She shakes her head and sighs. When Mom left, Dad tried hiring a nanny to watch out for me while he was gone, which was always. Too bad he couldn’t keep his hands off her—or any of the ones that followed. I spent more than half my life watching a parade of young women full of promise come into our home to teach and guide me, only to leave it a few months later with tear-stained faces and broken hearts.
After all that? I’d still rather be one of them than a wife. They left him cradling their wounded egos, with stories to tell their friends. Mom fled like a refugee in the night with stories of her former life she could never tell a soul.
“Look at you, all grown up and ready to start your new life,” Sylvia says, looking like she might actually cry. She’s toughed it out a lot longer than most of the others, lasting a few years now. She tries to be both my sister and my mother, which makes me a little sad for her. It also ensures I don’t confide in her like a sister or respect her like a mother, though I do like her. Dad stopped paying her when I turned eighteen, but she sticks around for the other benefits—the posh lifestyle and, I assume, the dick.
Yes, I know more about my dad’s sex life than the average girl wants to, but he’s never hidden things from me, which I appreciate. I grew up sitting on his knee while he played poker, for fuck’s sake. I know way more about the Life and all it entails than I probably should, including the mistresses. Bianca’s always grossed out at the thought of her parents getting busy, but it’s so obvious in my house that there’s no squeamishness around it. It’s an unspoken but well-known fact that Anthony Pomponio gets all the pussy he wants.
“Can we just get this over with?” I ask, sighing as Sylvia rummages in my handbag. She produces a tiny bottle of breath spray and brandishes it at me.
“How much did you have to drink at lunch?” she asks in a scolding tone.
“Not nearly enough,” I mutter, but I open my mouth and let her make my breath minty-fresh nonetheless. She leads me out of the room and down the hall. And even though I got a good buzz going so I wouldn’t be nervous, I can suddenly hear every beat of my heart echoing like the thud of a drum leading soldiers into a doomed battle where they’re outnumbered three to one.
“Wait,” I say, grabbing Sylvia’s hand. My mind is skittering over the possibilities. Who did Al Valenti pick for me? Probably someone hideous inside and out, someone who will punish me for all the lives my family has taken. Suddenly, my mind flashes to the tattooed giant they callIl Diavolo, someone so brutal the devil himself would be terrified, and my knees go weak. “Did you meet him?”
Sylvia gives me a conspiratorial smile. “He’s a looker,” she whispers, squeezing my hand.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. Some new guy.”
“Asoldier?” I ask incredulously. They picked a nobody for the daughter of a legendary mafia don?
I’m too offended to come up with a response. It’s not Sylvia’s fault. I know she thinks it’s an honor to get to be anyone’s wife, but asoldier?
Before I can ask more, I hear my father’s voice from the study below. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but I focus on trying while I wobble down the steps. I drank too much to cope with this situation, but oh god, it really wasn’t enough. The desire to stop by the wet bar grips me, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m heading in to grab a shot or ten before I have to meet this asshole. I need something to calm the urge to tell the loser he’ll never marry the likes of me.
“Just to settle my nerves,” I assure Sylvia as I snag a bottle of Patron and pour myself a shot.
Ten minutes later, my father arrives in the doorway, a scowl on his face. “What are you doing in here?” he demands, his bushy brows lowered in a glower.
“Isn’t he supposed to come sweeping in here to court me?” I ask, throwing my arms wide. I stumble a bit, bumping into the leather sofa and collapsing back onto it.
“Get her some coffee,” he snaps at Sylvia. “I’ll bring him in here. But you’re not getting out of this, Liza. It’s already been decided. Nothing you do now will change that. And I won’t have you making a fool of our family.”
“Yes, Daddy,” I say sweetly.
A minute later, he’s back, a tall figure towering behind him like a shadow stretched out on pavement in the late afternoon, larger than life. But the man who steps in behind him isn’t boisterous like someone you’d use that term to describe. Instead, he’s stiff and formal, a frown knitting his fine brow. His sculpted jaw is clenched, and his angular features are set in angry lines. The moment my eyes meet his dark, cold gaze, everything in my body reacts. I must have had too much to drink because suddenly my belly does a little flip like I might be sick, and my heart starts racing, and my blood seems to tremble in my veins.
One look in his bitter chocolate eyes, and I can tell I’ve made a terrible mistake. I should not have taken those tequila shots. I should not have expected Al’s ugly-ass uncle to come to collect. No, this guy is so much worse. He’s not some old guy who can be manipulated into doing my bidding with insincere flattery about how hot and young he still is. This guyisstill hot and young. Too fucking hot, and way too fucking young. He’s not going to be dying of too much alfredo sauce anytime in the next fifty years.
Suddenly, I can’t breathe. My marriage won’t be over before I’m twenty-five. It will never be over. This isn’t a sacrifice for the family. It’s a life sentence. I can feel the shackles around my ribs tightening with each breath I try to draw as he holds me pinned with his gaze, the venomous cruelty in his expression boring into me as if he already hates me more than I hate him.
He’s a Valenti, after all. My family has killed as many of them as they have us. And now I’m at his mercy. He’s probably already thinking up what sadistic tortures he’ll inflict upon me for the rest of my life.
My knees go week. Oh god. I’m doomed.
He strides to the sofa and stands over me, looking down at me expectantly, like he’s lording his height over me. When I don’t jump up to bow at his feet and tell him how happy I am that I’m being sold off like a head of cattle to an absolute no one, he frowns even harder. Then, the dude sticks out his hand like we’re in a fucking business meeting.
“I’m King Dolce,” he says. “You must be Eliza.”
Damn it. Even his voice is sexy, rich and smooth like melting chocolate.
But despite his looks and his voice, he’s too uptight to be sexy. I mean, the guy is seriously trying to shake my hand like some stuffy old guy from a Jane Austen novel.
Yeah, fuck this. I’m not doomed. I’m not going to give in that easily. I don’t lie down and roll over for anyone, even my future husband. In fact, it’s even more important that I show him I won’t be controlled. If he were old, maybe I could stand it for a few years. But if I’m going to spend the rest of my life with this prick, I’m going to have to lay down the law real quick. Starting with the fact that I don’t respect anyone who hasn’t earned it.
Ignoring his hand, I cock an eyebrow and meet his gaze with a challenge in my eyes. “You’re supposed to be able to handle me?” I ask. “You can’t be any older than I am.”