The Sweetest Oblivion by Danielle Lori

“The die is cast.”

—Julius Caesar

SOMETIMES THERE’S NOTHING TO SAY.

Sometimes words will only clutter a space already filled with an unpleasant truth.

I sat next to my sister on the couch while we both numbly watched an episode of The Office.

The funny moments, all the “That’s what she saids” passed without even a smile.

My mamma had taken a bottle of wine and a Xanax up to her room, and she hadn’t made an appearance below stairs in hours.

After we gave our vague statements to the police—we’d been schooled on how to talk to cops at age four—we came here and hadn’t left the living room since. Our Uncle Marco and Dominic, his son, were both in the house, but since the incident at Francesco’s, the rest of the males in the family had been absent.

Red.

It was now dripping somewhere other than my uncle’s restaurant.

And I felt no remorse about it, just numb.

It was two a.m. when they decided to show up. The light in the living room flicked on, and the sound of steps and voices filled the foyer. Weight pressed down on my chest.

Papà came around the couch. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his suit jacket was off, which he was never seen without, even on sweltering days like today. Not a good sign. I swallowed when I noticed the blood splattered against his white dress shirt.

Marco, Dominic, Manuel, Tony, Benito—who must have discharged himself from the hospital—Luca, and finally Nicolas filled the room. My gaze followed Nico, but he didn’t give me a glance. He still wore the same outfit from lunch, and his expression was unreadable as he leaned against the TV stand.

His fiancée had been impregnated by another man. Any Made Man would take that as a personal and grave insult, but as he finally flicked a thoughtful gaze to me, for some reason I wondered if that was even what was on his mind.

Eight men stared at my sister. They were going to try to intimidate the name right out of her.

“Phone,” Papà barked.

Adriana sat cross-legged on the couch in the white dress she’d worn to lunch, while I’d changed into shorts and a tee. She didn’t even look at our papà or acknowledge his demand. That had him grinding his teeth.

I grabbed her phone that sat on the couch between us, stood, and handed it to my papà. We’d already deleted every speck of Ryan’s existence from it.

Papà handed it to Dominic, who began searching through it.

“We’ll find out who it is, Adriana, so you might as well tell us,” Marco said. He was starting with a softer approach, but my papà wasn’t going for it.

“You’ll tell us, Adriana. Now. Or I swear to God you won’t see daylight again.”

My sister crossed her arms, her eyes flashing with defiance. That strategy would never work with Adriana, and Papà knew it. I thought one day he believed she would magically become compliant.

“We won’t kill him,” Marco said. “There’s a baby involved, it’s different.” He didn’t say it, but we all heard it: Different than me. Different than my situation.

When hope flickered in Adriana’s gaze, my stomach twisted.

“He’s lying,” I blurted.

Angry male eyes shot to me.

I swallowed, giving Nicolas a glance, but he still seemed to be a mile away.

Uncle Marco shook his head. “No, I’m not. We’re not going to kill him, Adriana. I promise.”

The glint of hope in her eyes grew a tiny bit more.

Panic flooded me. I knew that look in Benito’s gaze, in my brother’s.

Lie. It’s all a lie.

“They’re lying, Adriana,” I urged. “Don’t believe them.”

My pulse leapt into my throat as the back of Manuel’s hand came toward my face. I flinched, expecting the blow. When only a brush of air touched my cheek, I opened my eyes to see Nicolas’s hand wrapped around my uncle’s wrist.

“Hit a woman in front of me and you won’t be alive to do it again,” Nico growled.

Seconds passed before Manuel ripped himself from Nico’s grip and took a step back, his face red with disdain.

Papà watched the exchange with neutrality, but something close to displeasure played behind his eyes when he looked at Nico. My papà had never hit me—his distaste was for another reason than Nicolas stepping in, but I wasn’t sure what.

My mamma’s brothers had always been mean, except Marco. He was gentle, reserved, but at the slightest infraction, he was nothing but a wolf in sheep’s clothing on the hunt.

“Elena,” Papà barked. “Leave.”

I had never stood up to my papà before. However, I knew my sister; she was tough but gullible. She wanted to believe in her fairy-tale, so she would. And it would be the death of her prince.

I didn’t move.

“Elena.” My papà’s tone was colder than the Arctic and tinged with disbelief.

I was pulled by the desire to listen, yet my feet were frozen to the floor. I now stood on cheap apartment carpet, watching a similar scene play out before my eyes.

Papà flicked a gaze to Tony, who, with a look of contrition, came around the couch to me.

