Chapter 3
THREE
LUCIE
“I’m going to miss you so much,” Dante exclaims as he squeezes me into his arms, his broad frame enveloping me with that familiarity I’ve become so accustomed to.
Handing me a glass of red wine, he guides me outside to the terrace, where a few of his men are smoking. With a shake of his head, they disappear back inside. Sometimes, I forget he’s the Head of the Cosa Nostra here in London. To me, he’s just Dante. The brother I never had.
“There’s something I need to say,” he starts, his green eyes brimming with emotions. “I want to apologise to you, Loulou.”
I chuckle awkwardly. “Whatever for?”
“It was wrong of me to ask you to marry someone you didn’t know and didn’t love. I was a fool to ask you to go through with this. An asshole, even.”
“Dante, I—”
He takes the wine glass from my hand and sets it down on a low, metal coffee table in front of the outdoor sofa, before inviting me to sit next to him.
Facing me, his fierce determination illuminated by the fire nearby, he takes both my hands in his.
“Don’t pretend it was easy and you did it gladly, Lucie.
Not with me. I took your freedom. I took your choice away.
And you didn’t even blink. I’ll never forget that you did that for me. ”
“I’d do anything for you, Dante.”
“I know. But you will never have to. Not ever again. You helped me with this marriage, and you saved me last summer. Without you—” His voice breaks before he takes a deep inhale and smiles kindly at me.
“We’re only cousins, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re my sister.
I’ll never use you like I did. Please forgive me.
I promise I’ll make sure you lead the life you want.
If that’s away from us all, good. You’ll always be protected even if you prefer to stay away, Loulou. ”
I gulp. His words remind me that I have no clue who I am without the life I was assigned to lead, without this role to play.
“Thank you. Right now, I just want a break from all the blood and death, you know?”
He smiles. “Of course.”
My eyes fill up with tears, and I look up at the stars so they don’t fall and ruin my make-up. “And people think you only escape the mafia in a body bag,” I chuckle.
“Oh, they do. But not you. For all intents and purposes, you’re still a Ventura, you’re still Cosa Nostra. You’ll benefit from the same protection you always did. But it’ll be more like a job we won’t talk about with you. You deserve to be happy and safe.”
I don’t know about happy and safe. The only thing I know is that I’m about to end up all alone. Again. It’s confusing. I’m on the brink of escaping the life that killed my parents and almost took the man in front of me, yet my heart is breaking.
After my parents died and I was shipped to France to live with a relative of the Ventura who treated me like the daughter he never had, I thought it’d be the last time I felt that way.
But it stuck. Everywhere I’ve ever gone.
With everyone. I always end up alone. If I’m not perfect and sweet, it’s even more chance for them to discard me, abandon me.
Who would stick around for a difficult child?
That’s who I was before. If only the last words I said to my mum and dad hadn’t been ‘I hate you’.
“I’m so proud of you for following your dreams,” Dante continues, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “I love you to the moon and back, Loulou.”
His words hit me like a knife to the chest, twisting with all the love he’s pouring into me.
It’s not like I don’t know what love is.
My adoptive father, Bruno, is an effusive man.
Despite teaching me that my place was to serve the family, he always made sure I knew how grateful he was that I was his daughter and how proud of me he was, even if I didn’t bear his name.
He was still gone for business most of the time.
My real parents were still dead, my hateful words the last thing they heard me say as they released their last breaths.
And the friends I’ve made? They were never friends to begin with.
They used me for my dad’s money and status.
The lovers I’ve had? I was a stepping stone to get favours with my dad and move up the ladder of our organisation.
Dante’s speech is an acknowledgement of the wrong he did me.
Something I never thought I’d get. But accepting his apology makes me wildly uncomfortable.
I did everything right and still got abandoned or left on the side of the road.
Little orphan Lucie, unloved, used for what she could bring to the people who were supposed to love her.
Including Dante. What will happen when I’m not the little Miss Sunshine I’ve created for everyone? How worse can it get?
“You would have done the same for me.”
The words ring hollow and flat, though I do believe in them. Accepting his apology would mean I have to face that he didn’t treat me like a brother should and I’m not ready to face that.
When he opens his arms, I gladly shuffle on the sofa to accept his embrace. I clench my jaw as tight as I can to stave off the tears that want to flow on his expensive suit. I just found the large family I wanted, that accepts and loves me, and I have to leave them already.
“Go on,” I say when we separate again. “I’m going to stay here for just a moment. I’ll be back inside in a few minutes.”
Dante nods and kisses my cheek before leaving me to my dark thoughts.
I thought following my dream of escaping the mafia and violence would be easy. So why do I feel like I’m cleaving my heart into pieces that won’t ever match again?
I pick up my phone from the black clutch I carried with me and dial the one person I need to hear right now.
“Salut Papa,” I greet my dad.
“Salut ma princesse. How’s your goodbye party going?”
“It would be better if you were here,” I sing-song, trying to bring levity to the topic. I wanted him here.
“Look behind you.”
I turn around and there he stands, a few steps behind me. Dressed in a beige suit with a dark brown dress shirt, he’s the picture of dapper. I run and crash into his arms. “You’re here.”
