Page 4 of I Would Die For You

“She’s eighteen,Padrino.”

I’m appealing to my godfather here, the one who’s to step in as my father should my own be incapacitated or dead. And this is indeed what the Don has been to me. His own son is only fourteen, and I’ve been treated like his eldest since I was born and my mother had the crazy idea to go up to Giacomo Rossi, the heir apparent of the current Don at the time, and ask him to be my godfather.

“That is a bit young,” he concedes.

“She’ll be nineteen next March. As if that’s a magic number. A few months doesn’t make a girl grow up into a woman.”

“And you’ll be thirty next February.”

A groan escapes me. I’d thought I’d have until then to bat myself off the marriage mart. Seems I was wrong.

“Themammasandnonnaswill all be on your back then,” he continues with a small laugh.

“Precisely.Then.” I groan again. “Why does she have to be so fucking young? A girl doesn’t even know her own mind at that age.”

Let alone a man knows his own at thirty, but it is the magic number in Italian society. Turn thirty and all the women of generations prior to yours start asking for wedding bells and babies, as if a man’s supposed to flip a magic switch on his thirtieth birthday and produce a wife who will get pregnant on her wedding night and deliver a full-grown baby a week later.

“Lorena Bruno is a beautiful girl,” Don Giacomo says. “Good hips.”

I frown at him. He’s taking the piss, I hope. Yeah, the sardonic lift to his lips implies he is. I’d gladly throw out a ‘Vaffanculo’had he been anyone but my Don, much less an elder.

My father married my mother a week after he turned thirty—she was twenty-one at the time. They didn’t have me until three years later. Is that why he’s foisting an eighteen-year-old on me, because her eggs are supposed to be more fertile the younger she is?

“You’re sure it’s her age you have a problem with?”

This time, I do frown outright to his face. “A year ago, she would’ve been jailbait.”

We may be Mafia, but there are things even our kind doesn’t touch, like underage girls.

He waves his glass in the air. “It’s not because you have your eye on someone else?”

This makes me sit upright. What’s he getting at?

“Like my girl Kaya, perchance?”

I could’ve said ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ but you never lie to your Don. Doesn’t mean I can’t deflect, though.

“You said it. She’syourgirl.”

“Is she?” he asks, then takes a leisurely sip of his whiskey.

My stare must convey what I’m thinking. Everyone knows she’s the only woman who frequents the Don’s office when he’s at the club, and that means only one thing.

“She’s yours if you want her,” he adds quietly.

I know he doesn’t mean it like she’s property to be peddled and exchanged. Don Giacomo is not that kind of Mafia leader. Anyone who thinks they own his girls or boys is clearly shown the error of their ways, an eye opener usually delivered by my father and his crew, Gennaro Beccario being the Don’s enforcer.

One day, I’ll ascend to this post, too. And that’s going to happen sooner rather than later. My father is past sixty, a ripe age few enforcers get to see thanks to the dangerous nature of their job. Death hasn’t taken him yet, but retirement will. I’ll have to step up then—it’s what I’ve been groomed for all my life.

“I’m not looking…” I start, letting the words dwindle.

“Aren’t you?” The smile lifts some more. “That’s not what I’ve witnessed.”

Fine. I’ve had my eye on the alluring blonde just about every time I’ve visited Demos and she’s on duty.

A sigh escapes me. “I can’t foist myself on her,Padrino. That’s not the kind of man you’ve raised me to be.”

“I don’t think she’ll need much convincing.”

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