Chapter 10 – Penelope
T he timer on the oven buzzed. I set the last tray of cupcakes on the counter beside it, grabbed the hot pads, and pulled the tray out from the heat and replaced it with the last batch.
“That smells so good,” Poppy moaned, sailing into the kitchen.
I flashed her a smile. “They will be!”
I didn’t add that it was my form of stress relief. This was the eve of her wedding. The rehearsal dinner was in less than twelve hours. The last thing she needed to worry about was how I felt.
“I wish I knew how to bake.” She reached out, thought better of it, and retracted her hand.
“Have one,” I insisted, pushing the chocolate pile of goodness to her.
“Thanks!” She snatched it, tore down the wrapping, and pulled off a huge piece. Steam shot from the cupcake.
“They can’t have frosting until they’re cooled, but I have it made if you want a spoonful to smear on it,” I offered.
She nodded, cheeks puffed like an adorable chipmunk. An innocent woodland creature. Who would march willingly into the lair of the beast in one more sunrise.
I turned away.
“Oh, you found your bracelet,” Poppy observed. “Where was it?”
I shook my wrist, the charms tinkling with their metallic lyrics. “In the bottom of my purse. I swear I looked there, but it was in a tear in the lining.”
I didn’t add that the purse hadn’t been broken when I left. I would sound like a crazy lady. Because who would have broken my purse? It didn’t make sense.
“I see. Well, I’m glad you found it. You’ve been collecting those charms since you were a kid.”
“Mhmm, since Dad gave me the chain and the cross charm when I was seven,” I agreed.
There was a moment of silence before my cousin whispered in a changed tone, “Penny?”
Looking through the kitchen window at the perfectly manicured yard that I hated I murmured, “Yeah?”
“I don’t think I can do this.”
Those words! I latched onto them, my heart bursting with joy.
“Never mind, I shouldn’t have said anything,” she added quickly.
Oh, no you don’t! Glancing around the aperture to make sure there were no household staff loitering about, I hurried to her. Grabbing her elbow, I drug her into the butler’s pantry and shut the door.
“What does that mean?” I asked eagerly.
Poppy shook her head, dark curls swaying over her shoulders. “We have nothing in common. I’ve spent the last three evenings with my fiancé and there’s nothing. No spark. No connection. How can I marry someone like that? Make a promise for life when I know we’ll both be miserable.”
“It’s not right,” I agreed.
“He kissed me, you know. On our last date.” Poppy brushed the tips of her fingers over her lips.
I balked.
“There was nothing, Penny! No kernel of heat or explosion of passion. It was like kissing the Mother Superior on the cheeks.” Poppy dropped against the door. “He’s a good match, but only on paper. There’s nothing between us.”
Guilt dropped in my stomach. I wasn’t able to say the same. A raging fire zipped through my veins at the memory of how that beast looked at me. I knew he felt it too. The raw hunger, the desperate need. We’d avoided each other since the night at the pool, but that didn’t make the electricity any less real. There was no lack of spark, no end of chemistry…with my cousin’s fiancé.
Liquid heat pulsed between my legs. Mother of god, I was turned on just thinking of his hands on me!
Stop it!
Mancini used those hands to kill without hesitation. But the reminder of what he was capable of didn’t shut down the rush of arousal in my veins.
“What should I do?” Poppy whispered.
The thickness in my throat wouldn’t let me respond quickly enough. I coughed and tried again. “What does your gut say?”
“Read more books.” Her laugh was halfhearted. “Maybe I can find a way to spice up our marriage,” she added hopefully.
That wasn’t the right trail of thought.
“So that’s the only reason you don’t want to marry him?” I pushed.
Poppy lifted a shoulder. “There’s not another option for a girl like me. You’re lucky, coming into the famiglia with worldly experience. You can bargain your way into a position of power.”
Could I? What did a girl like me really know about climbing the ranks? Just because I wanted to, didn’t mean I was able.
That seed of self-doubt, the one that was always front and center to tell me I wasn’t born capable of achievements like my sister whispered through my mind. Jillian was smart. Studious enough to become a nurse once I found the money to pay for her degree.
