Rubies and Revenge (Cardinal Families #1)

1. Zarina

ZARINA

I want to laugh. I want to wave my hand and make the words Father said disappear, because they’re absurd. And I would, if my parents weren’t wearing their serious, stern faces that mean they expect me to do exactly as they ask. Whether that’s apologizing to my cousin after taking her dolly at age seven, or grinning and bearing it when a Falcone son’s hand brushes my ass at some gala.

The problem is, I usually do what they ask.

Because I probably shouldn’t have taken my cousin’s dolly out of her hands, even if she was being a jerk. Because some quote-accidental-unquote grab-ass is paltry in comparison to the deal they brokered with the Falcone Family at that gala. And because I understand cost versus profit and what is expected of the Gallo crime family’s only daughter, the princess who will inherit not just money, but also the power to bend half of Louredo to kiss my toes if I so choose.

And right now, I would so fucking choose.

“Can you repeat that, please?” I stand behind a tufted leather chair in the library. Dark, cherrywood shelves with a rolling ladder for each section line the two- story walls, and deep-seated leather furniture takes up the middle of the room. A stately desk piled with neatly organized ledgers and reports sits at the top of the room, a wall of windows looking out over the inner courtyard behind it. And to my right, between the shelves, hangs a portrait of my late grandfather, the man who built this room. Built our entire estate. The man whose rich, brown eyes with veins of gold passed down to my mother—his daughter—and then to me.

I dig my nails into the chair back, holding on lest I either stagger under the weight of his gaze or throw something at both my parents’ heads. Which is more likely is a complete toss-up.

“We’ve negotiated with the Accardis.” My mother perches on the edge of the desk, dressed in an electric-blue power suit, jacket buttoned over a lace camisole and thumbs hooked in her pockets. She’s tall, taller than my father when she wears her Louboutins, like she is at the moment. Her dark-brown eyes don’t mirror Grandfather’s painting right now. Their gold is muted, the richness dull and devoid of warmth. Like mud. “And they’ve agreed, along with their son, Marcus?—”

“See, that’s the problem.” I grind my teeth. My orange silk dress, which usually hugs my thighs, my ass, and my chest exactly right to make me feel powerful in its embrace, is currently chafing against my skin. It’s failing me for the first time. “ Son .” I spit the word as if it’s poison on my tongue. “Implying a penis-wearing boy .”

“Zarina,” my father chastises from the window. He stands hunched, his black hair graying at his temples. That I inherited from him. Mother’s eyes, Father’s hair. For a brief, hysterical second, I wonder if I’ll gray in the same pattern as him in thirty years. If my eyes will dull with the tempering of time.

I shake myself. This isn’t a typical Thursday family meeting. We aren’t discussing shipments or upcoming events. If we were, Father would look at me. If we were, Father would smile when he chastises me for “poor language. ”

Instead, he’s looking at the unlit cigar held between his fingers. Like this is some impersonal business deal where we shake hands and go our separate ways, richer for the dealing.

But it’s not.

Mother pushes off the desk to stand straight, adjusting her cuffs to lie just so. And then she continues as if neither of us have spoken. “They’ve agreed to clear our debts to them in exchange for a quarter of Gallo territory and you.”

And you. As in marriage. To Marcus Accardi. A man.

It takes every ounce of strength in my hundred-sixty-something-pound, five-foot-four body to keep my feet planted, my hands stayed, my voice a reasonable volume and tone. “You seem to be forgetting a very important conversation we had after you caught me kissing Isabella when I was fourteen.”

Mother purses her red-painted lips. Father presses his fingers to his forehead.

“Allow me to remind you.” I flick my hair off my shoulder, the blowout Mother “treated” me to this morning making a lot more sense now. “I am gay . I like pussy?—”

“Zarina!” Father snaps.

I ignore him. “Men are disgusting, and the thought of marrying one, especially one with a reputation as notorious as Marcus Accardi’s, makes me want to retch.”

Mother presses her fingers to the pinching wrinkle between her brows. “Zarina, this is not up for discussion.”

“It is absolutely up for discussion.” I file away the fact she doesn’t address Marcus’s reputation. One where he is known for beating his capos, his lieutenants, his own family. The same fate waits for me if I become his wife. “It’s my fucking life.”

