Vicious Promise by M. James
Sofia
If I’d thought the rehearsal would be nearly impossible to get through, the dinner afterwards is even worse. The restaurant that’s been rented out for the occasion is beautiful, an elegant five-star Italian place owned by a friend of the Rossi family, but I’m completely overwhelmed. The banquet room that we’re using is full of the Rossi’s, their extended family, Luca’s remaining extended family, and their friends—and no one at all who knows me. I feel like I stick out, the girl who appeared out of nowhere to marry their prince, and as if everyone knows there’s something up.
The questions don’t make it any easier, the: “where were you hiding her?” and “why haven’t we met her before?” I just smile prettily while Luca comes up with bland answers for why no one has even heard a hint of him dating anyone before this, and try to remember names. But I can’t. I can feel my pulse pounding in my throat as I’m introduced to person after person, and I realize suddenly that if there’s this many people at the rehearsal dinner, there’s going to be so many more at the wedding itself, and the reception.
I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack. My throat closes over as Luca introduces me to someone’s grand-uncle while barely even bothering to glance at me, and I have a second to choke out a passable “nice to meet you,” before I excuse myself in a hurry. Luca is probably going to think I’m being rude, and he’ll probably be angry with me, but I can only imagine how much ruder it would be if I just fainted in the middle of our rehearsal dinner.
It’s not a lie, either. I feel dizzy and clammy, and I escape to the ladies’ room as quickly as I can, splashing cold water on my face before retreating into one of the stalls and hoping that no one comes to find me anytime soon.
But when I step out, I see Caterina leaning against the sink counter, toying with a lipstick with a sympathetic look on her face.
I tense up, waiting for a comment about how I’m being missed out there, or how I shouldn’t be hiding out in the bathroom during my own rehearsal dinner. But instead she just gives me a sympathetic, soft smile. “Are you okay?”
How do I even answer that?The obvious answer is, of course, no. Absolutely not. I couldn’t be further from okay.
“It’s alright to be overwhelmed,” she continues, watching me as I touch up my own makeup in the mirror. “I was born into this family, and I’m still overwhelmed by it sometimes. There’s a lot of them, and they’re so loud. So—much.” She shrugs. “They’re my family, but I don’t always love everything about them.”
It’s all I can do not to snap at her. There’s any number of things I could think of to say, from I don’t want your pity, to I don’t care how you feel, or at least you aren’t being forced into a marriage with a man you actively despise.
Of course, the last one is rapidly becoming a case of my protesting too much. Just having Luca’s hands wrapped around mine at the rehearsal was enough to make my skin heat and my heart race, and thinking about him kissing me tomorrow made me come face to face with the uncomfortable truth that a part of me—a very small part—is actually looking forward to the kiss.
Because I have to kiss him tomorrow. Kissing him tomorrow isn’t admitting that deep down, I’m curious, or that deep down, I’m attracted to him, or that deep down, a part of me wants to give in and say fuck my conditions, take me to bed. I don’t have a choice—and that very small part of me is glad about that. Glad that I don’t have to wrestle with whether to let him or not.
Instead of saying any of those things, I turn to her, shoving my own lipstick back into my clutch. “You said you didn’t choose to marry Franco,” I said tightly, trying to keep my emotions under control. “That you could understand how I feel.”
“I didn’t choose to marry him,” Caterina says calmly. “I was—informed that I’m going to marry him, on account of the fact that he’ll be Luca’s underboss, when Luca takes my father’s seat.”
“I see the way you look at him, though. You don’t hate him.”
“No, I don’t.” Caterina pauses, setting her clutch down as she turns to face me. “I’m lucky, I know. He’s handsome, and young, and we get along. I wouldn’t say we’re the best of friends, but we enjoy spending time together. I won’t mind going to bed with him on our wedding night, and I won’t mind being his wife. It could have been much worse.”
I just stare at her. I can’t wrap my head around how she can be so calm about it, how she can behave like any of this is fucking normal. “How can you say all of that—like that? You’re talking about an arranged marriage? How can you be so okay with it—how can you say it’s anything like what I’m going through, when you’re clearly okay with it?”
There’s a long pause between us, my outburst hanging in the air. Caterina takes a deep breath, pressing her lips together for a moment before she speaks.
“I’m not okay with it,” she says softly. “Deep down, I’m not. I had things I dreamed of—things that had nothing to do with being a mafia wife. But this is the life I was born into, and I always knew it would be this way. I was never going to be able to choose my own husband, never going to be anything except a wife and a mother to a high-ranking man in the family. All I can do is make the best of it. Perhaps I’ll love Franco, perhaps not. But it will be a decent marriage.” She stops, looking at me with that same sympathetic expression. “Yours could be the same, if you’d allow it.”
For a moment, I feel completely unable to form a complete thought. I want to scream at her, to throw something, but deep down I know that she’s right. I was born into this life too—I was just given a brief window of time where I didn’t realize what my fate would be. The only real difference between Caterina and I is that I insist on fighting it.
And for the first time, I see that she’s trapped too, more so than I realized. She might be more accepting of it than I am, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t a prisoner in this world too.
