13. Zarina
ZARINA
A ll four dons focus on Tamayo.
As if the moment she slipped the ruby ring onto my finger, I became invisible. I am no longer Zarina Gallo, heiress to the Southern Districts and daughter of one of the most powerful families in Louredo. Now, I am only Andrea Tamayo’s fiancée, inheritor of her last name and mistress to a local gangster. Bitterness coats my tongue as Tamayo stands at my shoulder, neither ahead nor behind, and slips her hand out of my fingers and around my waist.
“This is ridiculous,” Alonso spits. I would like to agree, but for different reasons.
Jimmy holds up a hand for quiet. “When did this happen?” He’s studied us this whole time, smart enough to see through our sham but shrewd enough to let it play out. As don of the Eastern Districts, he can’t afford to cede more power. Not with the gentrification of the South and West moving half his high-rolling clientele across town.
“I asked her last month,” Tamayo answers for me. For us. My shoulders stiffen, and she drags her thumb across the bare skin of my back, teasing at the edge of my dress. “She said yes. ”
“I would’ve known.” Father’s voice is low and strained. To anyone else, it might sound like he’s holding back anger, but I’m not just anyone. I’ve spent all twenty-six-years of my life deciphering the tones of his voice, learning when to avoid him and his bitter, verbal lashings. “I would know if my daughter was rolling around in the mud.”
I whip my head around and suck in a breath to fire back, but Tamayo physically pulls me against her side and squeezes my ribs in a grip that’s both staying and punishing.
“We were forced to hide it.” Tamayo stands steady, entirely unbothered by the insult heavy in Father’s words. I don’t know how. I could rake my nails down his face right now. She continues, “Seeing as you don’t approve.”
“Understandable.” Jimmy brushes off his thighs and stands, adjusting his suit jacket. “It seems this meeting was unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary?” Alonso sputters.
Marcus sits next to him with a darkening glower and clenched jaw, the opposite of the idiotic smirk he wore when we entered. I toss him the same smug wink he gave me then.
He growls.
Jimmy speaks before Marcus can push out of his seat. “With their engagement, it renders the Accardi claim null. As well as yours, Ricci. She’s not been kidnapped, she’s eloped.”
“They’re not married yet!” Alonso’s face has progressed past tomato red into heart-attack purple, and I wish he would succumb to it already.
David Capone sits in the front pew, eyes flicking between us and Jimmy and Alonso, face wrinkled in disgust as if he’s seen a cockroach scuttle across the floor and disappear beneath the baseboards. He buttons and unbuttons his jacket, like he’s unsure if he should stand and end the meeting with Jimmy or if he should stay sitting and end my ungodly, improper engagement to another woman .
“Married or not, they’ve entered a contract. Those rings are as binding as blood.” Jimmy leans a hip against the back of David’s pew, mostly talking to him while answering Alonso. “A deal is unbreakable. It’s our most basic law.”
“We’re all liars, James.” Father’s voice is so quiet, I can hardly hear him. His most dangerous decibel level.
“Not on the Council,” Jimmy growls. “Not since the Russos.”
Alonso’s glare snaps to Jimmy at the mention of his long ago betrayal of the fallen fifth family. Their name is only whispered behind closed doors or when their surviving son’s entry into a gala is announced to the room. They are the bloody blight threaded into the fabric of our city’s history and splattered over Alonso Accardi’s name. The cautionary tale to us all when deals have no merit and Louredo no keepers.
Their name serves the purpose Jimmy intended: It spurs David to his feet with a clearing of his throat. A deal made by a member of the Cardinal Families must be upheld by all of them, even if it goes against every fiber of their sanctimonious, hypocritical beings.
“You’ve caused quite a ruckus, Andrea,” he says. As if I, a ranking member of a Cardinal Family, am not the entire reason he must hold up our “distasteful” agreement at all.
“I apologize, Mr. Capone.” Tamayo sounds properly contrite. I have to lock my gaze on David’s mustache to keep from rolling my eyes.
“Don’t let it happen again, hm?” He winks at her, like she’s a child caught sneaking candy—me—from the jar.
