Chapter 1
Besiana
Ihate this garden. I hate that it’s perfect. I hate the too-straight rows of peonies. I hate that the landscapers hover, gloved hands ready to prune and tuck, waiting for something to fall. I hate that I’m not allowed to touch any of it.
Mornings, I’m drawn to this patch of beauty like a starving thing, only to remember none of it belongs to me. But I come here every day, sit on the cold bench with a book on my knees, and try to inhale as much freedom as my lungs allow.
I’m reading poetry. Baba doesn’t approve. He thinks it makes me unstable, ungrateful, and vulnerable. He has no idea how much I’m all of these things already.
I retrieve a page from the gravel path, just as footsteps crunch around the corner. I know those measured footsteps.
Adrian Dushku. My father, Baba. A man who orders life and death with the same detached precision.
“You always liked the fall,” he says.
My fingers curl tight around the book, and I look up and find him watching. He’s good at that. Like a wolf. Silent, calculating, knowing what he wants before he ever says it. I exhale slowly and let my hands relax.
“Valmira always liked the garden, too.” He sits beside me, never waiting for an invitation. “Did you bring your coat?”
He asks the question like it’s loaded. Like he’s accusing me of leaving it inside on purpose, testing him, acting out. I left it inside, but not for those reasons. Only to feel closer to the world outside these walls, to sense every molecule of cold air on my skin.
“I’m fine,” I say.
The morning is brittle. I sit straighter and close the book. He waits, knowing that if he’s patient enough, I’ll be the one to break. I always am.
“Was Mami allowed to touch all this?” I keep my voice steady. I touch the knife strapped to my thigh, the only piece of her I have left. His eyes follow the motion, and I drop my hand. A few of the staff pause to watch us. I imagine they are hoping to see something worth gossiping about later.
“Don’t be childish.” He shrugs, a calculated movement as he observes me closely. “Your mother was grateful for what she had, and she would tell you to be the same.”
Something pinches at my throat, and I swallow it down, trying not to let it show on my face. Grateful. I’m not sure I even know what that is. Adrian studies me, and I force myself to meet his gaze. His eyes are still, the color of storm clouds.
My father’s stillness is unsettling. He looks like he might have been carved from stone, if stone wore a tailored suit. “I have an opportunity for you.”
Opportunity. The word curdles in the air.
“And I expect you not to resist.” He speaks like that, always. Expecting my obedience, demanding it with a quiet sort of ruthlessness. I give him what he wants and slip into the role I know by rote.
“Of course.” I choke on the submissiveness. Agreement. The only words that will ever earn my survival.
“You’re marrying Domenico Rosetti.” He leans back, like it’s nothing, like he’s discussing the weather. “You leave in three days.”
I sit there, stone still, my mind cracking open. My life was always headed to this point, of course, I know that. Daughter of the Dushku cartel, raised to be the perfect wife and spy. But the Rosettis? They are the worst kind of men, brutal beyond compare.
Baba keeps watching, his eyes tracing every flicker of expression that might betray me. Cool, calculating. The wall I’ve built around myself begins to splinter.
The Rosettis are notorious. Dangerous. Violent. They are everything Baba admires.
His eyes lock on mine with unnerving precision. He knows I won’t fight him. He knows he’s broken me enough to know my place.
Three days.
I don’t blame my father, this is how he loves me. The only way he knows how. It’s the only way I know, too. But I have to question this decision.
“The Rosettis killed our men. Just a couple of months ago, they swarmed our warehouse and slaughtered us. How can you forgive them so readily?”
The look in my father’s eyes makes my blood run cold.
He pierces me with that pale stare of his.
I’m a fool to think he forgives anything.
There’s something else he wants, something else he’s after.
I’ve grown up watching him, trying to anticipate which way he’ll move, wondering how he can be so blank, so stripped of feeling. All I know is he’s playing a long game.
My free hand traces the edge of the bench as my mind spins. I try to think like him, strategic and calculated. But I can’t forget the men we lost or the way my heart crashed at the news of the attack.
“This is to prevent an outright war, Besiana. Uniting our families will buy us peace.”
War. It’s the kind of thing Baba excels at.
“But the Rosettis,” I repeat, like the word will poison me.
“Them, yes.”
I fold the poetry shut. The sound is small but final. My hands are steady. I’ve had practice. “I see.”
He takes a folder from inside his coat and offers it to me. A file. Details. Evidence. I should know better by now, but the last fragments of hope scatter like ash as I take it from him. He is precise, even when he’s breaking me.
I open the folder, let it sit on my lap, and let the weight of it pin me in place.
A single photo of Domenico Rosetti. Green eyes, hard as glass.
A jaw cut from stone. He looks like he’s capable of anything.
As if nothing will ever surprise him or stop him.
As if the world is his, and the rest of us exist to serve him.
His soul looks like a carbon copy of my father’s. And I’m supposed to marry him.
I trace my finger over the image, feeling the finality of it. It feels like a reckoning. The photo stares back, and I imagine it’s trying to consume me.
“Domenico Rosetti,” Baba says.
“What do you need from me?” My voice is steady, calculated. This is how I protect myself.
Adrian watches me carefully. His eyes are iron, now. “The Rosettis are manufacturing a new designer drug, Iride. It gives a clean high, if the rumors are true, and I want it.”
“A drug?” The word is out before I can catch it.
“They have a chemist, some genius dropout from Caltech, and I want her. I want the drug. I want the chemist. I want the recipe.”
My father is selling me for access to a designer high. I suppose I should be flattered it isn’t just ordinary old cocaine or MDMA.
“I will get the information,” I say.
“If you fail, I cannot protect you.” He smiles. I think he means it to be comforting.
Silence swells between us. I make myself look at him, and the smile vanishes.
“So, Besiana?” He waits for my answer, though we both know it’s a formality.
“I’ll do it.” My voice doesn’t tremble, and my hands are still. I clutch the file and smooth my expression. I’ve done this before, and I’ll do it again.
“And Besiana?”
I hold my breath.
“Don’t disappoint me.” He doesn’t look back as he walks away, crunching over the gravel, his steps as measured and controlled as his words.
The garden trembles with cold silence. I stare at the poems, at the file, at my future spread out like a map with no escape route. Three days.
I touch the edge of the file and open it again, letting the photo pierce me. His eyes follow me, this man who will soon own me as thoroughly as my father does now. I memorize his features and steel myself.
Domenico Rosetti. I let the rest of the file wash over me: history, alliances, weaknesses. I soak it all up, let it fortify me against the storm to come.
Baba expects me to spy. To return with secrets I’ve teased out between kisses and lies. He expects me to bend to this Rosetti family, the way I’ve bent to his.
Let him think I’m unfeeling. I’ll be a statue like him, like Domenico, and when they aren’t watching, I’ll crack them both wide open.