Stifling was not a word Siena Calabrese used often, but at the moment, it was the one that best fit her life. Hot, stuffy mid-June air blew through the hallway of her oldest brother’s brownstone. It reminded her that it wasn’t only the two men looming at her back making her feel like she was roasting with suffocation. Even the muggy weather had hot, sticky hands around her small throat.
So was her life, now.
“Greta, Giulia,” Siena greeted.
The two teenaged girls stepped into the brownstone with guarded eyes. As they always did. As they should. There was nothing in that house—but for Siena, perhaps—that could be trusted, and the girls knew it.
Every time they were faced with their half-brothers, Siena highly suspected Greta and Giulia wondered about their fate. Or rather, what their fate might bring for them today.
Greta more than Giulia, likely. She was, after all, closing in on eighteen faster and faster. Giulia, on the other hand, was only fifteen. She still had a few years of safety under her belt.
Not even the girls’ mother had been able to save them.
Not when it came to Kev and Darren.
“I like the red,” Siena said, reaching out to play with a few strands of Greta’s long, wavy hair. Her half-sister only offered a slight, yet still awkward, smile in response. “I thought you were thinking about something darker?”
Greta shrugged. “Ma liked red.”
Silence saturated the hallway. Both of Siena’s half-sisters refused to look up from the floor, not even after Kev cleared his throat, and Darren let out an exasperated sigh.
“Too bad she won’t be able to see it,” Siena said.
She was only forcing herself to talk because every part of her felt like Greta and Giulia. As though she should hide away somewhere, and avoid drawing attention to herself. That would be for the best—that was what would be the safest for her.
Siena couldn’t do that.
Not now.
Not after everything.
It would be like throwing these two young girls to the wolves. Those wolves being their own half-brothers.
It wasn’t like any of the Calabrese daughters—not Siena, being the only legitimate daughter, or her half-sisters, born to her dead father’s equally dead mistress—could trust their brothers to have their best interests in mind. Kev and Darren had proved over the last few months that their interests were solely tied up in one thing, and one thing only.
Moving higher.
Ruining the Marcellos.
Taking over New York.
Siena’s mind drifted over the months that had passed since her father’s murder, and then John going into a facility. A little bit of February, March, April, May, and now here they were in the middle of June.
Her father was still dead.
John was still gone.
And yet … so much had changed.
So very much was different.
Kev had taken over as the boss in lieu of their father’s death. Darren was, of course, Kev’s right hand man. If only that was all …
A failed marriage arrangement. A missing half-sister. Two others, now orphaned. A war on the streets. Bodies piling up.
Siena shook those thoughts out of her head. She could not afford to get lost in them today, and certainly not right now. It didn’t help that Kev and Darren were at her back damn near constantly. She couldn’t move without one of them knowing about it.
Again … so was her life.
But for these two girls?
For her little sisters, so lost without their own big sister to guide them, Siena was present. She forced herself to be present and to do what she needed to do, so they saw a smiling face, and someone they could trust.
Because fuck Kev and Darren.
They would not do to these girls what they had tried to do to their missing sister. Well … to Greta and Giulia, Ginevra was missing. Siena knew the truth—and while right now, the younger Calabrese girls hurt, it would not last forever.
Missing did not mean dead. Someday, they would know that little fact, too.
“Are we all going to linger in the goddamn hallway all day, or have lunch?” Kev asked. “I’m starved.”
Greta and Giulia kept their gazes locked on the floor. Neither of them answered their brother, but frankly, they had learned rather quickly about Kev and Darren. When the two men asked a question, they weren’t actually looking for a response, but rather, an action.
They only wanted well-behaved women.
Very little else.
“Are you hungry?” Siena asked the girls.
“A little,” Greta said.
Giulia dared to look past Siena, and her familiar blue eyes narrowed. “Not particularly.”
Siena let a little smile slip through at the youngest girl’s barely hidden contempt. “I cooked, though.”
The girl’s gaze darted back to Siena in a blink. “Did you?”
“Your favorite.”
“Oh, well … okay.”
“I’m hungry,” Kev repeated.
“Then, go sit down in the damn dining room,” Siena barked over her shoulder.
The warning that flashed in both her brothers’ eyes was enough to tell Siena she was toeing a very thin line with them. Before her father’s death, she used to get away with a hell of a lot more than she did now.
Kev and Darren barely let her breathe. Apparently, even breathing was wrong. Or rather, Siena breathing was wrong.
“Let’s grab some food,” Siena told them.
The girls nodded, and then followed in front of her when she urged the two forward. Greta and Giulia passed by Kev and Darren without saying a word. Siena didn’t miss how the two sisters’ lips curled a bit in their disgust at being close to their brothers.
That could happen when a person was forced to watch brothers you barely knew do things like try and force your older sister into an arranged marriage, not to mention, how they found their mother one morning.
All by Kev and Darren’s hand.
Siena tried her fucking hardest to ignore the awkwardness as the siblings settled into the kitchen together. What else could she do at this point? What else could she possibly do for these two girls—both fighting invisible battles, and confused?