As usual, Mother ignores me. She ignores my wishes, ignores my pleas, ignores my free fucking will. She smooths out her jacket and rolls back her shoulders, pinning me with her wet-mud glare. “They’ll be here for dinner within the hour. This deal is closing tonight. ”

I look to Father, like I always do when Mother hatches a scheme that asks too much of us. We’ve always reached for each other, tempered her maniacal greed together, but tonight, he won’t meet my gaze. He stares at that stupid fucking cigar as if he can unroll the tobacco leaf paper and find the answers to all his problems written there. Something squeezes in my chest, but I can’t name it, not right now.

I abandon him, like he has me, and return Mother’s look tenfold, hoping my eyes are more blazing than empty. “Without me, there is no deal.”

Mother strides toward me and cups her hand under my chin, her long, manicured fingernails stroking my jugular in subtle threat—how she does when I’m “throwing a tantrum” and embarrassing her. “You will do your duty to this family. We cannot afford to say no to the Accardis.”

I fight back the urge to cry, because I know it will only feed her an excuse to ignore me. “My duty to this family does not require the violation of my body.”

Mother’s claws catch on the chain of the necklace she and Father gifted me when I turned eighteen. A blood-red ruby in the shape of a teardrop held by a noose—a play on the Gallo family name. And now the very thing tightening around my throat. “It is a woman’s role.”

“It was your role, Mother,” I whisper, glancing at the man in the portrait hanging above us. The man who sold her hand in marriage to a small family with an ambitious son who would bring him more power and more wealth and run the family in his absence. A son so ambitious, he shed his family name to merge with ours. My father, Riccardo Toselli, now Gallo.

I wrap my hand around Mother’s wrist and yank myself free of her grip. “I will not let your story be mine.”

“Zarina Giovanna Gallo!” Father raises his voice from the window, finally deciding to join the conversation. “You will do this! ”

“I’m not a child anymore.” Fearful anger gathers in my throat. “You cannot compel me with a raised voice and my full name.”

“Then stop acting childish,” Mother snaps.

“Would you demand this of your capos?” I ask. “Would you demand this of a son?”

“We don’t have a son.” She waves her hand, dismissing the notion as easily as I wish I could dismiss this entire conversation.

I scrape my hands over my face, through my hair, grabbing it hard at the roots. “How did it get so bad? I’ve been asking to see the books for years. I could help find a better solution.”

“There is no better solution.” Father slips the cigar into his inner jacket pocket, probably saving it for a smoke with Alonso Accardi after Marcus “proposes” to me. I shudder at the thought.

I swallow past the acidic reply ready at the tip of my tongue and try for something with a bit more honey. “A new perspective might see something you can’t.”

“This is happening, Zarina.” Mother pours herself two fingers of bourbon from the bar cart beside the mantle and turns with the tumbler in hand. “We expect you to be agreeable and pleasant to Marcus until the license is signed and the deal closed.” She sips her drink and looks me up and down with a lazy shrug of her shoulder. “After that, behave as you wish.”

“You mean as he allows.” I narrow my eyes. “From what I hear, I’ll be wearing long sleeves and high necks once he owns me.”

Father squeezes his eyes shut as if they’re his ears and he can stop from hearing me. “We have no other option.”

I ask the question that terrifies me. “What could we lose?”

Mother drains the rest of her glass and stares up at her father’s portrait, at our eyes reflected in his. “Everything.”

I push down the fear stuck in my throat until all that’s left is the rage. Fear is useless. But rage burns. “So you’ll settle for a daughter and the Sallay neighborhood instead.”

They stand there, the distance of a twenty-eight-year marriage between them, and look anywhere but at me, but at each other. Neither say a word to deny it or comfort me. It’s not their way. Everything they do is for the Gallo name, for the legacy they either inherited or gave up everything to be a part of. And once a decision is made, it’s made. There’s no going back.

But not this time. Not for me.

I turn on my heel and stride to the door, throwing it open and letting it smack against the wall.

“Thirty minutes, Zarina,” Mother calls. “Agreeable and pleasant.”

I roll my shoulders back and shake out my hair, placing my armor piece by piece. Fuck agreeable and pleasant.

I’d rather riot.