Emilia's POV
The clock struck midnight, and my life became a prison.
I stood stiffly in my father's marble-floored dining room, my black birthday dress itching at the collar. Twenty-one candles burned on a cake no one would eat.
At the head of the table sat my father, Don Vittorio Conti. His gold ring tapped against his wine glass. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound echoed through the silence like a countdown.
"Sit," he ordered.
I sat. The guards by the door—men I'd known since childhood—wouldn't even meet my eyes.
This isn't good. The thought curled through my mind like smoke.
"You're a woman now." My father's voice was cold. Gunmetal gray. The same color as his suit. The same color as my entire fucking childhood. "Eighteen years old. Time to stop acting like a child."
Eighteen.
The number landed wrong. Three years wrong.
I'd been twenty-one for fourteen hours. He sat at this table while they lit the stupid candles. There was a gigantic place-card on the cake that spelt 21.
It was Gracie's (Our head housekeeper's) not subtle way of saying pay attention.
"Twenty-one," I corrected. Barely kept myself from shouting count the fucking candles, Baba.
He waved his hand like swatting a fly. Like my age—like me—wasn't worth remembering.
"You'll marry Enzo Marchetti next week. Your engagement is tomorrow morning."
The words hit me like a slap.
Marchetti. The biggest Mafia family on the East Coast. The family he'd cursed at dinner tables for years. The ones who'd shot and killed my brother, Paolo, and his pregnant wife. They left my ten-year-old niece an orphan!
That Marchetti?
"You're… selling me to our enemies?" My voice came out thin. Barely audible. Probably shock. It wasn't something I thought I would hear in this lifetime "You're throwing me to the wolves?."
I shouldn't have been surprised. This was Vittorio. He'd whore out his own mother if it benefited him.
Daughters were nothing but trade cards.
Just ask Liliana—my older sister. Three kids under four, heavily pregnant again, paraded around town like a fucking breeding mare for the Kamikaze family, the Japanese syndicate that controlled the docks. But as long as Vittorio got his shipping routes? All is well that ends well.
"No." The word came out louder than I intended. My eyes burned, but I refused to let the tears fall. "The answer's NO. I will not be marrying Paolo's murderer."
Vittorio's fist slammed the table. Dishes rattled. Wine sloshed. I jumped. Mostly close to shiting myself but I didn't waver.
There were worse things than death by Vittorios' hand and this was one of those things.
"You'll obey me!"
I liked it better when he pretended I didn't exist.
I leaned forward, gripping the tablecloth so tight my knuckles went white. "What did Enzo promise you in exchange, Baba? Another territory?"
"No more arguments—"
"His casino holdings?"
"You will do as I have asked—"
"The fucking port access?" I was practically shaking now. "What do you get in return for selling me?"
"Guards—take her to her room."
"How much am I worth, Baba? How much is Paolo worth?"
I didn't fight as two men dragged me upstairs.
What would be the point? I'd spent years obeying—wearing the clothes my father deemed appropriate, smiling at his associates, swallowing my screams into silk pillows.
But tonight, staring at the high walls of my bedroom, something inside me snapped.
"I will sooner eat my own intestine than marry that old psychotic bastard!" I yelled at the empty room.
My hands were shaking as I grabbed my phone. There was only one person who'd understand.
They're making me marry a Marchetti.
Linda's reply came seconds later:
< Girl, we're breaking you out. 1 AM. Window. Be ready.
---
1:07 AM
The mansion's smoke alarms woke up the dead
Right on time.
I hurled pillows under the bedsheets, creating a body-shaped lump in the dark.
Gracie had promised the guards would be distracted too—not just by the alarms, but by the sleeping pills she'd slipped into their nightly coffee.
"Enough to make them sluggish, not suspicious," she'd promised.
Still, my hands trembled as I climbed onto the balcony ledge.
Four floors below, my best friend, Linda's car idled in the shadows, headlights off. She waved a flashlight in frantic circles.
"Jump onto the awning!" she hissed, barely audible over the blaring alarms.
My dress snagged on the railing as I swung my legs over. For a heartbeat, I froze.
What if the awning tears? What if I break my neck?
I jumped.
I missed.
Thorns ripped through my dress as I crashed into the rose bushes below. The scent of crushed petals and iron flooded my nose. Pain screamed through my palm. I bit down on a cry, but it tore from my throat anyway.
"Dio mio—"
"Shut up!" Linda ran over the garden wall, her curls spilling from a stolen security guard's cap. "You're bleeding."
"You said the awning was reinforced!" I accused.
"I said maybe!" She yanked me free, leaving a trail of bloodied thorns behind. "Move, damn it—Giovanni's shift starts in two minutes, and he actually does his job."
We lurched into the car. Tires screeched as Linda peeled onto the road.
I was free, at last.