Page 1 of In the Shadows

PROLOGUE

CAMILLA

Most girls get a big party for their eighteenth birthday.

They get gifts and loving words from their friends and family. They get to spend the day with their loved ones, showering them with attention and celebrating their coming into adulthood.

Not me, though.

No. Instead of a big party, I got told today’s my wedding day. I’m marrying a man I’ve never met, one who’s twenty years my senior, to pay a debt my father has owed since I was still in my mother’s stomach.

I’m not stupid, I know arranged marriage is normal for families like mine, expected even. I just never thought I would fall victim to one. But maybe I should have known. Now that I think back on the last eighteen years, there are things that don’t make sense, moments when my father looked at me with sadness at a time when everyone else felt nothing but happiness.

He waited until today to tell me. I’m not sure whether to be mad that he’s ruined my birthday or happy I got to live in blissful ignorance up until the very last moment. All I know is that this morning when I came down for breakfast, I was met with my father’s dejected eyes and the news I had just spent my last night in my own bed and woke up for the last time in the home I grew up in.

As far as Mafia lives go, ours has always been fairly normal. Or at least I think it has based on what I’ve seen of the other families in New York. Sure, we have security twenty-four-seven, and yes, I do have to log every movement I make before I make it, but I’ve been free to make my own choices up until now. I haven’t been bound by generations of tradition to play the dutiful daughter.

Or at least that’s what I thought. Now I think I’ve been led up the garden path into a world of false security, only to have the rug pulled out from under me. I thought I would take my father’s place eventually. He’s been training me for that eventuality for as long as I can remember, but now I’m not sure why he bothered. If he always planned to hand me over, why not spend that time training my cousin to take his place?

“Camilla,” Chloe, our housekeeper, says from behind me, and I realize I’ve been staring into my suitcase, completely unaware of the world going on around me while mine stands still. My future is scary and uncertain, and I don’t know how to navigate everything that comes next. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.” She rubs my shoulder, but I can’t drag my attention from the clothes piled in the bag I took to Paris last month.

Will I ever be able to travel again?

Will I get the chance to complete my bucket list?

Or will I become a baby farm until my usefulness wears out? Until I’ve produced enough heirs for Charles Davenport to pass his legacy down to? When I’m no longer useful, will he let me go? Or will he kill me and dump my body at the bottom of the ocean?

I give Chloe a weak smile, but it doesn’t reach my eyes. Hell, the thing barely even reaches my lips. I’m sad to leave the house I grew up in, but more than that, I’m sad to leave my family, because I have no idea when I’ll see them again or if I will at all.

Chloe was my nanny growing up after my mother died of cancer when I was eight, and she effectively became my mom. She was patient and kind, and she guided me to be the best person I could, considering the family I was born into. But she never prepared me for being married off to a man in his late thirties and how to navigate that.

When I was old enough to look after myself, she decided to stay on staff. The perks when working for the De Marco family are pretty good, and although what she’s told me has been limited, I’ve always wondered if there’s something in Chloe’s past she’s running from. She’s only ten years older than me, barely out of high school when she took on the position in our home, but there are stories in her eyes I’ve often wondered about.

Someone clears their throat by the door, and when I look up, I’m met with my father’s regretful gaze. After he told me, I lost it. I yelled and screamed and begged him not to make me go through with this, but he’s already made up his mind. Hell, he made it up before I took my first breath. Why would I expect him to change it now?

I never bothered asking why he would do this. What could possibly be so important as marrying his oldest, and only, for that matter, daughter, off to someone as cold and terrifying as Charles?

“Camilla.”

“Father.” I drag my attention back to the task at hand. If I spend too much time looking at him, I’ll break. I grew up in a Mafia family, and if there’s one thing I learned over the last eighteen years, it’s that weakness is a death sentence. He spent years teaching me how to live in this world, but nothing could have prepared me for this eventuality.

The door clicking shut pulls my eyes back up, and I find his own darting around the room. “We don’t have much time.”

“Until my new husband sends for me?” I sneer. The word leaves a bitter taste on my tongue, and bile rises in my throat. I’ve never thought much about getting married. I wasn’t one of those little girls who dreamed of their wedding and their Prince Charming, but now I’m forced to consider my imminent vows and what they’ll mean for my future. I almost scoff at myself. That’s not the right word for the life sentence my father has given me.

Stupidly, I thought one day I would rule the De Marco kingdom. I’m my father’s only child, and the only other person who could ever take the throne is my asshole cousin, Scott. But he’s not fit to be king, and his father is never lucid enough to be of any threat to my position. But I guess I never considered the possibility of being traded like a piece of fucking meat either.

“You need to leave right now,” he whispers, rushing toward me with an envelope I didn’t see in his hand before. “There’s a new identity, a plane ticket, and enough money to see you through a few months in here. You need to run as far and as fast as you can.”

I stare at him blankly for long moments, because it sounds a lot like he’s helping me escape, but that would mean double-crossing the Davenport family, and that in itself is a death sentence. “I don’t understand.”

He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “There is a long story that comes with how you came to be promised to Charles, but I want you to know that I never wanted this to happen. I thought I’d be able to buy him off, that I could offer him something else he may want, but as your birthday got closer, he’s become more obsessed with you, and I can’t send you to him. I refuse to have my baby girl fall into hands like his.”

“But Dad?—”

“No, Camilla. There’s no time for arguments. I love that you have your mother’s fire, but right now, I need you to go. Get out of New York, start a new life, and never look back.”

I look over his shoulder at Chloe, who’s zipping up my suitcase, and I realize she must have known about this when she was helping me pack. It makes sense. While I was aimlessly throwing shit anywhere it would fit, she was gathering necessities and packing them carefully in the same case. She was getting me ready to run.

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