“I’m not leaving,” I protested.

“Come on, Elena. Let’s go.” Tony reached for my wrist, but I jerked it away. He sighed, before wrapping an arm around my waist and lifting me.

“Adriana, don’t do it,” I pleaded as Tony half carried me, half walked me with one arm to the door. “I promise you they’re lying.”

I knew the kind of guilt this carried around—let alone the heartbreak—and I couldn’t allow Adriana to live with the same.

Once my feet were in the hall, Tony shut the door, leaving me alone on the other side. I let out a noise of frustration, before smacking the wood with my palm. Sliding down the door with my thighs pressed to my chest, I listened to their voices seep through the cracks.

I waited and waited for the name Ryan to escape my sister’s lips.

It never did.

A clock ticked. Ice clinked in a tumbler glass. Cigar smoke hung in the air. And a certain distaste emanated from Salvatore sitting behind his desk.

I occupied a chair in front of it, leaning back with one elbow on the armrest. I was pretty sure he hated the way I sat like I was bored, so I’d continued to sit that way.

I wasn’t sure how long we’d been in his office, remaining silent, while Salvatore smoked his cigar, but something was building, and it wasn’t from me. Truthfully, I enjoyed the atmosphere. I could survive on tense, awkward silences alone.

“You can’t have her.” The words cut the quiet like a knife through the air.

My gaze found Salvatore’s through a haze of smoke. “I didn’t say I wanted her.”

He let out a sardonic breath, shaking his head. “Cut the shit, Ace. I know you want Elena, and she’s not on the table.”

My jaw ticked. I did not like being told what I couldn’t fucking have. “I don’t think you get to tell me what’s on the table, Salvatore. You fucked me over.”

Technically, his daughter fucked someone, but it was the same thing in our eyes. He’d breached the contract.

Salvatore puffed on his cigar one last time, before contemplatively putting it out. “Elena isn’t a possibility, even if I wanted to give her to you.” His gaze came to me, showing me that he didn’t. “She’s engaged.”

I stared at him with indifference, while my chest twisted with aversion before going cold enough to burn.

I’d thought a lot about this situation, what I could get out of Salvatore for breaking the contract, what I wanted the most. It started with an E and had long black hair. It was also my vice.

I wanted it, but I couldn’t let myself have it.

Nonetheless, now that I knew she belonged to another man, something violent spread through my veins like an internal case of frostbite.

My irrational side began speaking for me. “Contract signed?”

Salvatore nodded, a glint of satisfaction in his eyes.

I watched him closely. I bet after that little incident with the pool and me shoving Elena into it, he’d locked that man’s signature right down.

I had nothing against Salvatore, but there was something about sharing the same title with a man close to half his age he didn’t like. And I was fucking richer than him. He didn’t like how far my reputation stretched, and the details of said reputation. But after today, he knew he couldn’t afford to get on my bad side. We’d found the Mexicans involved with the drive-by, but there were still a few members that needed to be taken care of.

Frankly, I had more men on the streets than Salvatore. Even men on his, who I’d used to find the men responsible for today’s shooting. Salvatore hadn’t liked it when I’d used that card. I didn’t play by the rules, and the straight-laced don didn’t trust me. He needed me, though. I thought that was why he disliked me the most. He also just really didn’t want my Russo hands all over his favorite daughter.

“Who?” The question escaped me, and I fucking prayed he wouldn’t answer.

His gaze narrowed as he took a sip of whiskey. “Oscar Perez. Colombian.”

We stared at each other, and the cold bit into my chest.

“This problem with the Mexicans has fucked some of my connections with suppliers. Oscar has been an . . . acquaintance for a while. He has good product, but he wants Elena.”

Salvatore was trying to convince himself, it sounded like. Oscar was the kind of man the godly-rich with a twisted sense of ennui bred. Fitted with a malignant stain he’d try to rid with Elena.

I got up, buttoned my jacket, and turned to leave. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow. It’s late.”

“And Adriana?” he said as I opened the door.

I hadn’t shown much desire in getting revenge on the man who dared to fuck Nicolas Russo’s fiancée, but only because I’d been fighting the possibility of her sister.

“Her phone records. They’ve contacted each other,” I replied, before walking out.

I didn’t care so much about who Adriana had slept with while engaged to me.

It was just the fucking principle of it.

It was eight o’clock in the morning as I sat on the couch, in a pink oversized Yankees t-shirt and shorts. I ate a bowl of Cap’n Crunch while the blonde newscaster filled me in on current events.

