The Mafia Heir's Promised Bride

Prologue

Lina

Five-Year-Old Lina

"I bet you can’t catch me before I reach the stone fountain," Giovanni says.

He is standing on the grass, his hands shoved into the pockets of his dark trousers. He is only seven, but he already walks like the grown-up men who sit in the study inside, shoulders squared, head held high, and a serious crease between his dark eyes that never seems to go away.

"I can too," I say, hiking up the skirt of my yellow dress. "My legs are faster than yours."

"They aren't. They look short and slow." He nudges a loose piece of gravel with the toe of his leather shoe. "I’ll even give you a head start. Three steps."

"I don't need a head start." I stomp my foot, but the leather pinches my toes. I hate these shoes. Mama made me wear them because we were visiting the big house, but they feel like wooden blocks on my feet. "I'm faster than you anyway."

"Prove it, then." Giovanni takes his hands out of his pockets and crouches down a little, his eyes locked on mine. "On three. One... two..."

He doesn't even say three before he starts running.

"That's cheating!" I shout, but my feet are already moving.

The hot afternoon sun beats down on the Ferrante estate, turning the green grass blurry beneath me.

The air smells thick and sweet, like the yellow jasmine climbing up the stone walls of the villa.

Behind us, the high windows of the study are dark, and I can hear the rumbling voices of our fathers talking about things I am too small to understand.

But out here, there is only the sound of my breath and the crunch of Giovanni’s shoes ahead of me.

He is bigger than me, his legs longer, but I am small enough to slip through the gaps in the rose hedges without slowing down. I gain on him, my chest heaving, a fierce grin stretching across my face.

"I'm going to win!" I scream.

"No, you aren't," he calls back over his shoulder.

He looks back to check where I am, and his foot clips the stone border of the flowerbed. He wobbles, tries to find his balance, and in his scramble to stay upright, he lunges to the side, right into my path.

I don't have time to stop. My shoulder hits his arm, our legs tangle, and the world tilts sideways.

The ground is hard. The gravel of the path bites directly through my thin white stockings, scraping hard against my skin.

The pain hits. It starts as a hot, angry sting on my left knee.

I look down. The white fabric of my sock is already turning a bright, wet red. My yellow dress is covered in dust, and my hands are scraped.

A sob catches in my throat, and then I start to cry.

Giovanni scrambles up from the grass, completely unhurt. His hair is messy, and there’s dirt on his chin, but his face goes completely white when he looks at me. He drops to his knees beside me in the gravel, his hands hovering over my shoulders.

"Don't cry," he says. "Lina, please don't cry. You're going to get me in trouble."

"It hurts!" I sob, burying my face in my hands. "Look at my knee! Mama is going to be mad about my dress!"

"I didn't mean to do it," he says. He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket.

It has his initials, G.M., embroidered in blue thread in the corner.

He clenches it in his fist, looking at my bloody knee with terror and fierce determination.

"Stop crying. Shh. If my papà hears you, he’ll make me sit in the dark room. "

"Then you shouldn't have tripped me!"

"I didn't trip you! I slipped." He reaches out and awkwardly presses the clean handkerchief against my knee.

I flinch, kicking his hand away. "Ow! Don't touch it!"

"I have to stop the blood," he says, his voice suddenly going very quiet, the way he sounds when he talks to his father. He grabs my ankle to keep my leg still, his grip surprisingly firm. "My papà says when someone gets hurt on our land, we have to fix it. I’m fixing it."

"You're making it hurt worse," I sniffle, though I stop kicking. I wipe my nose on the back of my hand, watching him as he carefully dabs at the scrape. "You ruined my favorite dress."

"I'll buy you a new one," he says.

"You don't have any money. You're just a boy, and only grown-ups have money."

"I'll have lots of money when I'm big," he says, tilting his chin up. He looks down at my knee, then up at my face. His dark eyes are very steady. "And I'll make it up to you. I promise."

"How?" I wipe another tear from my cheek, my chest still shaking with little aftershocks.

"When we grow up, I’ll marry you," he says simply, as if he is deciding what we should have for lunch. "And then I’ll be the boss, and I’ll never ever let you fall down again."

I stare at him through my wet eyelashes. Marry him? Grown-ups do that. My mama and papa are married, but they don't laugh very much, and they sleep in different rooms. "That's stupid. You can’t marry me, you’ll forget it by the time we are grown-ups."

"I won't." He presses the handkerchief down one last time, then pulls it away. It’s stained with a neat circle of my blood. He folds it carefully and puts it back in his pocket. "I never forget. Papà says real men never break a promise."

"Is that true?"

"Yes. I promise, Lina."

Suddenly, the heavy glass doors of the villa creek open.

Two men step out. My father, Salvatore, is tall and broad, with thick black hair and a gold watch that glints in the sun.

Beside him is Don Ferrante, Gio's father, a man with graying hair at his temples and a cold smile that always makes me want to hide behind my mother's skirts.

Behind them, stepping out more slowly, are our mothers. My mama, Maria, looks pretty in her pale pink dress. Her eyes are fixed on me, but she isn't smiling at all.

"Well, look at that," Don Ferrante says, pointing a cigar toward us. "They’re already inseparable. What did I tell you, Salvatore?"

My father laughs. "They look like a matched set. Come here, Lina."

I try to stand up, but my knee stings, and I wince. Before I can take a step, Giovanni reaches down, grabs my hand, and helps me pull myself up. He doesn't let go of my fingers, even when we walk toward the terrace. His hand is warm and a little sweaty, but he holds on tight.

