Chapter Four
Aria Bianchi
The purple of the flowers lining the aisle reminded me of the bruises I had seen on the victims of my father’s brutality. They reminded me of the light purple color of a bruise right before it cleared away from the skin.
They reminded me of the bruises I had gotten the night I tried to run.
I shook away my thoughts as I rubbed one of the petals between my fingers and looked down the aisle.
“Are you looking forward to it?” a woman I had only met a few hours ago asked.
She was a cousin of Enzo’s—one who seemed keenly interested in the ceremony. I had a few distant relatives of my own in the dressing rooms, but they all had the unassuming, unspoken auras around them that came from years of being silenced.
The Rissi women were… different.
They liked to talk.
A lot.
“Mhm,” I replied halfheartedly.
“Oh, wonderful. We all knew you were. You seem tense. Cold feet? It’s impossible not to get them in this situation. Most of us were there at one point, you know. The Rissi line is full of arranged marriages.”
I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything about the Rissis besides what my father had told me about them. I didn’t know what to believe. For a year, he had me convinced that they were mercilessly killing the women of our family.
That had been a lie.
“I didn’t realize that arranged marriages are so common for you all.”
She nodded excitedly. “I’m a distant cousin of Giovanni, you see. The day I turned twenty, Giovanni asked if I’d marry the son of a businessman on Wall Street—one of the bigwigs in the stock trading industry. I agreed. It helps us build lasting connections with businesses. It’s how Giovanni runs things.”
He whores out his women.
I didn’t speak the words, only taking in the snippets of information she offered and nodding. Maybe some of these things could help my father. Maybe they could help get me off the hook for this marriage.
The thought of seeing him so soon had me ready to turn and run out of this mockery of a church.
These weren’t the wedding colors I would have chosen.
This wasn’t the guest list I had wanted.
I wasn’t going to wear the style of dress I had always dreamed of.
And a part of me was happy about those things. It was nothing that I had wanted, so I felt a sense of separation from it all. I was marrying Enzo, but he wasn’t getting the part of me that I had been saving for an authentic wedding.
Maybe doing this for my father would free me.
Once Enzo and his uncle were out of the picture, I could marry someone I actually chose for myself.
I turned away from the aisle and walked away from the doors of the church’s ceremony hall. I went to turn toward the bridal suit where everyone waited for me, but I froze in my spot as I caught a familiar, piercing gaze. The vibrant green of Enzo’s eyes peered straight into my soul, and I wondered if he could read all the hesitation on my face.
I wondered if he could sense what I had to do to him and his family.
He didn’t say anything as he stood, hands tucked in his pockets and a cigar pressed between his lips. An expensive one, no doubt. His suit clung to his body like a second skin as it hung unbuttoned across his chest. The crisp white undershirt didn’t wash out his skin the same way as that shade of white had on me. In fact, it seemed to make the bronzed color of his skin glow.
His hair had been trimmed and styled, leaving a longer cut on top and a shorter one on the sides. His facial hair had been trimmed meticulously beside his hairline, blending seamlessly across his face.
Under different circumstances, maybe I would have considered his attractiveness.
But not today.
Not when he planned to make me his and never let me go.
I forced myself to turn and walk back toward my bridal party.
I didn’t allow myself to look back, even though I felt the heaviness of his gaze at my back.
* * * *
“Most men don’t know how to be gentle the first time, but it does get better each time,” my cousin said, sipping a glass of champagne. “If my husband looked anything like Enzo…” She allowed her words to trail off.
The buzz of conversation in the hallway beyond was enough to tell me that the room was filling with friends and families on both sides. I hadn’t invited anyone personally, and I hoped that word hadn’t gotten out to anyone beyond the family.
Though I knew it had.
Enzo Rissi may have been a notorious mob underboss, but the world saw him as something else entirely. They saw him as a businessman, a real estate investor, and an investor in restaurants up and down the streets of the Bronx.
The world viewed him as one of the top twenty wealthiest men in the country, sharing the title with the other mob bosses of different backgrounds in the city and a few rich men in tech.
I knew the media would be frenzied over this wedding.
They would write stories of the “casino boss’s daughter” marrying into another empire, and they wouldn’t be wrong.
