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But I knew him. I knew his touch, the way his breath shook when he was with me, the way his mouth felt against mine. I knew the man under the monster.
“My blood is your blood. I bleed, you bleed.” I whispered the family’s oath. “I bleed, you bleed . . .” He squeezed harder so that I couldn’t finish it. Then he yanked my neck toward him so he could devour my mouth.
“Never let them see you cower or back down, Katalina. You are better than everyone.”
“For his dad and him to be around. Family’s everything, you know?” Cade replied.
“Cleopatra,” he murmured as his hand shot out. His fingers touched the etchings on the front. “What a powerful being.”
“She’s a reminder of what someone, even someone like me, can strive to be even when the odds are against them,” I said. “Or maybe of what you already are,” he whispered,
“You’ll live. Because if you don’t, you’ll die.”
“Yeah, you’ll live. Remember that the best of us go through the worst.”
Cleopatra wasn’t as pretty as she is on your necklace. It was her intelligence that allowed her to rule. She knew over a dozen languages and communicated effectively in all of them. When your dad is gone, remember that. PO Box 108 Chicago, IL
Rome, We celebrated my seventeenth birthday at Dad’s bedside. He sang softly to me before I sang him a lullaby and tucked him in that night. He winces in pain a lot more these days, and I’m not sure how to get better care for him. I’ll find a way, Katie PS Cleopatra supposedly was not beautiful but smart enough to marry some of her political allies. PPS I’m also reading Edgar Allan Poe. He seems to know darkness and pain better than anyone else. I need a friend like that.
This will be my first and last letter. Jared and Jimmy are not good people. Don’t surround yourself with trash or you’ll start to smell just as it does. Rome PS Cleopatra dined with rulers, not servants.
PPS Poe’s best is “The Raven.” He goes mad in missing his Lenore. I find we’re all missing something, and maybe that makes us all a little mad.
You’re beautiful. I choose death so you can live. I won’t tell you to stop working with them. I know you’re in too deep. Make me proud, Katalina. Show them you were meant to stand out or get out from under them.”
PS Cleo lived for power. Or maybe love. She died because she lost them both. PPS I don’t read much of anything anymore.
“My father was too proud to raise a girl who lied, Rome.”
I was what the mafia made me: a monster and nothing more.
“I’m no good for you, Cleo. I’d ruin you.” “Then let me go where I need to go. I’m safer wherever I land than I ever was with the dead man out there.” Maybe I was too young to make a different call, but I still wonder if I should have.
Except his right-hand man, my father.
Mario and I cried that night. He cried like he’d lost a brother, and I cried like I’d lost my father. Because we had.
No fear was in her eyes. No shudder ran through her body. She picked at a piece of lint on her jeans and crossed her legs, as if ready for the night’s events.
“Because he wasn’t a liar. He never uttered anything but the truth before he died. I’m not one either.”
“It’s a blood oath. Family first, honey. You don’t get out. You bleed, we bleed. You die, we die.”
“She’s a tough little thing, but I really like her, Rome. She’s good people for us. Good to have a woman among us, huh? Maybe she’ll teach us a different perspective.”
“When my father was murdered, I became Mario’s right-hand man. I’m the enforcer, the lone wolf of this family who gets to do as I please.”
“You’ll do the blood oath, but it doesn’t make you blood.” His words stabbed at the only thing I longed for. “You know the first rule of the family? Act as if you don’t know us. You walk out of here tonight with no one. We don’t pass in public and smile at each other. It’s a new way. Family isn’t family. It’s strangers. You’ll be on your own.”
“Made to conquer us like Cleo?” “Only if I have to. Women fight to survive. If we don’t, we die,”
“I didn’t get a miracle, but I fought to survive. I guess I’m doing that again or else I’ll end up dead.”
“Stay away from me, Katalina. You know too much and yet not enough to stay away. You’ll ruin me or I’ll ruin you.”
When he held a gun to my forehead the night before his death, I quivered under the barrel, but on the inside, I was laughing, Rome.” Her smile was as bright as a wolf’s on a dark night. “I’d emptied the bullets out of it earlier that day.”
“Worry about saving yourself, Rome. I’ve never needed a knight to come rescue me. I ride in on my own damn horse, and if it happens to buck me off and disappear, I can walk out—guns blazing—on my own.”
but I was sure none of it would save me from the one thing I was in danger of. Her.
“Stop fighting me. Let out a breath on me, Katalina. I want to taste your air.”
“I never sell myself, and even if I did, you wouldn’t be able to afford me, jackass.”
You’ll live because if you don’t, you’ll die.
“I’m not interested. My dick might be, though.” Her gray eyes narrowed. “Right. You saying that’s all I’m capable of?” “A better man will show you that’s not true. I’m just not him.”
“I can handle a man’s hands on me.” I gripped her hips in response, and she hissed when I squeezed and then lifted her up onto the table. “A man like that on a body like yours is a waste.”
Rome said I wouldn’t feel anything, and I normally never did. Except with him. With him, I felt every stupid thing I never wanted to feel again. Pleasure and pain. Hope and dread. Longing and fulfillment. Hate and love.
Above all else, Rome would never know he had my heart because I knew I could never own the monster that controlled his.
“Even if you had been, it still could have happened because you’re close to us, to me. We didn’t consider the repercussions. You’re a threat to many, and now you’re extremely exposed.”
“No. Cade’s your brother. I’m your muscle, your protection, and also your
weapon. I’m this family’s monster. And if your protection finds something necessary, you better find it necessary too. Your life depends on it.”
Would they miss me? Would they really always be there to protect me? Or would I have to protect myself? I knew the answer. Deep down, everyone knew the answer about the family.
“Little one, you only learn by getting up yourself and making sure you face your opponent again. The one who falls down over and over is the strongest of all in the end.”
“You’re fanning the flame, Katie. You want an explosion today?” His choice of words, the way I told her that we were a nuclear bomb, it had me backing up as she looked at me with humor in her eyes and replied, “Maybe I do.”
One side of his mouth pulled up in a casual smile. “I like knowing outcomes, Katie.” “That’s not fun at all.” I threw a pillow at him. “Don’t you think it would have been nice to guess with me?” “Not interested.” He caught the pillow with ease and set it on his lap. His manly hand waved toward the television. “I don’t want to waste all that time watching something if I won’t like the outcome.”
“I am serious. You look like one of those big feral cats, ready to move in for the kill. To someone like me, it’s beautiful.”
“You aren’t supposed to pity the small guy,” I said. “You take what’s yours, or someone else will.”
“A good leader is feared, Katie. A great leader is loved. And an exceptional one is one you never thought you needed. This city will one day operate like that because I’ll make sure they can say, ‘Look, we did it all on our own.’”
“Without their acknowledgement, you lose their respect,” I said. “Or I gain their allegiance and they become stronger because they believe in themselves.”
“Or you wasted time on the weak when it’s survival of the fittest.”