Alonso slams his hands on the back of a pew. “This is ludicrous! There’s no proof?—”
“Andrea has the marriage rite,” David announces. He avoids looking at me, buttoning his suit jacket and fussing with his cuffs. “The Council awaits an invitation to celebrate with you both. ”
The unspoken threat thickens the air around Tamayo and me. Don’t make a fool of him, or else .
“We’ll set a date soon,” Tamayo says.
“Splendid.” David clears his throat and turns for the aisle. He offers Tamayo a handshake, still not looking at me. “Stay smart.”
“Keep safe,” she replies with the customary farewell.
And then he turns on his heel and strides away. Not one further word uttered to me. Not even a wave or a nod. Tamayo’s thumb swipes over my ribs, and I almost rip myself away from her touch, too incensed to be told to calm down, whether aloud or not.
Instead I lean in to whisper in her ear, fake smile stretched across my face. “I need to leave before I scream.”
“Be good.” She clutches my waist tight. If I weren’t fuming, my skin hot with the anger swirling inside me, I might shiver. “Straight to the car.”
“Five minutes, or I leave without you.” I kiss her cheek and thank Jimmy as he congratulates us—Tamayo, really—then slip out of her grip before she can draw me close to her side again. I’ve spent most Sundays in this church, watching a man preach from the pulpit with gold hung around his neck as if he was a god himself. I hate this fucking place.
I stride down the aisle without glancing to my father, or to the Accardis, though I know each one of them wishes they could stop me. I don’t offer them the chance. All I want is a few moments alone, without anyone watching me, without anyone undressing me with their eyes, without anyone searching for a chink in the armor of my glare. Just me and deep breaths until the urge to tear something, anything, apart finally seeps out of me.
The doors to the nave swing shut behind me, placing a physical barrier between me and the men who continuously try to rule my life. My shoulders loosen infinitesimally, and I stretch out my jaw, trying to ease the pulsing ache from the force of my clenching. Blood pumps loud in my ears, and I wish I was already back at Tamayo’s, in a hot bath with a glass of wine.
The door creaks behind me.
I jerk straight again, the small relief I felt hardening into steel around my spine. When I swivel on my heel, my elbow is grabbed with a rough hand, and I’m swung around off-balance into a hard chest. Fingers grab my chin tight enough to leave a bruise if they don’t loosen.
Marcus Accardi forces me to meet his eye. “You’ve made a right mess of things.”
He’s a handsome man, objectively speaking. Strong jaw with full lips and bright, golden-brown eyes. His hair is thick and curly, his shoulders broad. But he’s a pig wrapped up in old power and rich silks. A pig with his hands on me.
I wrap my fist around his wrist and dig my fingers between the tendons there. He doesn’t flinch. I summon my most smug expression despite his harsh grip on my chin, his nails carving half-moon imprints over my skin. “Thanks, it’s my specialty.”
“It’s fucking stupid,” he snaps.
“So was thinking you could marry me.” I apply enough pressure that I think my acrylic nails might snap before they pierce his skin.
His thumb pulls down my bottom lip, pressing hard as he studies my face like he wants to paint it with something other than watercolor. “You shouldn’t use such a pretty mouth for speaking, darling.”
I jerk forward, teeth first, but he pulls his thumb back before I can bite it.
“Such a wild thing,” he muses. “I wonder how long it will take to break you.”
The words sink in, and more than his assault, more than his too-familiar touch, more than his leering glare, they send a wash of ice over my scalp and down my neck. Because he would break me, given the chance. And my parents would like to give him the chance.
I drag my nails down his arm, ripping his skin. “Let me go, Marcus.”
He steps forward, forcing me back until my shoulders smack against the stone wall of the antechamber, his hands somehow even tighter on my chin and elbow. If he shifts his grip just so and applies more pressure, he could strangle me. He could pin me against this wall and force more than his hands on me.
And I can’t do much about it. One mark on his pretty head, one drop of blood spilled, and it’d spark a war. But his trespassing on my body and the subsequent pain? It’d be swept away and hidden under the rug. Another woman ruined by a man.