The tumble of thoughts in my mind nearly consumed me. As I struggled to put the negativity back in the box where I tried to keep it contained, another thought flitted through my mind. This one from the moonlit conversation with Mancini.
Uncle Tito told me yesterday that I would have a date with another capo for the rehearsal dinner, and a third for the wedding. After that, I would start meeting top-ranked soldiers, since his other capos were married.
When I’d pressed, my uncle had readily agreed that these dates were for me to feel out his capos. But I wondered: Why would a don suspect his captains? All of them? And his soldiers? That wasn’t good business, and the mob was more complex than a corporate structure. Disloyalty would be severely punished. There was no way these men needed their loyalty questioned.
Which meant Mancini might very well be right. I was little more than a prize to reward the loyalty of one of my uncle’s men.
The oven buzzed in the next room. The stress baking was my way of coping with the situation.
I squeezed Poppy’s hand, and we reentered the kitchen.
“I don’t know how, but it will be okay,” I promised.
“I wish I could trade places with you,” Poppy said wistfully. “You know about animals. You know how to work a kitchen. You have a job! In your world, you could marry for love.”
Trade places…. I set the last batch of cupcakes on the island. Because I needed my uncle, I signed up for a fate exactly like hers. There was no going back to Carrington and our ranch. Not anytime soon.
But my mother had done it.
“What would it take to dissolve your engagement contract?” I whispered.
Poppy looked around nervously. “A series of master chess moves.”
Every eBook I’d consumed about organized crime in America, every video interview of the mobsters who walked away, what I knew from fiction TV—it played through my head in a rapid succession.
I hurried to her and grabbed her hands. “What if we did trade places?”
An eager spark flashed in her eyes. But then fear—the kind that had been nurtured in her no doubt since a young age—sprang up.
“The one thing the mob fears is the law. They’ve been enemies as old as time. It’s how a lucky few have walked away,” I whispered quickly.
“They’d kill me,” Poppy murmured.
I shook my head. “Not if we have the right leverage. We can place you in my old life.”
“What about you?” Poppy hissed. “No, I can’t sacrifice you to do that.”
But I smiled, shaking my head harder. “You wouldn’t be! I have to be here.”
And then the whole story about my mother’s condition came tumbling out. “So you see, I’m already prepared to stay, to do whatever it takes. If I can free you at the same time, then two birds with one stone!”
“I don’t know. There would be some consequences for Papà—”
“Nothing he can’t handle! It’s now or never.” I wasn’t losing this momentum. This was the opportunity I’d been praying for, the little spark in her heart that I could blow into a great conflagration! Admitting she wasn’t invested in the marriage was the first step, and I would take it from there. “Your hair and makeup artist comes at four. We have until then to make the arrangements.”
With that, I abandoned the cupcakes and dragged my cousin upstairs.
“Just a few more hours, hun,” I murmured, sending a burst of good energy in Poppy’s direction.
Not that my cousin could hear me across the crowded room. The glamorous space pulsed with wealth and privilege. I felt like something the cat drug in. Once again, I was poured into one of her slimmer dresses that was too short on me. The capo I was supposed to spend the evening with was at least twenty-five years older than me, double my age. He’d mentioned how he had a son going to graduate school. That made me young enough to be his child.
I wasn’t sure what my uncle expected me to do with this one. It was apparent after just a few minutes of conversation that he lived, breathed, and bled Caravello Famiglia.
This isn’t a question of their loyalty. I took a long sip of my champagne. It slid easily down my throat, and I reluctantly resolved it had to be my first and last glass.
Did my uncle think so little of me that he assumed I wouldn’t figure his game out? And how would I play this development? I set the empty flute down and declined a second from my date.
Poppy needed me to have a clear head tonight. She would leave with cash and documents. Sherriff Forge would meet her at the Fargo-Moorhead border, and the whole Foster County Force was prepared to protect her. The documents would be kept safe and unused so long as her father didn’t come after her. If anything happened to Poppy, the local boys would raise Cain.
