Chapter 6 Leanna
LEANNA
Once I’m on the train, I FaceTime Maria, my ride-or-die since kindergarten.
Her dad’s one of my father’s most trusted enforcers, and she’s the only person outside the family who knows the whole truth about my world.
When she chose UCLA, I was shocked.
Her father is extremely protective and even more traditional than mine, which is saying a lot considering mine is the standard-bearer for how people should act within a made family.
“Hey girl,” she chirps through the phone screen. “Where are you?”
“On the train home,” I say.
“Home as in…”
“My apartment,” I say. “I just left Tuesday night dinner with the menfolk.”
“Oh? How was that?”
“Ah, Carlotta makes amazing pasta, Vince is a psychopathic moron, and my father is obsessed with hockey.”
“So, the same, then.”
“Yep.”
“And how are you?”
I grin. “I’m good.”
“What’s that cheesy smile all about? You got a secret that needs to be told?”
She knows me too well. I’ve been dying to tell someone the whole story about that lap dance last week.
My college friends only got the PG version—how I found an open room, danced for a masked stranger, and bolted the second the timer went off.
Haha, super weird and funny, right?
But with Maria, I tell the truth. I tell her about the strange way the man made me feel, like I needed to please him. I wanted him to find me sexy, to want to touch me.
Maria’s the only one who knows my real secret—I’m a virgin.
Yep. A full-grown woman who’s never had a man inside her.
Shocking, right? Considering everything else about me. I’m a walking contradiction: I chase dares, flirt with danger, and never back down from a fight. My dad calls me impulsive. I call it alive.
But for all my recklessness, I’m not careless.
I have lines I don’t cross.
I’ve never had a real boyfriend, too risky, too complicated, when my father keeps tabs on my every move.
I’ve never given myself completely, even though I know exactly what I like. Because deep down, I’m waiting.
Not for a husband. Not for some fairytale forever.
Just… someone who makes it matter.
The one who’ll make me forget why I waited at all.
Maybe that’s naive.
Maybe I’m just romanticizing my own restraint.
But hey, risk is my favorite vice.
And if sex is just another kind of danger… maybe I’m just waiting for the right one to make me reckless.
“So you…Had an orgasm from dry humping a man in a mask?” she asks after I’ve told the whole story. “And he really couldn’t see you? Like, at all?”
“Yes and yes,” I confirm. “And I know, it’s so weird, but it was also…hot?”
“I mean, one assumes it was hot, considering the orgasm. And he never, like, touched you?”
“I mean, he touched me a little, mostly over my dress. He touched my nipple and my ass, but only because they were already exposed. Not my…you know…privates.”
Maria cackles so loud through the speaker that people on the train turn to look. I feel my cheeks go hot with embarrassment.
“Your privates?” She wheezes with laughter. “Leanna. You’re a grown-ass woman, not a kindergartener.”
“I mean, I don’t know…”
“Don’t know what? How to say the word clit? Pussy?”
“I know how to say them,” I say, rolling my eyes, cheeks still bright with color. “I’m just…on the train.”
She yells, “Hey, people! Women have clits and pussies! Women like their clits and pussies touched! But only with consent!”
“Ssstoppp,” I hiss, but I can’t stop grinning. This is why she’s my oldest friend.
She wipes tears from her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Look, I love you, so you know I always have your back. And you know I’ll always tell it to you straight. Are you ready?”
I nod once. “Shoot.”
“Okay. You have had what I feel confident I can call lackluster or ho-hum sexual experiences to date. You’ve had more orgasms from playing with yourself than you’ve had from your partners, and the experiences have been so uninspiring that you literally couldn’t stomach taking it to the next level. Am I right so far?”
“I guess…”
“Shut up. Of course I’m right. I know you better than anyone. So, being you, you decide to do a lap dance on a stranger on a dare. And, ooh, it’s a Russian mob club, which only makes it hotter, because you love what’s off-limits.”
She’s on a roll now, eyes sparkling. “Even better? He can’t see you. No idea you’re a Campisi. No clue you’re the smartest person in the room. No expectations except that you move and be sexy for him. So you do. You drop every inhibition, every wall, and for once, you just let yourself be free.”
She’s so right about this, it isn’t even funny.
“My friend,” she continues, “I think you need something, I don’t know, darker? Maybe you haven’t wanted sex because you haven’t gotten what you really need. Maybe this weird Russian is the dark lord you’ve been looking for.”
“Dark lord,” I repeat with a snigger. “Nerd.”
“I’m down for this,” she says. “But.”
“But?”
“But, this is a Russian-owned club. You don’t know who or what they’re trafficking in and out of that place, and what if they figure out who you really are? What if they think you’re a spy for your dad? It could get dangerous.”
I wave this off. I’ve thought of it, but I just don’t think it’s possible. No one knows I’m going back. My college roommates all believe it was a one-time joke.
Maria is literally the only one who knows I’ll go back again this Friday.