Marcus towers over me to snarl in my ear. “You’re mine to hold, Zarina. Mine to marry. You made a promise I don’t intend to keep.”
I refuse to be just another woman who cowers and shudders away. I wrap my hand around his neck before he can flinch and press my fingers against his carotid. “Let me go. Now.”
He releases my chin finally, but only to brush over my knuckles like they’re a necklace rather than a noose. I grind my teeth and squeeze harder.
“Marcus!” Father’s voice booms through the entrance hall.
Marcus smirks with all the vicious intention of a starved predator. He taps the blood-red ruby engagement ring on my finger wrapped around his throat. “Until next time, darling.”
He releases me and steps out of my grip, glancing back at Father. Before he can turn, before Father can stop me, before I can stop myself, I rear back and slap him with my full strength. His head snaps with the force of it, and I shove him backward hard enough to make him stumble.
My chest shakes, but my voice does not. “Touch me again, and I’ll do my fucking worst, Marcus Accardi. ”
“Zarina!” Father scolds.
Marcus holds up his hand. “Nothing happened, Ricci.” He says my father’s nickname like he’s speaking to a child, and it makes me want to slap him again. “Just a little caress between lovers.”
“Never,” I hiss.
Father stands between us, his back to me as he addresses the pig. “Marcus, leave us.”
He wiggles his fingers in a condescending wave. “Good night, darling.”
“Choke, Marcus.” I glare as he backs away with the same too-smug, lecherous look he wore when we arrived.
“Zarina Giovanna Gallo, behave yourself,” Father mutters.
The door thumps shut behind Marcus, and I snatch the handkerchief out of Father’s jacket pocket to wipe it over my face. Lipstick darkens the white fabric alongside smears of concealer, and yet not a speck of the disgust crawling over my skin comes off.
“What have you done?” Father spits the words at me through clenched teeth.
I rub off the rest of my lip color before shoving the handkerchief at his chest. “I saved myself from a lifetime of abuse and guaranteed murder.”
Father takes the fabric with an exasperated huff. “We know who Marcus is. We had a plan!”
“And what plan was that? Negotiate a no-wife-beating clause?”
He wrinkles his nose and looks away, and my fucking god, that was the plan.
My mouth drops. I can still feel the pressure of Marcus’s fingers on my chin, his thumb on my lip, his grip around my neck. “No clause in any contract would ever keep that man’s hands to himself. You were fooling yourself. Both of you.”
“It doesn’t matter now, because we no longer have the leverage to negotiate anything.” He rubs over his face, as if he can wipe away the truth. When he drops his hand, shadows line his eyes and hollow his cheeks. The signs are there—have been there for months. But I didn’t pay attention.
I step closer, lowering my voice. “Why negotiate the deal at all, Father?”
He shakes his head, waving his hand.
“Please,” I plead, “just tell me.”
“Your mother will kill me,” he whispers.
“Wouldn’t be the first attempt,” I say.
“Zarina.”
“Father.” I use the same chastising tone he does. Despite the specter of Marcus’s face looming over me, his fingers digging into my skin, his breath hot on my ear, and the overwhelming urge to run out of here to scrub myself clean of all of it, I can’t help but lean closer to my father. The Gallos—my family—are in trouble. I want to help.
“Please,” I whisper again, “let me help.”
Father stares at the handkerchief, at the makeup smeared across it, before crumpling it in his fist and shoving it in his pocket. He raises his head, and I know without a word that he’s the same proud, stupid man he’s always been.
“Are you really marrying Andrea Tamayo?” he asks.
I sigh. “Does it matter?”
“No,” he snorts. Like this is the most unbelievable, unacceptable part of this entire sham of a meeting, rather than his failure as a father, a don, and a man. “I guess not.”
Father sniffs and rolls his shoulders back, walking to the door without another glance. “Stay smart.”
I watch him leave me, makeup ruined with smarting bruises forming on my chin, and wish for the first time in a long time that I wasn’t his daughter. “Keep safe.”