Chapter Three Lila
CHAPTER THREE
LILA
TWO WEEKS LATER
“Madonna Santa, Chiara, your daughter is such a beauty. What a shame she’ll never marry!” Tammy, Mama’s friend, raked her gaze along my frame, clucking her tongue.
I wore a pink chiffon dress with off the shoulder pleats and a tight corset. My long pale hair tumbled in waves down to my waist, haloed by a tiara of snow-white roses. They were real roses, twisted into one another. The tiny thorns dug into my skull, but Mama always said that beauty was pain.
Mama picked the tiara and outfit.
She dictated my wardrobe. My activities. My future.
I felt a little ridiculous in the white satin gloves and high heels.
Like I was playing teatime with my dolls, something I did publicly sometimes to make people believe I was mentally delayed.
I hated the teatime routine and always thought it was overkill.
But as Mama said—in our world, one can never be too pretty or too cautious.
Besides, it wasn’t every day my eldest brother was getting married. And to a princess from the Outfit, no less.
Sofia’s family was well known in Chicago. So influential were the Bandinis that the wedding attracted none other than the president of the United States, Wolfe Keaton, and First Lady Francesca Rossi-Keaton.
Luca and Sofia stood in the far corner of the room, careful not to touch or look at one another as they politely mingled with their guests. My brother was tempered in movement and thinking. Eerily still and cold as a fish. He looked like he was attending his own funeral, not his wedding.
Sofia seemed to share his desolation. Misery was stamped on her lovely, tan face like the angry welts of a belt.
“Yes, well, in our world, marriage is overrated.” Mama huffed.
“I’m relieved Raffaella won’t be subjected to a marriage with a cruel man who would cheat and disappear on her for days on end.
I gave Vello three boys, and he shaped them into merciless killing machines.
Lila is my reward for fulfilling my end of the bargain. Mine to keep and protect.”
Tammy and the rest of the women in the circle nodded.
“Speaking of awful husbands…” Mina, another friend of Mama’s, flashed a sly smile.
“I saw Tony’s Alyssa in the shops the other day.
She had a black eye. Swore up and down it was due to undereye fillers gone wrong.
Just three months ago, her arm was in a cast. Does she think we’re all stupid?
She’s barely even twenty-seven. And with three kids already.
” Mina tsked. “I always told my Pietro to keep away from that man. He’s a hot-tempered one, Tony. ”
“And what about Maggio?” Tammy clucked her tongue. “Cheatin’ on his wife left and right. Three bastards out of wedlock, all on child support, and he still sees the mothers regularly. One of them even works for him. The baldracca.”
“They’re all as awful as each other.” Mama’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Cheating, beating their wives, bringing trouble to our doorsteps. Men are terrible creatures. The world would be a better place if women ruled it.”
“What, and miss our weekly gel manicure and hair appointments?” Tammy snorted, sparking a chorus of giggles. “No, thank you. They can do the hard work while we pamper ourselves. We earned it.”
“It’s not all bad.” Mina gestured a manicured hand to the ballroom in our mansion.
It was dazzling. With gilded pillars, marble arches, and frescoed ceilings so high you could barely see the medieval paintings on them.
The room glowed golden by candlelight and chandeliers, its deceiving warmth masquerading the awful people inside it.
I craned my neck past the sea of puffy hairdos, searching for Tate Blackthorn.
“Are you going to Ischia for the summer?” Rita asked Mama, her lips curving around her words in the corner of my eye. They were all sipping on champagne while I was holding a pink lemonade.
Everything about me was pink. My wardrobe. My room. My ruddy cheeks.
“Of course.” My mother’s face immediately relaxed at the mention of our summer house. “Lila and I enjoy the sun, the food, the culture. Ischia is our home.”
Mama and I spend two months out of the year on the Italian island to get away from the men in our family.
I liked going there. I was able to live more freely.
I read in public, played sports, and did cartwheels on the beach.
I had a Latin tutor and a math teacher. My mother took me to the movies to watch old Italian films, and I never had to play with dolls or school my face to a blank mask of nothing.
At home, I needed to hide these abilities. My intelligence.
“You should come,” Mama told the three women, but I knew she didn’t mean it. She loathed her friends. Loathed everyone and everything connected to the Camorra.
“What a marvelous idea,” Rita cooed. “I’ll speak to Antonio, see if we have any plans.”
I wondered why they did that. Made plans they weren’t going to execute. Feigned excitement about things they didn’t care about.