At least, she thought, Greta and Giulia had some freedom even if it was just an illusion. The two lived with an aunt, although the woman was largely paid and happily so by the Calabrese brothers. The sisters weren’t forced to be in Kev and Darren’s presence every single day of their lives. Usually once or twice a week, instead.
Siena, on the other hand …
Well, it all went back to the stifling thing again.
Her brothers were the worst.
She was rarely able to escape them.
It was a couple of hours later before Siena saw her half-sisters off. Shuffled into the back of a black town car driven by a Calabrese enforcer, Greta and Giulia were taken away once more. They were packed up like prized beauties to be brought out and dusted off for showing on another day.
Siena knew it.
The girls knew it.
A fucking shame, really.
“You’re late, Ma,” Kev grumbled.
“I had things to do, son.”
“Things like what, exactly?”
“A friend called.”
Kev scoffed. “Sure, Ma.”
As the footsteps of her mother and older brother came closer to the kitchen, Siena tried to relax the tension in her shoulders. The anger she felt toward her mother reared its ugly head whenever the two were in a damn room together.
Today was not going to be any fucking different.
How could it?
“I really did have other things come up, Kev,” her mother said.
The two were just outside the kitchen, now. Siena didn’t care to eavesdrop, but that had kind of become a part of her job.
So to speak …
“We are trying to put on a united front,” Kev reminded Coraline. “It is the most important thing right now. I’m quite aware of how you feel about Greta and Giulia, but you need to forget about it, Ma. Put it aside for now, so we can all handle our business in this city.”
“Mmm.”
“What?”
“Handle business,” Coraline said. “I suppose we’re going to pretend that another Calabrese Capo was not killed last week, are we?”
“No one is pretending—”
“Well, we can’t forget about that united front, Kev.”
“Ma.”
“I said what I said, didn’t I?”
Kev let out a harsh sigh. “We have a plan—an attack coming up. A few days after the funeral. One of their warehouses on the west end that they think we don’t know about. An answer to the Capo’s death. Darren thought it would be appropriate that we wait until after. Respect to the man, and all that.”
“Sure,” Coraline said. “Your father never would have waited.”
“I am not my father, Ma.”
“Obviously.”
Siena didn’t even bother to look up from the dishes she was washing as her mother and brother slipped into the kitchen. Coraline moved toward the island where a plate of hot food had been left to sit out for her, and looked it over.
“Really, Siena, chicken alfredo?” her mother asked.
Siena kept her attention on her work. “It’s Giulia’s favorite. I was trying to make her comfortable.”
Coraline made a noise under her breath.
It sounded a lot like disgust.
“It might have helped had you shown up like you were supposed to for dinner,” Siena added. “They were looking forward to having an actual conversation with you, Ma.”
Siena did turn around and chance a glance at her mother, then. Coraline looked like something awful had been shoved into her mouth. Horrified, displeased, and disgusted all at the same time.
The last thing this woman wanted to do was greet, be nice to, or handle anything about her husband’s mistress’s children.
It wasn’t like it was the girls’ fault. They hadn’t asked to be born, or for their father to be an unfaithful bastard. Yet, here they all were.
Coraline had been perfectly fine, pleased, and pampered in her life before Matteo’s death. She had not minded turning cheek to her husband’s behaviors, and dalliances with women. She even pretended like she didn’t know her husband’s mistress had once lived in a bigger house than she did simply because she birthed him the same amount of children that Coraline had given to Matteo.
No, none of that had mattered to Coraline before.
Now, with Matteo dead, and the girls’ mother dead, Coraline had no choice.
Despite knowing it might cross one of her brother’s many lines, Siena didn’t mind reminding her mother of her place at the moment. Sometimes, it was the only thing that actually worked where Coraline was concerned.
“It would not look very good for you to shun the only Calabrese principessas della mafia,” Siena murmured, letting her finger edge along the line of the island as she spoke. “Even if those mafia princesses are illegitimate daughters born from a several decades-long affair. You know this, Ma.”
Coraline scowled.
Kev passed a look between the mother and daughter, but said nothing.
“They are not the only principessas of this family,” Coraline said, smiling in that cruel, cold way of hers. “And don’t you forget that, Siena.”
Dread slipped down Siena’s spine.
A cold fear met it with open arms.
Siena knew all too well how open and vulnerable she was to her brothers’ games. She could just as easily be used as fodder for her brothers’ plans as her half-sisters.
And shit …
Maybe better her, than them.
Siena didn’t show her fear, or her weakness. Not to a woman like her mother. Coraline ate that shit for breakfast.
“Maybe that’s what bothers you the most, Ma,” Siena said, shrugging. “That one of the illegitimate daughters will be used before I ever am—the only legitimate daughter. Your daughter. What a fucking shame that would be, huh?”
Coraline’s gaze narrowed.
A silent threat.
A vicious promise.
“Legitimate in name and birth only,” Coraline hissed right back. “We all know how you’ve betrayed this family with all you have done to us, Siena. None of us will ever forget the disgrace you are. Marrying you off to get you off our hands, or getting rid of you by some other means would be a blessing. Nothing more.”
Kev chuckled. “She’s got a point.”
What a life this was.
The disgraced one.
Siena wished she cared.