“My first time, I bled everywhere .”
“Ugh, it’s horrible. Consummation is so twentieth-century, but it has to be done, especially with someone of Enzo’s caliber. You know what they say: Every boss needs an heir and a spare.”
Why couldn’t these busybody women stop talking about this like it wasn’t my life about to go down the drain? Did they really think I wanted to hear about their consummation stories?
I knew how it would happen.
Enzo and I would retire to his suite, and he wouldn’t have mercy on me. Men like him never did. I had grown up surrounded by men almost as horrible as him, and my father had ensured that I was to wed the worst .
“I couldn’t walk for days after,” another woman chimed in.
“I couldn’t for a week !”
Livia stood quickly. “Okay, you know what?” she shouted. “Everyone, get the fuck out!”
A few women gasped at her harsh tone, but I didn’t bother looking around and seeing who. Everything was a blur of motion around me. Cousins, aunts, grandparents, and friends. None of them were close to me. Only Livia and Evelina mattered here. Everyone else was extra.
Not everyone moved right away.
Evelina stood, holding up a glass of red wine. “Anyone who is not approaching the door in the next three seconds will get this poured on them.”
The remaining people stood and moved toward the door, mumbling about how crazed my sisters and I were. But it was worth it when the last woman left the room, and only my sisters and I remained.
Evelina sighed and pulled the glass to her lips, taking a sip. She offered it to Livia, and my youngest sister downed the whole thing.
“Liv,” I laughed. “If Dad sees you drinking…”
“He’s too focused on all the Rissis. We’ll be fine.”
I nodded reluctantly as I looked at my dress still hanging on the door across the room. I should have been in it by now. I knew I should have, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull it over my body yet.
I needed a few more minutes of being me, and once I put it on, everything would change.
“I’m sorry that everyone in the room lacked more social awareness than Evie,” Livia stated with an exaggerated eye roll.
“Okay,” Evelina spoke up. “Even I wasn’t stupid enough to bring up sex when Aria looks this terrified. I’m sure if you tell him that you don’t want to, he’ll back down.”
I would let her think that. I forced myself to nod. “Yeah, he seemed really great when I met him.”
Lie. Lie. Lie.
Could I tell them anything but lies? I felt like my entire relationship with my sisters had become consumed with all the things I hid from them.
“Let me take your place,” Livia said.
I opened my mouth to turn her down. “You’re terrified, Aria. You’ve never been scared of anything a day in your life. You faced Dad our entire lives without so much as backing down. You went to undergraduate and graduate school even though you weren’t allowed and you graduated with perfect grades. Hell, you plan on taking the bar exam even without Dad’s permission, don’t you?”
I didn’t. Not anymore. It wasn’t worth the consequences.
“I graduated high school a month ago and have nothing important happening in my life. You have so much. I’m sure nobody would care either way.”
“No.”
“Aria, you have done so much.”
“No,” I repeated, sitting up straighter. “You’re enrolled at NYU in the fall. You have so many friends who care about you. You have the chance to start a life one day. I will never accept that offer. I want to do this. I want to be the one to tie our families together.”
“I know you don’t.”
“Aria, you don’t—”
Our attention shifted to the door as it was opened briskly. Our father stopped at the entrance and crossed both arms over his chest.
“Give me the room with Aria,” he demanded.
I saw the heat in Livia’s gaze, but she didn’t argue as she stood and gave me one last pleading look. I only shook my head once as they slid past him and left me alone.
“Are you ready?”
I nodded slowly.
“You know what you’re going to do, correct?”
Another nod.
He reached forward and handed me a phone. It was a basic flip phone with no frills or additional features, and I turned it over in my hands.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s how you’ll contact me with information you find. Your sisters will be safe if I receive something relevant every week. If I don’t…”
He didn’t need to finish. I knew what he meant.
“Okay,” I replied. “Is there anything specific you need me to find?”
“He keeps everything about his business under wraps. I know essentially the same information as the media. I need to know his numbers and where most of his men are at any given time. I’m going to take the ground out from under him.”
I nodded, considering a world where my father was untouchable—the undisputed capo dei capi of the Italian mafia.
That was not a world I wanted to see.