Page 5 of Forbidden Vows

“Anyone you know who works pro bono?” I mumble.

My best friend often forgets that I’m a kindergarten teacher in Queens at an underfunded school. I share a small one-bedroom apartment above a lively kebab shop.

Shared. Past tense. Over. O-V-A-H.

I stayed there until around eight last night, when a kind waitress named Candy sent me a message letting me know she had been involved with him for months.

I confronted him. He didn’t deny it. Then he told me we’d grown apart.

I should have left.

In my desperate (pathetic) attempt to avoid disrupting my life, I told him that we could work it out.

He laughed.

Again, I should have left.

Then, he broke up with me.

I packed a bag, left Keith a strongly worded hate note, and crashed on Serphina’s sofa.

With his name the only one on the lease, I’m technically homeless.

Seraphina snaps in the air to get my attention. “Yoo hoo, porn star. You there? I was asking if you know why Keith would do this to you?”

“No idea,” I say. “Why further ruin my life with the awful homemade bad porn when I’m the one who got screwed over?” I flash her a smile through my pain. “Pun! Not intended, but still counts.”

Seraphina pats my leg with a grin. “Good girl.”

“I did write him a hate note,” I offer.

I’d scratched it down, the tip of the pen nearly tearing through the paper in my hurt and anger.

I should have taken that secret to my grave.

Seraphina snaps her fingers in the air, drawing my attention. “Earth to Cleopatra!”

“Sorry.” I try to remember where the conversation left off. Ah. The part where I am powerless to get my lady parts offthe internet. “I can’t afford a lawyer. What am I going to do?”

“Take the money from me—” she holds a hand up to stop me before I list all the reasons I won’t let her pay for my mistake, “But you won’t, so I’ll tell you what I would do if I were you. I’d call my mafioso stepbrother and tell him to smash some damn heads. Well, one head in particular. Keith’s.”

Heat washes all over me. Everywhere. Her mention of my stepbrother makes last night’s naughty dream come back to mind, guilt sinking in.

“I can’t call him, Seraphina. Absolutely not.”

Chapter Two

Cleopatra

Blaze. My once-stepbrother, too hot even for Hollywood, recently turned mafia man, whom I avoided like norovirus in the classroom ever since I accidentally had sex with him at his brother’s wedding.

I can’t believe she’s bringing him up. “I will not resort to the mob,” I tell Seraphine. “You know I opposed Blaze’s involvement from the beginning.” I reiterate what I tell my class: “Violence is never the solution.”

She arches a perfectly manicured eyebrow at me. “What about a perfectly tailored pair of concrete boots for the bastard? The Harlem River looks rather hungry.”

“Could I pull off a Carmen Soprano ’90s manicure?” I waggle my plain fingernails before her.

She smiles. “You’re Cleopatra. You could pull anything off.”

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