Prologue
ALICE
“You move. You die.”
I think most people would be pissing in their pants if they heard that the second they stepped into their dorm room. Especially a five-foot-nothing college sophomore whose only weapon is the set of keys that look a few more turns away from crumbling to dust.
But I’m not most people. I never have been most people.
I’ve never been allowed to be most people.
I’m Alice Romano, and that name—unfortunately—means something to the people of this godforsaken city. That name means that I’ve been dealing with the owner of this voice for the better part of my life. It usually comes with being blindfolded and strapped to a chair with my hands duct-taped.
It comes with ugly taunts and the promise of what’s to come if I don’t get myself out by the time the buzzer goes off.
Because the asshole who’s currently pushing something hard and metal against my back is my cousin Leo. He’s the second-oldest nephew—that we know of that happens to live in the US. Leo’s older brother, Marco, is the current heir to the Romano family rule, and Leo is kind of his bitch-boy.
At least, that’s what I hear people whisper behind his back. It’s something I know he hears too, but he’s good at ignoring stuff like that. We all are. If we want to survive, we have to be.
Of course, this is basic training stuff. I know how to escape being tied up, but I don’t know how to fight. I can break duct tape handcuffs, and I know where to kick a man who’s holding me captive, but I couldn’t hold my own with some frat-boy asshole in a dark alley.
Not that I have much of a chance to meet guys like that. My father, Guido Romano, has been keeping me isolated from the evils of the world, as he likes to call them. He’s a former Catholic priest who fell in love with my mother and broke his vows for love.
So he says.
That was the fairy tale I grew up on, anyway. Sometimes I think that story’s meant to hurt me, though, because my mother’s dead, and my father’s a heartless monster who hasn’t looked me in the eye since I was eleven years old.
Of course, he has no problem dressing me up and parading me around his creepy friends at parties, and I can hear them whisper behind their glasses of single malt scotch all the ways I’d be a perfect, obedient little wife. And all the favors marrying me would earn them with my father.
It almost makes me laugh when I allow myself to think about my situation. How I became the single, surviving Romano child from a family who was a minor deal in Italy and a huge deal here in this city. How a tragic accident that took my mother and sister away from me left me shouldering the entire responsibility to keep the line going.
After all, Marco and Leo aren’t Romanos. They’re Riccis. So it’s up to me to produce the next line that will inherit, so long as my father can stay alive before it’s Marco’s turn to take over. That’s easier said than done since the two things I know about my father are that he doesn’t make friends easily and this city is full of his enemies.
I’ve never been allowed to know much about his dealings, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that he’s got his fingers in weapons and drugs and other shit that’s above my head. And I know his biggest rivals are the Walshes.
I’ve never set eyes on any of them, but I’ve heard my father’s drunken rages about Kane—who took over sometime when I was away at boarding school and is now attempting to make my father’s life a living hell. At least, that’s how he tells it.
But he rarely lets this sort of thing bleed into my life.
Instead, he sends Leo to torment me a few times a year, and then he leaves me to my own devices. Sort of. And by that I mean he leaves me in this dorm room with so-called friends who are on his payroll and guards twenty-four seven.
What a life.
I’m not really in the mood to deal with Leo right now, though. My birthday just passed—the ripe old age of twenty, and yes, I’m older than most of the people in my year. It took a year to convince my father to even consider the idea of college, and by the time he relented, it was too late for him to bribe admissions to get me in.
I don’t really care about that, though. I’m here, and I’m slowly building dreams of what my life will be like when I can get out from under my father’s thumb. I just have to play nice and pretend like I’m willing to go along with whatever he wants.
And one day, I’ll just…go. It’s not like I can really be of use to him anyway, aside from some sort of walking womb, and at this point, I can’t even say I want kids ever.
But today kind of hurts. I woke up to one of my father’s sterile gifts—a silver necklace in a blue velvet box. It was sitting at the end of my bed alongside a single rose and a hardback copy of a book by my favorite author, which means one of his creepy guards broke in while I was asleep to leave it there.
It wouldn’t have even fazed me, considering that I’ve long since stopped expecting that man to actually care about me, but the flower is new. And so is the book. Both of those things are a surprise because they’re so…personal. It amazes me that anyone was paying close enough attention to get me something I might like.
The pathetic, sorry, abandoned little girl piece of my soul started to glow with hope that morning, and like the loser I am, I waited for a call. Or a text. Anything.
I sent him a message at noon thanking him for the gifts, and the most I got was that the message was read. Just like always.
It’s on me for thinking it meant anything different—that he was finally starting to see me as a person, as someone he could be proud of. The ache sat heavy in my chest for the rest of the day, and I managed to scrape by classes, then my study group at the café before I had to make my way home.