Page 2 of Rubies and Revenge

“Zarina Giovanna Gallo!” Father raises his voice from the window, finally deciding to join the conversation. “You will do this!”

“I’m not a child anymore.” Fearful anger gathers in my throat. “You cannot compel me with a raised voice and my full name.”

“Then stop acting childish,” Mother snaps.

“Would you demand this of your capos?” I ask. “Would you demand this of a son?”

“We don’t have a son.” She waves her hand, dismissing the notion as easily as I wish I could dismiss this entire conversation.

I scrape my hands over my face, through my hair, grabbing it hard at the roots. “How did it get so bad? I’ve been asking to see the books for years. I could help find a better solution.”

“There is no better solution.” Father slips the cigar into his inner jacket pocket, probably saving it for a smoke with Alonso Accardi after Marcus “proposes” to me. I shudder at the thought.

I swallow past the acidic reply ready at the tip of my tongue and try for something with a bit more honey. “A new perspective might see something you can’t.”

“This is happening, Zarina.” Mother pours herself two fingers of bourbon from the bar cart beside the mantle and turns with the tumbler in hand. “We expect you to be agreeable and pleasant to Marcus until the license is signed and the deal closed.” She sips her drink and looks me up and down with a lazy shrug of her shoulder. “After that, behave as you wish.”

“You mean as he allows.” I narrow my eyes. “From what I hear, I’ll be wearing long sleeves and high necks once heownsme.”

Father squeezes his eyes shut as if they’re his ears and he can stop from hearing me. “We have no other option.”

I ask the question that terrifies me. “What could we lose?”

Mother drains the rest of her glass and stares up at her father’s portrait, at our eyes reflected in his. “Everything.”

I push down the fear stuck in my throat until all that’s left isthe rage. Fear is useless. But rage burns. “So you’ll settle for a daughter and the Sallay neighborhood instead.”

They stand there, the distance of a twenty-eight-year marriage between them, and look anywhere but at me, but at each other. Neither say a word to deny it or comfort me. It’s not their way. Everything they do is for the Gallo name, for the legacy they either inherited or gave up everything to be a part of. And once a decision is made, it’s made. There’s no going back.

But not this time. Not for me.

I turn on my heel and stride to the door, throwing it open and letting it smack against the wall.

“Thirty minutes, Zarina,” Mother calls. “Agreeable and pleasant.”

I roll my shoulders back and shake out my hair, placing my armor piece by piece. Fuck agreeable and pleasant.

I’d rather riot.

TAMAYO

Arancid substance clings to the toe of my boot. I try to knock it off against one of the brick walls lining this decrepit alley, but it holds on like a blood-sucking leech. I glare down at the offensive glob and curse the Falcones. I wore my most expensive suit and my hand-stitched, supple, black Italian leather boots in an attempt to feel as powerful as I was hoping this deal would make me.

And then we found the address.

Some back alley stuffed between a Chinese restaurant and a dive bar. The smells of the two kitchens compete with the foul odor of their garbage piled in the dumpsters and the acrid stench of piss. For a second, I thought maybe there was a basement entrance to a club, a restaurant, anywhere that might show the respect due. But then Darius came back with a curt shake of his head. Nothing but garbage and feral cats.

“We should go.” Darius stands a striking six-foot-three, his body built like a linebacker’s—he might’ve been one, if he played football. The green and gold neon sign of the dive bar shines across his face, his Black skin lit like this is a photoshootand not some back-alley mobster meetup. “We’re too exposed out here.”

I don’t move. Antoni, our contact with the Falcones, offered to set up this meeting with his underboss. We spent weeks stroking the man’s ego, wining and dining him, letting him win poker with shitty hands, to get to this point. My chest burns as I survey the alley again, my boot with the unknown substance stuck to its leather toe, all of it a clear signal of how much value Antoni and the Falcones place on the Tamayo Family.

The burn spreads through my body as anger, betrayal, and acidic guilt swirl together to become something just as rancid and insidious as the gloop on my boot.

“Chinese restaurant or American dive?” I stub my toe against the sidewalk, voice steady, hands loose.

Darius stares at me, dark-brown eyes calculating. I crane my neck and stare right back. My head comes up to his shoulder, my lean frame proportionately about one-third of his. Most often, people who don’t know what’s what look to him before me. I make sure they never make that mistake again.

Darius sticks his tongue between his teeth and considers the alley, the restaurants, the block. Antoni gave us this address for a reason, and we both understand what that is now. I want to stick around and meet the inevitable. Darius wants to leave before he’s required to unbutton his suit jacket.

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