I’m sorry, Mama, she thought. I’m so sorry.
She stroked the closed casket again, wishing she was better. Because then, she might have been able to stand having the top opened, so she could look at her mother’s face and say those same words out loud. Instead, she was stuck like this.
Wishing she could be better.
I love you, Mama.
Peering over her shoulder, Ginevra found her young sisters—still teenagers, and now left with her to take care of them—sitting in the first pew. The priest had suggested the girls be allowed to have a few minutes with their mother’s casket alone before the funeral started. He thought it might help them to say goodbye, but Ginevra didn’t know if it mattered.
They were still heartbroken.
Still crying.
Still alone.
And now, terrified, too.
Because their brothers had done this. People who were supposed to be family had taken away the one person they loved more than the world and life itself.
Ginevra needed to be better for them, too. For Greta, and Giulia. No one else would be here to take care of them, and make sure they weren’t pawns for Kev and Darren’s fucking games. For now, they were too young ... they couldn’t be used in a way to further the brothers’ agenda, but eventually they would be older.
Eventually, they too would be on Kev or Darren’s radar. Ginevra needed to make sure that never happened. And she didn’t want them to be used against her, either. Not like her mother had.
Marie thought to help her.
Kev made sure she couldn’t.
That couldn’t be her sisters, too.
“Ginny,” came a soft voice to her left.
There, she found Siena standing a few feet away. For the most part, her half-sister, yet another sibling she didn’t know existed until Matteo died, was nothing like her brothers. Siena was sweet, kind, gentle, and all the things Kev and Darren didn’t know how to be. She showed true empathy and sympathy for the situation Ginevra had been put in, and she constantly stepped in between her brothers and sister when she thought she might be able to help Ginevra in some way. Even if it meant Siena got in trouble for it, too.
At the very least, Ginevra thought she could trust Siena. That was saying a hell of a lot more than she felt regarding most other people in her life. She didn’t feel anything at all for them, now, except her sisters.
Everyone else just fell in line.
Except Siena.
“Yeah?” she asked.
Siena offered her a small smile. “You okay?”
She shrugged. “Not really.”
“Yeah, I ... get that.”
Ginevra put her attention back on the casket, knowing she only had a few more minutes to spend alone with her mother before the funeral would start. Once the church filled with guests, she would be expected to put on her mask, and keep up the charade. Kev and Darren would expect nothing less from her, now.
She would do it.
She had to do it.
For her sisters.
But it killed her inside. It was taking a piece of her every single day. The closer she came to the date her brothers chose for the wedding, the worse she felt. In her heart, and in her soul. This was wrong, and all kinds of bad.
This was not how it was supposed to be.
“Hey, hey,” she heard Siena whisper. “It’s all right.”
Ginevra didn’t realize it until she had been thrust right into the middle of a panic attack, but she bent over at the knees beside her mother’s casket. One hand stayed on the smooth, shined wood, while her other pressed overtop her racing heart to slow it down. She swore that if it didn’t calm, it was going to race right out of her chest. Or explode altogether.
God.
“It’s all right, Ginny, it is,” Siena said softly.
She felt her half-sister’s hands on her shoulders, and then one rubbing across her back like she thought that might help, too. She bet her younger sisters were watching from the pew, seeing yet another horrifying thing to remind them that nothing about their life was normal anymore.
Everything had changed.
Again.
Now, with their mother’s death.
It was all wrong.
“Come on,” Siena murmured, forcing Ginevra to stare up at her through watery eyes, “look at me, huh? Don’t let them come in here and see this, all right? Don’t let them see what they’re doing to you—they don’t deserve that. I promise they don’t.”
Ginevra dragged in lungful after lungful of air. She willed her anxiety and raging emotions to calm, but while it helped, it still felt like a whole war continued to battle on inside her heart and mind.
“What am I going to do?”
Siena blinked. “What?”
Ginevra swallowed the lump in her throat.
It ached.
Like the rest of her, too.
“What am I going to do, Siena?” she whispered, lips trembling. “If I run, they have my sisters. If I can even run, because I never get the chance. And if I stay, then I have to marry a man I haven’t even met yet. What am I going to do?”
Siena’s fingers tightened around Ginevra’s shoulders. “For right now, you’re going to get up, let me fix your face, and then we’re going to sit down in the pew like nothing is wrong. You’re going to get through this day, thank people who offer their condolences, and make sure Kev and Darren think you’re doing everything they want. Okay?”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You’ve been doing it. This doesn’t change that.”
Ginevra let out a slow stream of air. “And then what?”
Siena’s eyes burned brightly. “Never worry about those girls, Ginny. I will look out for them, if you can’t. I promise you that. Don’t ever think you have to stay for them when there are people here who will take care of them, too.”
“I can’t just leave them to Kev and Darren.”
“Stop.” Siena gave her a look. “They’ll be fine. They are too young to be married off, and right now, they wouldn’t even consider those girls for anything else. What we have to figure out is how we’re going to get you out of this.”
“You shouldn’t help me,” Ginevra mumbled. “Look what happened to my mama.”
Siena nodded. “I know, but I can’t stand back and do nothing, either. That’s not who I am.”
Which was why she was different, Ginevra knew.
It was why she could trust her.
“What am I going to do?” she repeated.
“Give it time. We’ll figure something out.”
But would they?
• • •
The first time Ginevra met her husband-to-be, Andino Marcello said very little to her. He was kind, of course, and polite, but that was as far as it went. He didn’t seem interested in discussing the wedding with her brothers, and he certainly didn’t care to talk about it with her.
Not that she minded.
Even she was doing the very bare minimum that she could regarding the planning. If someone asked her for an opinion, she gave one, but that was it.
It wasn’t like she wanted it.
Why should she care?
The couple of meetings that happened after that first one with Andino were basically the same. Safe, kind conversation that didn’t make Ginevra think he was anything different than the other men in the mafia life. The only obvious difference about Andino was the fact he was actually an heir to a criminal empire.