“Do you understand?” Darren asked.
Ginevra bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. “I won’t do this.”
“You will. Or we will make sure you do. You continue to think you have a choice here, Ginny—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Kev let out a sigh. “Now, be nice. It’s just a nickname.”
No, it wasn’t.
It was the name her mother had called her since she was a girl. It was the name her sisters shouted from the other end of the apartment when they wanted her to come help them pick out an outfit so maybe they could finally get their crush at school to notice them. It was the name her professors—which she would no longer be allowed to attend classes, according to Kev—used when they directed questions at her in classes.
It was not, however, a nickname her father gave her. It did not come from the fucking Calabrese. And she didn’t want the rest of them using it.
“Don’t call me that,” Ginevra muttered, keeping her gaze down.
Kev, seemingly reaching his level of patience with her for the day, smacked the wall with his hand loud enough to make Ginevra and her mother jump on the couch. “I won’t say it again after this, but it has been decided. You will marry the Marcello man within a couple of months. We’ll nail down an appropriate date, and let you know. If you run, Ginevra, we will find you. If someone here thinks that helping you get away will help your case, then they will be removed. I won’t tolerate someone going against me—I don’t give a fuck if you are my blood. Do you understand me?”
God.
She hated him.
All of them right now.
“Do. You. Understand. Me.”
Ginevra lifted her head, and met Kev’s stare from across the room. She felt her mother’s hand find hers on the couch, and grab tightly to keep her grounded. Right now, she just had to get through this day. They could figure out the rest later.
Surely.
“I understand,” Ginevra lied.
Lied, because no.
She would not marry someone chosen for her.
She wouldn’t do anything they wanted.
Kev’s gaze narrowed. “You know, I can see that fight in your eyes, Ginny. All of us Calabrese ... it all looks the same, and I see it.”
Good.
She said nothing.
“But don’t worry,” Kev added, smiling in that cold way of his, “you will learn, and I will break you like I did the rest of them. Remember, you were warned.”
A cold chill slipped down Ginevra’s spine, but she refused to show her fear. Like her anger or heartbreak, her fear would make them think they had won, too. They didn’t deserve anything from her, not even the emotions in her heart.
It was only once her half-brothers had left Ginevra and her mother alone in the apartment—although, not before explaining they would have guards posted at the door to watch them—that her mother finally turned to her.
Teary eyed, Marie grabbed both of Ginevra’s hands as the wetness slipped down her cheeks. Usually, her mother was a ray of happiness. Always smiling, so strong, and never sad. Lately, it seemed like sad was all she knew how to be.
That broke her heart, too.
Ginevra dragged in a ragged breath, and for the first time, a tear streaked down her own cheek. She didn’t try to wipe it away, her mother’s hands keeping her from moving. Not that she cared, now. Her mother could see the emotion. It was them that couldn’t.
“It’s okay,” her mother whispered, nodding fast, “I promise it’ll be okay, Ginny.”
“It won’t.”
Marie shook her head. “It will. I will figure out a way to get you away from them, and this marriage. I will, I promise.”
“Ma, don’t—”
“They don’t scare me. It’ll be okay, Ginny.”
Except it wouldn’t.
It really wouldn’t.
It was the quiet whispers from the hallway that made Ginevra and her mother pull away from each other. A quick check over her shoulder confirmed what she figured, her seventeen and fifteen-year-old sisters waiting at the end of the hallway, standing close together like they were the only things keeping each other up at the moment.
They probably were.
“It’s okay,” Ginevra whispered to her sisters, seeing the tears in their eyes. This was not their life, either. This wasn’t what they knew, or how they expected to be treated. They shouldn’t have to watch their new half-brothers force their sister into a marriage she didn’t want with a stranger, but this was their new reality. And it was terrifying. “Greta, Giulia, it’s okay, I promise.”
It would have to be.
For them, for her mama ... she was going to have to be strong. Because if not her, then would Kev or Darren go for them next?
Ginevra couldn’t safely say no.
That left her to keep them safe.
“Come here,” she told her sisters.
The oldest, Greta, came first. Giulia was quick to follow. Just a month ago, they had been normal girls, too. Experiencing high school, and their worries filled up by things like what jeans looked best with what shoes, and if they were going to pass their upcoming tests. Now, they had far greater worries.
That shouldn’t be how it was.
Once her younger sisters were sitting with her and Marie on the couch, Ginevra felt a little better. It felt good to hug them, to promise that things were going to be okay.
“Why are they making you marry—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ginevra said quickly, hushing Greta as she shot a look to her mom. “You don’t need to worry about me. I am going to be fine.”
And so would her little sisters.
Somehow, she was going to make sure of it.
• • •
“Ginny?”
“Yeah?”
Giulia looked away from the casket a few feet in front of them to stare at her oldest sister. “I don’t know how to say goodbye to Mama.”
Greta made a soft noise under her breath—it sounded like an agreement—but she didn’t look up from her hands. She’d been doing that for a week, now. Staring silently, but saying very little, and not engaging.
Ginevra worried more and more for her sisters with every passing day. For now, though, she had to worry about getting them all through this horrible day. “You don’t have to go up and say goodbye that way, if you don’t want to, Giulia. Mama knows that you love her, okay?”
Her youngest sister nodded.
“But I’m going to say goodbye, now. Are you both okay here?”
The girls nodded.
She didn’t believe them.
None of them were okay, now.
Ginevra left her sisters behind in the pew, and headed for the altar. She glided her fingertips over the chrome decals of the shiny, black casket sitting atop the altar. For now, the church was quiet ... but not for long. Soon, it would fill with grieving people who had known and loved her mother, ready to send Marie off to a better place.
They would never know the truth. Not her sisters, or the people coming to the church today.
They would never know that her mother was killed trying to save her from a fate nearly as bad as death itself. That those scars on Marie’s wrists weren’t self-inflicted, no matter how much money the coroner had been paid to say so. That Ginevra blamed herself every single day for this.