She nods her agreement silently.
“When are you going back to school?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Tonight. Mom’s driving me.” Chay is a Sophomore at Boston College, studying some silly degree that won’t get her a job. It won’t matter though, Da will make sure that she marries someone wealthy and is taken care of. At least financially.
My youngest sister, Maren, is just eighteen. She’ll go to college in the fall, she’s itching for freedom. Chay’s first year at college was nerve-wracking for us all, we all wanted to protect her from everything and she just wanted to experience the world.
That’s the problem with little sisters, they’re always overprotected and under-experienced.
But even knowing that she needed freedom wouldn’t stop me from protecting her.
I think of Gemma, I wonder how pissed her brothers are at her. If that was Chay, I would have locked her up in her bedroom, so I can only assume Gemma is suffering the same consequences.
I need to get the damn raven haired beauty out of my mind, out of my system, but she won’t leave me. Her face in the car, the way she looked at me when I figured out her dirty little secret.
She’s broken.
Just like me.
There's a tightness that swells in my chest, an ache, drawing me to her.
I want to see Gemma DelGado again.
I’M THINKING ABOUT HIM, LIAM, when I sit down for Sunday dinner.
My brothers, Gian and Gio, haven’t lived at home for a while now, but for some reason they’re always here, and tonight is no exception. It is Sunday and it’s a tradition in our family to share dinner. A long running custom that my great grandfather started back in Italy. It’s never stopped, and missing a Sunday night dinner is a sin in this household.
“Why are you smiling?’ Gio asks me, a hint of excited interest in his tone.
Nobody cooks since Ma died. Gian and Gio take turns picking food up and bringing it over. Gio has a fancy Italian restaurant in the city with a chef that loves to cook for us for some reason. He sends platters of food over for us, normally more than we eat in one meal.
Today Gio doles out plates filled with chicken parmesan, stuffed manicotti, and sauce. I reach for the salad bowl, filling up my plate with greens, something my brothers won’t touch.
Chef Alejandro makes a mean Italian meal, but it’s nothing compared to my mother’s.
I fought with her when she tried to teach me how to make her Sunday gravy, telling her that by me learning to cook I was participating in a sexist tradition of women taking care of men. The look on her face was sad, at the time I thought she felt personally attacked. My mother lived to serve her husband and her children, and I hated that. I hated that she didn’t have a job, a hobby, anything. Her whole life revolved around us. I despised that because I never wanted it.
I don’t think she was trying to make me into a housewife though, I think now that she just really enjoyed cooking and wanted to share it with me.
I wish I would have let her.
I would kill for a bowl of her pasta.
I finally look back to my brother, his eyebrow is raised, waiting for my response. “I’m not.” I tell him, stabbing a piece of lettuce with my fork and dipping it into my dressing. It’s a weird diet trick I picked up from a magazine that I haven’t been able to stop, Gio rolls his eyes watching me.
“You were smiling, Gem.” Gian adds, filling his plate with chicken and pasta.
“If it’s a damn boy,” my father mutters. “I’m going to send Gio after his balls.” He doesn’t even look at me as he says this menacingly.
Gio grins. They are not one bit ashamed of the hell they put me through when it comes to men. They torture anyone who even looks at me in the name of protecting me.
Instead it’s only driven me into the arms of monsters. If only they knew.
I roll my eyes, and avoid looking at any of the men in my family. I’ve learned the hard way that telling them will only get me and whoever I’m fucking, in trouble.
“Better not be Joey.” Gian eyes me. Joey is a man who used to work for him. He’s alive, but Gian beat the shit out of him when he found us together at a party. His chances of joining La Famiglia are off the table, though.
No matter what I say, not one of them believes I wanted it. To them, I’m an innocent little flo