I smiled. Small towns had a way of protecting their own.
And it was up to me to distract the players here until the last possible moment. It was a thirteen-hour drive. If she left around midnight, she could make it to North Dakota before the wedding was supposed to take place. The biggest mercy was that my cousin knew how to drive, even though she’d never traveled far and never by herself.
But she was going to do it! She was going to escape.
Running through the plan once more kept me calm. Distracting the hairstylist would be easy. Tell them to be somewhere and tell other people they were supposed to be somewhere else. It would be a grand cluster mess.
Losing the nanny would be the trickiest part.
Another shiver rattled through me at that part. I would slip something into the drill sergeant’s coffee that would send her to the bathroom for the entire morning.
That idea was all Poppy. She’d given me the pills, and I was ready to drop the powder first thing in the morning.
Ruthless. With the potential of freedom dangling in front of her, that ruthless side came out of my little cousin. And I was so damn proud of her.
I watched her smile and nod to people she knew. It didn’t matter if she was running from this life because she had some notion of true love. Whatever it took! Maybe with age and scope, she could learn how messed up it was to be sold into marriage.
And yet here I stood, pretending to be amused by a wiry old capo of my uncle’s crime family.
“Don Tito is looking for you, Bruno,” a deep voice said smoothly.
My date straightened, almost as tall as I was, prattled his farewell to me, and ambled off in search of his boss.
I turned toward the man of the hour, ignoring the small jump of excitement in my chest. “Having a nice time, Mr. Mancini?”
That dark gaze studied me from behind the cold, unfeeling mask he wore in public. Try as I might, I couldn’t read him. What did he think when he saw me? Probably like every other person in the room: I didn’t belong? The poor relation who was no better than the help.
“I wanted to thank you, for standing with Miss Caravello tomorrow.”
It was impossible to tell if he was sincere.
I snorted and took a step away. The motives behind that sentiment didn’t matter.
A hard touch slipped around my wrist. “I mean it.”
“Shouldn’t you be by her side, lupo?” I hissed. “Not talking to me! ”
Those fingers slid up the inside of my wrist, producing a crackle of heat and the corresponding burst of gooseflesh. “I know you don’t approve of this marriage.”
“You’re right, I don’t!” I snapped, wrenching my arm away.
He didn’t hold me. “In time, you’ll come to understand our ways.”
“This isn’t some grand tradition! These people are here to celebrate a lamb who’s being led to the slaughter,” I growled, glaring up at him. I wouldn’t show the monster a drop of fear.
He nodded once. “I wish there was another way.”
Of all the twisted, messed up—wait . What did he say?
“You might find this hard to believe, but I’m not the villain you make me out to be.”
“Like hell you’re not,” I spat.
“I’m not,” he insisted. Something that could only be described as hunger slid through his eyes. “I’m coming into this with no choice.”
I sucked in a short breath, before gathering my senses around me once more. “You need to leave me alone. You’re supposed to be with her.”
The tip of his forefinger brushed down the length of mine. “Trust me, I know.”
That made my heart shudder. But I set my shoulders, jerking backward. “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
His voice roughened as he fell into Italian. “I’ve never allowed myself to want anything and yet I can’t seem to get you out of my head. It will screw everything up. But maybe in a different life, vespina.”
As my brain scrambled to process that long declaration, my tongue took on a mind of its own. “What the hell did you just say to me?”
His gaze narrowed. “Nothing.”
“That’s what I thought. Go charm someone else,” I snapped and turned away. Mother of god, that man was trouble! He might be kind to my cousin, but only because it was what a good husband was supposed to do. He was downright dangerous in every other aspect. And I counted the minutes until I could save Poppy from that fate.
Rejoining my date, who was flustered that he hadn’t actually been summoned by the boss, I accepted the glass of bubbly from him, not having any intention of drinking. I held the flute like a lifeline, fast breaths filling my lungs. Funny how the chilled liquid felt frozen against my still-burning fingers.