"There are several qualified mental health professionals in the Genovese Family." Most of their clients are not mafia though.
We allow it, but therapy is not popular and I don't know of a single soldier or high ranking made man who has been. But even my father understood that children deserve whatever kind of healthcare they need.
Carlotta is the first adult in the family I know of to attend therapy. Catalina goes now too. At Sev's insistence.
That is not something our father would have encouraged.
Róise is silent as we walk across the large lawn toward the water.
Finally, she speaks. "My father wasn't like Uncle Brogan, or my grandfather. Dad was the strongest and smartest man I ever knew, but he didn't see people as pawns in a criminal game of chess."
"Explain."
"Dad promised me when I was twelve that I would never be forced to marry someone for the sake of the mob."
That's unheard of. Her father was the oldest son and would have been the next boss if he hadn't died first.
His daughter should have been the first woman in the family promised in a political alliance. "Why?"
Why would he make the promise and why would he feel the need to?
"My grandfather and uncle signed a contract with the mob in Ireland for my sixteen-year-old cousin to marry a stranger. I had nightmares about it happening to me. Every night. Terrible dreams of being dragged up the aisle to marry a monster."
"Why did it terrify you so much? Mick Fitzgerald is a good man."
"He's a good mobster. A good father, but is he a good man?"
"You tell me."
"He could be. And that's not the point. I'd never met Mick. The monster was the marriage, not the man."
And now she's being faced with that monster, only it's marriage to me.
"So, your father promised not to force you into an alliance marriage?"
"He'd already refused on my behalf. That's why Kara was chosen." The guilt in Róise's tone causes a weird sensation in my chest.
That's where the nightmares came from.
Even without her dad telling her, Róise knew that as the daughter of the heir, she was the one that should have been promised in the alliance. Her tender age of twelve would have been no barrier.
Marriage arrangements are made at birth in some families. Her cousin was only eighteen when Kara married Mick Fitzgerald.
My sister finished college before entering her alliance marriage and no child of mine, whatever their gender, will be pushed into marriage before they're twenty-one.
"Dad didn't tell me that though," Róise continues. "I only learned it after his death. When I heard him arguing with my grandfather it was about any future marriages, not the one to Mick."
When had she heard? "Do you listen in on mob business often?"
If so, how is she still so innocent?
"It wasn't mob business. It was my life."
Another misdirect rather than answer and not accurate either. Her grandfather would have considered the marriage nothing but mob business at that point. She was too young for it to be anything else.
"Do I have to worry about you spying on me?" I turn from the view of the bay to face her.
"For my uncle?" she asks with insight I'm starting to realize should be expected. "No. For myself?" She shrugs.