political alliance, why did your uncle force the matter?" Can Shaughnessy be trusted?

If he'll break a promise to family, he'll break them to us in a heartbeat.

"The promise from my grandfather was based on my father becoming the next boss."

"There was some doubt?" Derry Shaughnessy was the oldest and heavily involved in the mob's business at that point.

I've done my research.

"Dad loved my mom and he blamed grandfather for her death."

"Their marriage was arranged." Not sure why I feel the need to remind her of this.

We're not going to have a marriage like her parents. For one thing, no way in hell am I going to let her get shot like her mother.

Róise will have the same number of men in rotation as Catalina.

"Gabriel required a blood alliance before he would go into business with my grandfather."

She calls her grandmother mamo , an Irish term like grandma, but never refers to either grandfather with affection.

Róise sighs. "My mother believed marrying my dad was the best thing that had ever happened to her."

And then she was killed by a stray bullet meant for her father-in-law.

"So your dad threatened to do what? Walk away? "

"Sort of. He told grandfather that if he signed a contract on my behalf, my dad was going to take me to Ireland and fill the position one of his second cousins had been tapped for. Kara's marriage was an exchange, with one of the Shaughnessy men going to Ireland to marry the daughter of the mob boss in Dublin."

A proud man, her grandfather would have been livid at the idea of her father stepping down into a lower position and becoming a soldier for another boss. In Ireland, or elsewhere.

"When your dad didn't become mob boss like his father wanted him to, the promise was negated." Shaughnessy did not go back on his father's word.

"That's how my grandfather and uncle saw it. I guess this alliance was actually my grandfather's idea."

"But he didn't approach my father." I would know if he had.

"No, but he planted the seed in Uncle Brogan's brain for a strategic time."

Or when he had no choice but to offer up the alliance.

The cartel's plans for our territory wouldn't have succeeded even if war had broken out between the Irish and us. But there's no denying both syndicates will be stronger for the formalized connection.

And both would have suffered losses if we'd gone to war like the cartel wanted us to.

"It's done. Can you accept it?"

She looks away, not toward the water, but toward the trees that shield part of the backyard from the wind off the bay. "I don't have a choice."

"No, you don't." I could sugar coat it with some pink fairy dust, but that isn't going to help Róise come to terms with our reality.

Only truth can do that.

And maybe logic. "You were all raised with the knowledge that some kind of alliance marriage was in your future."

I'm sure of that. For fuck's sake, her own parents were an alliance marriage. As no doubt Brogan and his dead wife were as well.

"Knowing it's a possibility and being promised to a stranger at the age of sixteen and then shoved down the aisle at eighteen is not the same thing."

"Reality can't live up to fantasy."

"Spare me your platitudes." She spins to face me, her lovely features set in anger. "Yes, we knew what our future probably held, but we weren't raised in a bubble. We knew that wasn't normal."

Her hands gesticulate wildly. "That other women got to choose their husbands. Your sister got to go to college before getting married. Both our mothers were over twenty-one when they got married. "

"There had to be a reason your grandfather insisted Kara marry when she was so young."

"He wanted heirs. Male heirs that carry his name. If my father had agreed, I would have been the one giving birth at nineteen."

"Your nephew's last name is Shaughnessy."

"Yes. He'll be the boss one day and he has no more choice about it than his mom had about getting married before she'd had her first kiss."

"She'd never kissed anyone at eighteen?" The mob might have some old world ideas about marriage, but we live in the present. "Don't most kids kiss in middle school?"

"Your sister had a chance to pop her kissing cherry before high school?" Róise asks with narrowed eyes.

"I honestly don't know." Giulia would never have told me or Sev if she had. Mamma probably knows.

"But if she had, it could never be more than a kiss."

It's starting to sink in how important it was to Róise to choose her first sex partner.

"I don't know what my sister got up to before the engagement was announced, and I don't want to, but there was no way she could marry a civilian. Neither can you."

"Why? Because we give birth to the next generation of mobsters?"