Chapter 4
Ilove my brothers to death, maybe a little more than is strictly healthy, even, but I’m not blind or dumb. With those two goofballs pulling the levers of power, the whole business will be one hairpin turn away from flipping into a ditch and turning into a smoking wreck.
Like it makes any difference what I think or what I know. And like anyone in the family or outside it would give two shits for my thoughts, anyway.
In our world, power in the family doesn’t pass down to the most talented or the most deserving. Not even, in my case, to the eldest. Only if you happen to be a boy. So the only way that I could get anywhere near the power in a family would be if I married a first-born.
The curse of being the ‘princess’ in the third level family is, there are only two men I can realistically marry up to. Alessio, the eldest of the Fortuna family, is dreamy hot, with the hands and eyes of a killer. But he’s never going to look at me.
I wouldn’t even stand a chance with his dark-eyed, muscular brother, Bruno.
Images of both of them have made my stomach flutter and flip and caused my thighs to clench, and generally drenched my pillows in the middle of the night often enough. But that’s no more than fantasy.
In my dreams I might lure the wicked sons of the Fortuna family into torrid twists and sweaty tumbles all night long, but in the real world? Forget about it. They will be sure to marry up to the Puccis, or into more powerful families from another city. We may be the next family down the ladder from the Fortunas, but we’re still a long, long climb below them.
We’re a third-rung mob family in this town, and there’s no way for us to move up. Not without all the Puccis and the Fortunas dying in a fire. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it, it’s just not doable. Not by me, at any rate.
I’m not proud of that side of me, but it is me and I have to be honest with myself. My future looks bleak and miserable enough already. I have to look it in the eye. See it all for what it is. I can’t leave myself exposed and open to bad surprises.
No, it seems like every time Daddy needs to do something he can’t face or he doesn’t want to do, he dumps it on me. That way he can always blame me for how it turns out. Dispassionately, I start to wonder if Daddy would have stuck to the plan. No, I’m certain he would have lost it with Gianni and made way more of a mess of him than I did. Paulo, too.
That’s why he sent me. I’m his surrogate.