“What did you want to do?” I manage to ask, when I feel like I can breathe again. I can’t imagine what she’ll say she dreamed of being, this perfectly polished woman in front of me, an absolute vision of the ideal mafia wife. Everything I know Luca wants me to be.
Caterina just looks at me, and I realize that she’s wondering if I’m mocking her. She almost looks hurt.
“I really want to know,” I say quietly.
She doesn’t say anything, and I’m about to give up, just walk out and find my way back to the hall, when she speaks up. Her voice is soft and sweet and quiet, and I can hear the hint of sadness in it. The longing for what might have been.
“I always loved art, and children,” she says simply. “I wanted to be an elementary school teacher. Somewhere that I could make a difference. But that was never going to happen.”
That sadness is written all across her face as she speaks. “I went to college for it, you know,” she says with a short laugh. “I always knew that it was pointless, that my father was just indulging my mother by letting me get a degree at all. I wasn’t allowed to move out, and I had a strict curfew. My virginity had to be protected, of course—I’m too valuable of an asset.”
There’s a tinge of bitterness in her voice that shocks me. I’ve never seen anything outwardly rebellious about her. But for the first time, I see a hint of rebellion in her eyes. I can’t help but admire her a little—she got a degree in something she knew she would never use, just to prove that she could.
“I should go,” I say softly.
“Yeah.” Caterina picks up her clutch. “They’ll be missing us before too long. Don’t worry, I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
As I walk out of the ladies’ room, I almost feel as if I might have a friend here—or at least the start of one. And I know that I’ll need all the friends I can get. Still, I can’t bring myself to trust her entirely. She’s still a Rossi, the Don’s daughter—and one of them.
I’m supposed to go back to the party. But as I step out into the hallway, I can’t bring myself to keep going back towards the banquet room where everyone is gathered. I can’t bring myself to face Luca, or deal with being introduced to more people whose names I don’t know, I need to be alone, to breathe, to get away from all of this—
Against my better judgement, I find myself walking away from the party, my pace picking up more and more with every step. I’m not running away, I tell myself. Just getting some air. Just going outside. I hurry towards the glass doors at the front of the restaurant, the faint chatter from the room at the back where the party is fading even more as I shove the doors open and burst out into the cool spring air.
I breathe in, sucking in huge gulps of it, realizing how on the verge of a panic attack I really was. It’s hitting me now full force—I’m getting married tomorrow—and I want to scream. I’m going to be legally bound to a man I hardly know and don’t even like, a man who has been both cruel and kind to me in turns, and although I have some small hope of finding a way out eventually—there’s no guarantee.
This could be my forever. And that knowledge suddenly feels suffocating.
I don’t mean to walk away from the restaurant. My feet just carry me a few steps, and a few more, until I’m at the far end of a bar a little further down the street, leaning up against the brick wall with my eyes closed and my breath coming in small, quick pants as I try to calm down.
It’s going to be okay, I tell myself, repeating Caterina’s assurance from earlier in my head. This won’t be so bad. It could be worse—you could be dead.
Somehow that doesn’t make me feel much better, though—that my only options are marrying Luca or death.
He’s the prince of the Italian mafia, heir to the throne, and I can’t say he isn’t charming. But a Prince Charming? He’s anything but that.
All fairytales have a dark side.
My throat closes over as I remember my father handing me the book of Grimm’s fairytales, speaking those exact words to me. He must have known, somehow, that the darkness would eventually come for me. That I would have to make an impossible choice.
I should go back inside, before someone comes looking for me. Before Luca or anyone else who sees me out here gets the wrong idea. But I can’t bring myself to move. The cool air, the traffic passing by and the scents and sounds of the city all help to ground me, make me feel just a little less afraid. This city has been my home all my life, but I’ve never felt more lost than this past week.
There’s people passing by on the sidewalk, but one set of footsteps comes closer, growing louder until they stop very close to me.
“Sofia.”
It’s Luca’s voice. It’s cold and angry, and my heart drops into my stomach at the sound of it.
Fuck.
“Didn’t I tell you what would happen if you tried to run away?”
My eyes fly open. “No,” I say quickly, turning to face him. “I wasn’t—I just needed some air. I wasn’t going anywhere—”
“Then why are you a block and a half away from Vitto’s, over here like you’re waiting on someone? Maybe you’re waiting for Ana to come get you and sweep you away? Or to catch a cab?” His face is like granite, hard and set in cold lines that make me feel like I want to throw up. He looks furious. “I told you what would happen if you tried to leave.”
“I’m not, I swear—”
“Come on.” Luca’s hand darts out, grasping my elbow. “We’re leaving, now. I’ve already made our excuses to everyone else.”
“Wait—where are we going?” I dig my heels in as he starts to pull me away from the building. “Where are you taking me?” I have sudden visions of bloody basements and cold warehouses on the docks, wherever he and men like him do the awful things that they do. Is he really going to have me killed because I went for a short walk?”
Luca turns to me, his face silhouetted in the streetlight. Even his eyes look dark, angry and full of seething frustration.
“We’re going home,” he says coldly. And then he pulls me forward, towards the curb where his driver is waiting.