"What happened to your leg, little one?" my father asks, crouching down as we reach the steps. His hand comes down on my shoulder, heavy and solid.

"She fell," Giovanni speaks up before I can say anything. He steps slightly in front of me, his small body shielding mine from his father's gaze. "But I took care of it, Papà. She’s okay."

The two men exchange a look, and Don Ferrante's smile widens. "Is that so, Giovanni? Taking care of your Lina already?"

"Yes, Papà," Giovanni says, his voice clear and proud.

I look up at my mama. She stands a few steps behind my father, her hands clutched so tightly around her small clutch purse that her knuckles are white. Her lips are pressed into a thin, straight line.

"Excellent," my father says, standing back up and clapping Don Ferrante on the shoulder. "The papers are signed. Our houses will be one. By the time they are old enough to understand, they will already belong to each other."

Giovanni looks at me and gives my hand a little squeeze. I don't really know what "belong" means, but I like the way his hand feels, so I smile back at him, the sting in my knee almost forgotten.

But Mama doesn't smile. She doesn't say a word. She just steps forward, gently detaches my hand from Giovanni's, and pulls me against her side. Her hand is trembling against my hair.

"Let's go inside, Lina," she whispers, her voice shaking. "We need to clean that scrape."

Inside the villa's quiet sitting room, Mama sits me on a velvet stool and carefully dabs a wet cloth against my bleeding knee.

Her eyes keep darting toward the heavy wooden doors of the study where our fathers are still laughing, their deep voices echoing through the halls.

Every time a door clicks open in the house, she flinches.

A few minutes later, Gio’s mother, Donna Ferrante, steps into the room with a bright, tight smile.

"The men are going to be locked in that study discussing transit lines for the rest of the day, Maria. Let’s take little Lina into Palermo.

The girl needs a distraction from her scrape, and I want to look at the new silks that arrived at the boutique. "

Mama looks up, her face a pale, unreadable mask, but I see the sudden, sharp calculation that flashes in her eyes. "Palermo," she repeats softly. "Yes. That sounds like exactly what we need."

The heavy glass doors of the boutique in downtown Palermo click shut an hour later, cutting off the humid afternoon air of the Sicilian streets.

My mama looks beautiful in her pale pink dress, but her hands are trembling as she adjusts the strap of the large, heavy canvas bag slung over her shoulder.

Inside that bag, hidden beneath a few changes of clothes, is the box she had quietly packed before we left our home, the one with FOR LINA written across the top in her neat, looping handwriting.

Gio’s mother is at the far end of the store, laughing with the shopkeeper as she holds up a delicate lace shawl.

"Mama," I whisper, my leather shoes pinching my toes as I tug at her skirt. "My feet hurt. Can we go back to the house with the big stone fountain? I want to play with Giovanni."

Mama freezes. She drops to her knees right there on the polished marble floor, her hands gripping my arms with a sudden, fierce desperation that makes my breath catch. Her eyes look huge, dark, and terrified.

"Listen to me, Lina," she whispers, her voice a sharp, urgent hiss that cuts through the quiet upscale shop. "You must never say that name again. Do you understand me? We are going on a special trip, just you and me."

"But he promised—"

"No," she interrupts, her grip tightening. "No promises. That boy, his father, that world... they do not own you. I will not let them have you. We are leaving, and we are never coming back."

She stands up fast, grabs my hand, and pulls me out of the boutique before Gio’s mother can even turn around.

The bustling Palermo street hits us like a wall of heat, filled with rushing crowds and the heavy honking of traffic.

Mama pulls me along, her eyes java-sharp as we navigate the sidewalk, her head turning to check over her shoulder.

She spots a dark taxi idling by the curb and lunges for the door, tearing it open.

"Maria."

The gravelly, heavy voice sounds right behind us. Mama gasps, spinning around, her face instantly turning completely white as she shields me with her body.

“Enzo.” She breathes out, looking like I do when I am caught doing what I have been warned not to.

The man she called Enzo stands there, unreadable mask, his heavy hand resting near the inner pocket of his coat where I know his weapon sits. He looks at the canvas bag, then down at my small canvas sneakers, instantly reading the layout of the street.

"Enzo... please," Mama breaks down, her voice cracking as hot tears spill over her cheeks.

She drops to her knees on the dirty pavement, clutching his leather sleeve.

"I'm not running because I hate your family.

I'm running because I love my daughter. If she stays, she'll grow up surrounded by blood, violence, and men deciding her future before she's even old enough to understand it.

Please... let me give her one ordinary life. "

Enzo doesn't move. He looks at my mama's frantic, sobbing face, and then his dark eyes slide down to meet mine. I am holding tightly to Mama's pink skirt, completely oblivious to the war hanging over our heads, but I offer him a small, innocent blink.

For a long, suffocating second, the only sound is Mama's ragged breathing. Then, slowly, Enzo steps back. His expression remains flat, but he gently detaches Mama's fingers from his sleeve and opens the taxi door wider.

"Fucking hell, this will get me killed, but fuck it. Get in," he rasps quietly. "I will tell the Don I lost you in the boutique crowd while my attention was turned. Run, Maria."

Mama doesn't hesitate. She scoops me up, throws us into the back seat of the cab, and slams the door.

As the taxi rockets into the chaotic Palermo traffic, I look out the rear window.

Enzo is standing perfectly still on the sidewalk, watching us disappear into the city, keeping our secret locked away in the dark.

I don't know what’s going on, but I trust my mama.