“It’s harmless fun. The guy can’t see me. I don’t know his face. I’m using a fake name. I literally show up, dance for him in a private room, and then walk away with a thousand bucks in my pocket. Who would ever figure out who I really am? It’s not like I’m filling out tax forms.”
My friend looks positively unconvinced. “As I said, I’ll always have your back.
But I don’t want you to get hurt. And, I don’t know, maybe it’s time to settle down?
Take things with your family more seriously?
You run around like you’re not the daughter of a mob boss.
Our families are into some shit, you know, and they can be targets. You could be a target.”
I make a face. “Who are you, and where is my fun friend Maria? I’m not interested in running the family. I don’t want that life; my dad knows that.”
“And what is it you want to do?” Maria asks, now fully serious.
“I want to graduate from college and then pack a backpack and go travel the world. I want to have sex with some hot, foreign guy finally. I want to eat weird food and buy little trinkets for my friends. And after that, I want to apply for regular jobs at ordinary companies. I want to go work in a cubicle, but like totally kill it so I get promoted to some badass girl-boss position.”
“You could be a badass girl-boss in the Campisi organization,” Maria points out. “Like, run multiple businesses and also, maybe, kill people on the side.”
I roll my eyes. “I extra don’t want that part. And I don’t want to marry some Campisi-adjacent goon that my dad deems an appropriate match, like it’s the seventeenth century or something.”
Maria purses her lips, making them disappear.
“What?” I ask. “You had high hopes for me marrying some loyal idiot and pumping out babies that some nanny can babysit while I plot out a network of criminal activities? Oh, and that loyal idiot is probably only loyal to my dad. He’s probably screwing the nanny.”
“That’s so…oddly specific,” Maria says, shaking her head, smirking. “You don’t want to get married? Have a family?”
“No. That’s not on my bucket list at all.
I want to be an independent woman. Nothing about any of the men I know or have dated makes me think I’d ever find someone interesting enough to make me want to marry, let alone procreate.
And you literally just said I should let my freak flag fly, so why are you pushing so hard on this? ”
My friend looks away from the screen. Seems like she’s steeling herself. Then she blurts. “I’m getting married.”
“I’m sorry? What was that?”
“I’ll be coming home after graduation. And I’m getting married.”
I’m dead silent. Stunned.
“Wooo?” Maria offers a lackluster.
“To whom?” I ask.
“Michael DiGiovanni?”
“Is that a question? Because I don’t know the answer.”
“Mikey Dee,” she confirms.
“And…how did this happen? Last I heard, he was in New York.”
“He is in New York.”
I grin at her. “So… your dad set up this whole thing with the guy, right?”
Maria shrugs, rolling her eyes. “Yeah. Totally arranged. But before you freak out, he didn’t force me or anything. He just… suggested I talk to him. Maybe call a few times, see if we clicked. That kind of thing.”
“And?” I press, leaning in.
“We did. We actually hit it off. Like… really hit it off. He started flying back and forth every weekend. And then…” She grins, a little dreamy. “Yeah. We fell in love.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Every weekend? That’s… dedication.”
“Or insanity,” she laughs. “Depends on how you look at it. But somehow… it just fits.” She tilts her head, genuinely happy, and I can hear it in her voice.
I’m flabbergasted. I want to be happy for my friend, but I thought she understood me. I thought her going to UCLA was on the same level as my rebellions.
I never expected her to come back and become a mob wife. Have little mob babies.
And how is it possible that I had no idea? She’s one of my oldest friends. I mean, we don’t talk every day or anything, but we do talk enough.
“How come you didn’t tell me?” I ask. My voice sounds tinny and hollow in my ears.
“I didn’t…” she trails off. Looks at something off-screen. “I didn’t want you to be mad at me.”
A bitter laugh escapes my throat. “Why would I be mad at you?”
The tone of it is almost enough to answer the question.
“I knew you wouldn’t approve,” she says.
“It’s not that I don’t approve,” I say. “And you don’t need my approval anyway, of course. It’s just—”
“I know,” she says, and it sounds a little bit sad. Sad for me, stuck in a delusion of getting away from the Campisi legacy somehow?
Sad because we’re veering onto different paths somehow?
“I guessed I just hoped you’d be happy for me. Mikey and I really do love each other. He’s a good guy.”
“I… I love you, Maria,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “I want you to be happy. I really do.”
She smiles softly, eyes flicking down for a second.
“And you deserve it,” I continue. “You deserve to make your own choices… the ones that are right for you.”
She looks up at me then, her grin a little brighter. “Thanks, Leanna. That… really means a lot.”
I hang up, because I suddenly can’t breathe. I feel really, really alone. And really, really trapped because being in this family is like a vice, and the vice just keeps getting tighter and tighter.
I feel overwhelmed and claustrophobic because I know that word of this will get to my dad soon, and then it will be me in the conversation about marriage to someone I don’t love, won’t love.
The train stops, then, and I stumble off, ears ringing, stomach roiling.
And I throw up. Right there on the platform.