“Of course, I am, princesse.” We remain silent for a beat, locked in a tight hug that makes me feel both at home and hurt. Because I’ll miss it. When he steps back, he frowns. “Did you think I’d miss your goodbye party?”
It’s not only my goodbye party from London. This is a farewell to the Famiglia with a big F, the one you’re never supposed to leave.
“Are you still sure about this?”
“Yes, Papa. It’s what’s best for me.”
He nods, but it’s impossible to miss the flash of hurt in his brown eyes. He raised me to take over. And also, to make my own decisions. And I didn’t choose him.
He’d never tell me he’s disappointed, but it taints the air between us regardless. My father believed I would take over. The overwhelming feeling of inadequacy threatens to have me look for a blade and lock myself up until I’ve bled it out of me.
I do what I’ve done for the past three years instead. I smile brightly at him, put the offensive, pesky feeling in a box and ignore it for the rest of the night.
“You’ll still come to visit right? I’m still your annoying daughter, after all.”
“Not as annoying as Dante. ” We laugh, but it’s stilted. “I’ll come when I can, Loulou. It’s going to be good for you to start fresh.”
My dad has always involved me in the business side of the French branch of the Cosa Nostra. He’s always been truthful with me and right now, he’s lying through his teeth. He didn’t want me to leave for London and even less to separate from my roots.
His mouth tightens before he can cover it. I ignore what my instincts tell me, that he’s hiding something. I’m too raw and frazzled to face that tonight.
“I’ll miss you, dad.”
“I’ll miss you, too, princesse.”
“If you don’t visit, I’ll have Diane fly to see me first, and then you’ll be a sore loser when she tells you all about it,” I say, mentioning his right-hand-man’s wife.
She’s like a mother to me, and the friendly competition between my dad and her to see who can get the best hugs and smiles from me is always raging.
“I’m sure she’d love to rub it in my face,” my dad says. “Meanwhile, I’ll rub it in hers that I’m here and she’s not. Send her a selfie.”
He juts his chin to the phone in my hand and I snap a picture of us, grinning, to my godmother.
She’s a quiet and reassuring presence in my life.
As the wife of my dad’s second-in-command, Michel Armani, she was always at our house.
She used to braid my hair and take me shopping.
It was obvious she’d never been around a kid, much less a twelve-year-old who just gotten her period and lost her parents.
But she tried. I went to her for every question my father couldn’t possibly have an answer to.
I wince imagining how he’d have reacted if I’d asked him why I bled after I was with my first boyfriend, and if it was normal that I wanted to be with women, too.
Diane laughed it off and helped me figure out my pansexuality and navigate period cramps, amongst other things.
“I’ll miss her,” I say, my smile turning tight. I try to hide it behind a joke. “Michel, too, even if he’s a grumpy asshole.”
“He’s even worse now that his favourite god-daughter doesn’t live at home. Imagine when you’re even further away.”
“I’m his only god-daughter.”
“Exactly.” My dad winks and I shake my head.
Grief is funny. It coexists too seamlessly with joy, and I find that part the hardest. Allowing myself to laugh as I want to cry is its own kind of torture. It makes me want to reach for a knife and strike at my thighs again and again. Like I used to.
Fuck, that box in my head is overflowing. It hasn’t been this bad for a while. I’m going to need the coldest of showers when I get home tonight.
“Let’s get inside, princesse. Your cousin hired a band, and if I have to hear him tell me one more time how much you’re going to like it, I’m going to punch him, or myself, unconscious.”
The tension in my body diffuses, the urge bleeding out as my thoughts get replaced with my cousin’s antics.
I can go on for one more day.
My dad enters the main room in front of me. I linger behind, taking one last deep breath of night air, bracing for the pain of leaving these people—people I love—behind.
A sensation of heaviness settles on my shoulder, as if someone’s behind me. I turn around, squinting to scan my surrounding for the source. There’s nothing to see in the darkness of the gardens. I shake my head and get back inside.
When I enter, my eyes involuntarily seek a massive man in the crowd, but I can’t find him. He probably left already.
I lose myself in the music and the laughter, leaving Diane in another box in my head along with Mariella’s condition, and the fear of losing my family in another. At some point, I’ll run out of boxes.
Inside, whispers of Toma of all people drift to me.
Women look for him in the shadows, using his monicker instead of the four letters of his name, gossiping about never seeing him with anyone and taking bets on who will score him tonight.
I want to sneer. I don’t, and smile tightly instead.
He means nothing to me. And in two days, he’ll be in the rear mirror, like everyone else in this room.
“He killed a man with his bare hands,” one says.
“I bet he can do a lot of other things with these hands of his,” another comments. “Have you seen how big he is?”
I ignore the way my gut twists and get lost in the music the band makes, dancing with Aleksei, Irina, Dante, my dad. The people I love.
They hug me, dance with me, drink me under the table—that was expected—and make me feel like no matter what, I will always have a place to return to. I cling to that.
Yet, the whole night, the feeling that I’m being watched doesn’t abate. And I find it somewhat comforting.