I watched the news every morning and night. There wasn’t much in the world that was reported on that I didn’t know about, from the Korean child labor crisis to the botchy Botox injections being given in L.A.

When a familiar face appeared on the screen, my pulse stilled. And when the words “Oscar Perez” followed by “found shot execution style in front of his apartment,” passed the reporter’s ruby red lips, I choked on my cereal.

Not ten seconds had gone by, before “SON OF A BITCH!” came from my papà’s office.

My eyes widened.

As I was sinking into the couch with the relief of Oscar’s death, the noise of Nicolas entering the foyer with my brother filtered into the room. They were talking about Adriana’s phone records. My heart dropped. If the report showed all of my sister’s messages, it would take little effort to find Ryan.

Tony and Nicolas had found something in common now? Disgust twisted in my stomach.

They headed past the living room doors to my papà’s office, while I watched the news, narrow-eyed and simmering.

Papà’s anger drifted down the hall like fog, and I wondered if I was going to hear gunshots, but another five minutes passed before his shout filled my ears.

“Elena! My office, now!”

I hesitated, but then got to my feet and padded barefoot toward his office. Dread sank into my skin with each step.

I knocked on the doorframe before entering the room. Papà was behind his desk, Tony sat in the chair across from him, and Nico leaned against the wall near the window.

I stood in the middle of the office, my fingers playing with the hem of my shirt. The sun warmed my clammy skin.

“Congratulations,” Papà bit out, his eyes a dark storm. I swallowed, having never seen my father so angry. “You’re getting married.”

A cold sensation crawled down my throat and filled my lungs.

Slowly, I glanced at Nicolas to see he watched me with indifference. Keeping his gaze, I let out a shaky breath and asked, “To who?” but I already knew. I hadn’t imagined this outcome, and I wasn’t sure why.

“To Nico.”

My heart beat so fast I fought not to choke on it.

Silence filled the room—deep and loathing from my papà, thoughtful from my brother, and apathetic from my no longer future brother-in-law but fiancé.

The silence I felt was instinctive, like how prey quiets to avoid capture. A survival instinct kicked in, and I shook my head.

“No,” I whispered.

A spark flickered through Nico’s eyes.

My papà shuffled some papers on his desk. “It is done, Elena.”

That must be the contract in his hand.

Nicolas could sign for me, and “it was done?” Of course, this was how it always worked, but something tasted bitter about Nico doing it.

This news was like a slap to the face. How could I process him being my sister’s fiancé to mine in less than five minutes?

That wasn’t only it.

I had never wanted a husband like him. He was everything my body thought it needed and everything my brain knew it didn’t. I would lose myself in Nicolas Russo, and I wouldn’t know where to come up for air.

My heart would fall for him and he would crush it beneath his feet. I could live a loveless life. I couldn’t survive a broken one.

I gave my head another shake. “Papà—”

“Enough, Elena! It is done. Now, go pack a bag. You’re staying with him until the wedding.”

My eyes widened.

“What?” I breathed.

He directed a sarcastic gaze at me. “It’s not like you’re a virgin, Elena.”

“Papà,” Tony snapped.

His words pierced my chest. I knew he was pissed and was directing it at me, but it hurt all the same. “How could you allow this? Do you think that because my reputation is already stained you can just rip it to shreds?”

“You can blame your poor reputation on yourself and your fiancé. After this issue with your sister and your . . . past, I agreed to his terms.”

What he meant was that Nicolas didn’t trust me not to fool around with other men behind his back before the wedding. Papà apparently didn’t have much say on the matter, considering the contract was broken on his end.

I didn’t know what to say, but I wasn’t ready to accept this.

“I don’t know how to cook,” I blurted, before looking at Nicolas, who still leaned against the wall, his hands in his pockets.

“I have one,” was all he said in a deep, thoughtful voice. I had a feeling he didn’t entirely want this marriage either, so why had he agreed to it?

“I like to shop. I spend way too much money.” It was true, but I also donated to the local shelters just so I wouldn’t feel so bad about my spendthrift ways. So I guessed that meant I spent even more.

“I have it.”

Was he only going to speak to me in three words now that he owned me?

“Enough, Elena,” Papà cut in. “Go.”

A frustrated sound traveled up my throat, but I kept it locked in. “I don’t want this,” I told my papà, my voice quiet. I avoided Nicolas’s gaze, though it burned my cheek like a rash.

“It is done.” Papà copied my tone, but his words were final.

So I left his office, headed to my room, and, while packing a bag, I contemplated how I could ever survive Nicolas Russo.