Page 32 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

They both steer me to a sofa in the living room section off the kitchen. Hana thrusts a glass of water in my hand. I’m trembling so much from the delayed shock, I can’t get a sip in and it’s falling on my clothes.

“Bianca, talk!” my brother orders.

“I-I can’t go ahead with this wedding,” I stammer.

“Why not?”

“Ardian has a girlfriend.”

“So?” he asks. “He’ll break up with her when you’re married.”

“That’s not the point, Mattia,” Hana gently points out.

He sighs. “Bianca, you’re not this naïve, surely. Some men do keep mistresses after they’re married.”

“Again, not the point, Mattia.”

“Thank you,” I mumble, glancing at Hana. “I’ll be the mistress, in this case.”

“You’re not making sense.”

Both Mattia and Hana are watching me with furrowed brows now.

I take a deep breath, not knowing how to tell them this. “Ardian…he’s into…weird stuff. Twisted shit. I’m afraid he’ll make me do those things…”

We all know in our world of arranged marriages, men bed their wives, make love to them if they care for them, and all their fantasies are reserved for their mistress or carefully procured escorts.

“You said he’ll makeyoudo it, so this means he’s not into kids,” Mattia says.

I bristle. “And that makes it better?”

His jaw tenses. “Of course not.”

I take a deep breath. “I…I saw what’s on his computer. It’s fucked up, Mattia. Dangerous stuff. Like, painful, sadistic, and possibly lethal, too.”

“It’s his brother who’s the pervert.”

“It runs in the family,” I counter. “I’m not doing this. Please. You can’t make me go through with this.”

Mattia remains silent for long moments. I see him pondering, weighing it all in his mind.

“Bianca,” he starts. “I…I’m sorry. I can’t.”

I blink. Hana gasps. I was fully expecting he’d be helping me, that he’d be on my side.

“You won’t, you mean,” I whisper.

He scrunches his face as if he’s in pain. “It’sPadre’s will. Neither of us can go against that, against him.”

I remember the slap, the sting on my cheek, the imprint of his fingers that was still visible on my face when I glimpsed my reflection in a mirror upstairs. My father won’t help me. In fact, he’d tie me in those shackles himself, literally and figuratively, if it means getting his foot up the organization’s ladder. A perfect stranger—the Punjabi cab driver—has shown more compassion to me in two minutes than my own father in two decades.

A ball clogs my throat, and as my stomach hurls in revulsion, in disgust that my father would sell me off like this, that Mattia would put his father’s wishes over the safety of his sister, I get up and run to the powder room under the stairs.

Head over the porcelain bowl, I throw up again, dry retching for long stretches. At one point, Hana comes in, pulls my hair back gently as I upchuck my guts.

“I’m sorry, my love,” she says, soothing me by running a hand on my back. “It’s not right, what he’s doing.”

“It’s not,” I mumble, tears threatening to fall again.

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