My heart skidded to a halt when I finally found the subject of my interest.
Tatum Blackthorn.
He stood across the room, next to Luca, Sofia, Enzo, and Achilles.
Half man, half god. A timeless marble statue towering over mere mortals.
Slung on his arm was his beautiful wife, Gia.
Draped in a red satin gown, she exhibited her pregnant belly.
I wondered what it felt like to be loved like her.
To have someone accept and adore your every flaw, your every win, your every breath.
Mama and her friends quarreled in the background, but I didn’t watch what they were saying. I was laser-focused on the Blackthorn couple.
Lila, this is unbecoming. You can’t keep staring at someone else’s husband, Mama’s voice scoffed in my head. I knew she was right, even though my interest in Blackthorn wasn’t romantic at all. All I wanted was another dance.
My eyes followed Tate’s lips as they shaped around his words.
“If you so much as look in her direction, I will scoop the other one out. And unlike the Ferrantes, I won’t stop the blood loss.”
A sharp elbow found my ribs—Mama’s way to tell me to stop staring—and my gaze quickly scurried to the person Tate spoke to.
A tall, agile man in a sharp suit, just like 80 percent of the room. And yet, I immediately recognized him, and bile hit the back of my throat.
The coppery hair.
The black eye patch.
The languid, fuck-you stance of a hunter quietly surveying the room for his next target.
His taciturn indifference to it all.
The man who nearly drowned me and then handed me his eyeball.
I wrenched my gaze away from him before he noticed me.
Next to him was another man who was unmistakably his brother, maybe even his twin.
“Oh, the music started.” Rita clapped excitedly. “Let’s gather around the newlyweds for their first dance.”
My feet shifted heavily toward the human ring forming around Luca and Sofia. The couple assumed their place robotically, with Luca taking the lead and moving to what I assumed was a waltz. Their faces were grim, their eyes dim with apathy.
Papa wedged himself between Mama and me, slinging his arms over our shoulders with a cunning grin. He appeared gaunt and yellow, but happy for a change.
“D’you see who’s here, Lila?” He turned to look at me. “The president of the United States, no less. And he brought his wife, too. This marriage puts us in a different league. The Ferrantes are going to be the new Kennedys. Mark my words.”
I blinked at him, pretending not to understand what he was saying.
“Eh, che Dio ti benedica. Your head just keeps your ears apart.” He patted the top of my head, laughing rancidly. “God really was cruel to you, cara mia. Giving you so much beauty and nothing to do with it.”
Ignoring the urge to smash his head against a sharp object, I returned my attention to Luca and Sofia.
The waltz ended, and when another one began, a stream of couples flooded the floor.
Everyone paired up like magnets, drawing toward one another in perfect harmony.
Couples swirled and fluttered. Laughed, hugged, and twirled.
I watched Tate Blackthorn holding his wife close, whispering in her ear, paying no heed to the tempo everyone else in the room was shackled to.
Enzo dipped a famous model to the floor, his lips a breath away from hers.
Achilles had a shoulder pressed against the wall, surveilling the room with his dead eyes, hands in his pockets. He didn’t dance, and I wondered if it was out of choice, or because no woman was brave enough to touch him.
“Roger, please.” My mother tapped a waiter on the shoulder. A middle-aged man spun around in his uniform, holding a silver tray filled to the brim with champagne. “Get Lila more pink lemonade,” my mother prompted. “Two ice cubes. Plastic cup.”
No sharp objects for me. My mother said I had severe mental impairment, which put me at age six or below on the scale.
A handsome, fair-haired man approached us from the center of the room. I recognized him instantly. Angelo Bandini was in his early thirties, impeccably mannered and dressed, and prominent in his family business. Sofia’s older brother.
He kissed Mama’s and Papa’s cheeks, then turned to me with a hopeful smile.
My heart fluttered against my rib cage like a butterfly testing its new wings. I forced myself not to smile back.
“Might I ask the youngest Ferrante for a dance?” I watched his lips move. He opened his hand, offering it to me.
My fingers twitched in anticipation beside my body.
“My daughter doesn’t dance,” Mama said.
Angelo chuckled good-naturedly. “Surely, just once? With her new brother-in-law. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
Mama stepped forward, cementing herself between us. I couldn’t see what she was saying, but Angelo’s beam morphed into a scowl. The sharp movements of her arms told me she was yelling. The blood drained from my face.