Everyone dies.
Everything ends.
I can’t stop it, just like I can’t keep myself from breathing.
I rub my eyes, exhausted as hell, and join Del on the couch. I don’t look at her left hand, the same one that wears a diamond ring my family may as well have shoved onto her finger the minute we realized what we had to do.
It wasn’t romantic.
I wonder then, how she will tell our story? If she could tell it her way? If we have kids, maybe when we have kids, will we say it was an arrangement, or will she lie about a beautiful story where the king saves the queen?
“You look tired,” she says without even looking at me.
I snort. No shit. “I’m always tired.”
“I bet.” She nods her head like she knows then turns to me. “You really should sleep more.”
I want to kiss those full lips so bad it’s physically painful to sit still. I watch her instead. I look into her green eyes, and I tell myself that in another life, this would be the moment, you know the one.
The one where you kiss the girl. Confess your love. Tell her all the amazing reasons you want to spend your life with her and pray to God you have enough time to spend with her until you burn in Hell for all the sins you’ve committed.
I’m silent.
I stay silent.
I watch her.
I finally sigh and find the words. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
She smacks me across the chest. “Not funny, King.”
“I’m fucking hilarious.” I rub my nose again, then my eyes.
She reaches for me, and then she’s holding my hand, rubbing her thumb back and forth, back and forth over my skin. It almost burns, maybe because I’m burning for her. “Sleep, King.”
“I don’t know if I can.” I yawn, trying not to stare at the three-karat diamond on her left hand yet powerless to look away because I am tired, and I do want her, and that ring represents a claiming I’ll never have.
“You can.” She consoles me. She heals me. She makes me feel both brave and whole and doesn’t even realize it as she gently rests her head on my shoulder, still rubbing my hand, and sighs. “Sleep. With me.”
It’s not the invitation I expect nor want.
Typically, a guy would be like, hell yes, let’s sleep together, but somehow this is better. I’m closing my eyes with my heaven while praying to God she keeps hell away for just a few hours while I rest.
She may not love me.
But I vow to love her enough for both of us.
“Until the end,” I whisper.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I lie.
Until the end.
Until the end.
Until it ends.
Amen.
Chapter Six
“The believer is happy, the doubter is wise.” —Edgar Allen Poe
Del
King’s beautiful.
I always think that though.
It makes sense. After all, his name is King, and he looks like a monarch from the days of old, the one women would throw themselves at.
Wow, I just said days of old. Someone save me.
I shake the thoughts from my head. After all, he’s not mine to take, and even if he was, my heart belongs to someone else.
“Hey there.” Roman elbows me and abruptly straightens up when my uncle walks by. I walk farther into the kitchen to refill my drink. “Champagne?”
“Yeah.” I hold out my glass and take it all in.
The fact that this is going to be my life.
The fact that I’ll be sleeping in one bed while wishing I was in another. I bite down on my lower lip and nearly spill my full glass as Roman fills it to the brim. “Sorry.”
“No problem.” His eyes lock on my lips.
My uncle walks past again, gives us a brief head nod, and keeps walking. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until Roman puts a hand on my lower back. It’s barely there, his hand, but it’s enough that I exhale and attempt to inhale a few more breaths.
I don’t know why I’m still freaked out, but something feels off despite the whole we’ve waved the white flag between the families as I get married off to our freaking godfather.
It’s like a bad Hollywood movie.
And yet it’s my life.
“You’re fine.” Roman leans down and whispers the words next to my ear, so close that I can feel the heat of him against my neck. I shiver. “Don’t do that, though.”
“Hm, what?” I don’t even turn to acknowledge him; it’s too dangerous. I don’t trust many people.
I trust Roman.
I trust the second generation of the mafia.
I do not, however, trust any of the older men wandering around the kitchen, my own family included. I’ve been brought up to protect myself, to protect my words.
Reacting could mean death. So I sip my champagne and look straight ahead like the champagne bottle sitting on the counter fascinates me, and I put a dopey smile on my face like I’m drunk and stupid.
It’s a part I’ve played my entire life.
It’s a part that’s kept me safe, compliments of my late mother, who always said the most intelligent woman in the room will always look the dumbest when working with men who think they’re the most brilliant.
She wasn’t wrong, and yet part of me thinks she wasn’t totally right either, not with how some of the other family bosses are looking at me.
Phoenix Nicolasi, for example. He’s talking to my uncle, he’s smiling, he looks like he’s participating in the conversation, but his left hand keeps rubbing his right hand like he’s thinking about punching him, and every few seconds, I notice his jaw tick.
Not that I’m being weird, but he’s a gorgeous man. You know, if I was into older guys or had a fetish. He’s quite honestly dangerously beautiful and probably old enough to be my dad, then again so is Brad Pitt, and well, it’s Brad Pitt; he can hair flip and wink at me any day.
“What are you looking at?” Roman asks.
“Nothing.” Everything. “Just, taking things in. I’m… not myself.” It’s a lot of pressure constantly being on, constantly making sure that I’m saying the right thing, looking the right way while on top of everything else carrying my entire family name into the Five Families of the Cosa Nostra, soon to be six or even seven, if my family has anything to say about it. Vitela. Rossa. Di Masis. They are all dying in Sicily. So my family decided that we would not be one of those families. We would play nice. We would play fair. Until we didn’t. Until we couldn’t. Until my dad and uncle broke the rules. Now it feels better, more fair, now it seems that we’ve all come to an agreement, but at what cost? I don’t trust my uncle, I don’t know him well. Does he seem fair? Yes. Do I know that in my soul? No. I feel like a threat more than a pawn and that scares me more than anything. It keeps me up at night. It terrorizes my days.
At the end of the day, the mafia overseas is dying.
It’s literally dying.
And they’ll stop at nothing to come to the States and make sure they have a piece of what the Families here already have.
Prosperity.
Honor.
Power.
But there’s a reason they aren’t doing well, and it has to do with the stupid leadership and the ways they’ve tried to weasel into everything, yet nobody will listen to anyone who says otherwise.