Page 2 of Alliance

I think I’m okay. My body is here. My heart is beating, my lungs are sucking in air. Physically, I’m fine.

Mentally, well, mentally, I saw my sister take her final leap.

I don’t think I’ll ever be “okay” again.

Chapter One

THE DAY MY GRANDFATHER DIES,I know my protection will be buried with him.

I want to sit and cry, to wallow in the pain of losing my favorite person, my biggest supporter, but my parents have a gleam in their eyes, and the whispering has started. I’m certain they have a plan, and I’m just as sure I won’t like it. Knowing my parents, they won’t stop until they get what they want.

And what they want is an alliance.

Even at my grandfather’s funeral, my mother is plotting. A symptom of growing up in the CostelloFamiglia, I assume. For the past three years, Carlotta Costello has been a tigress, lying in wait, searching for a weakness in her prey she can exploit. She walks into her father’s funeral with the confidence of a man in a suit. Despite being raised by her, I’ve never spent a day with the prowess my mother has.

Suddenly my black dress feels suffocating. It’s a warm day for December in New Orleans, the temperature reaching the low seventies. The French Quarter is lit up, holiday decor dons every building, lights are strewn across the streets. But inside the walls of this funeral home, all festiveness ceases to exist.

Funerals and I don’t do well together. Memories of Lily’s float through my head, making me dizzy. The thoughts don’t bode well with me as I recall the screaming matches between my mom and her siblings. My mother wasn’t one to accept any faults of her own. She refused to acknowledge that her actions had anything to do with her daughter’s death. Instead of accepting any blame, she let the crater between her and her siblings expand, creating a large division right down the middle of our family.

The only one to end the commotion was my grandfather. I spare a glance at his coffin; I guess he won’t be here to help now.

The Costello siblings have a rocky history of getting along, even before Lily’s death. Love didn’t flow freely between the four of them. Mostly, they conspire with whoever has their back at the moment. I glance at my parents huddled with Aunt Caterina. This tells me she’s their current ally.

Of the four Costello children, my mother has always been the closest with her older sister. The younger two siblings, Aunt Cosetta and Uncle Carmine, tend to leave out their older sisters. It feels like a civil war divided the two pairs, forcing the four siblings to constantly be at odds with each other.

The only time they tolerated each other’s presence was around my grandfather, Carmine Costello Sr.

Grandpapa had a low threshold for the fights between siblings, whether it was my mom and her siblings, or me and Lily. His view was that family should stick together. If only he knew his children were just sitting around waiting for him to die, so they could burn his beloved city to the ground with their petty war.

They can’t even wait for the funeral to be over.

Each of them is dying to take over New Orleans. The only thing the four siblings have in common is that none of them are willing to let anything impede their plans. Even each other.

As if on cue, Uncle Carmine aka Junior, the chosen successor, walks through the wooden door leading into the funeral home. Dressed impeccably in a black three-piece suit and his salt and pepper hair slicked back, he looks like a younger version of my grandfather. Behind him is his son, Sam, the spitting image of his father.

Despite the plotting currently happening in the room’s corner, Uncle Junior has been runningLa famigliafor a while now. Since before Grandpapa’s diagnosis, before the chemo, and before the month of hospice.

Uncle Junior’s eyes immediately find my mother and Aunt Caterina in the corner and both straighten their spines as he approaches them. I stand on the balls of my feet, clutching the paper cup of water I’m holding, ready for the shouting to start.

I think everyone in the room is bracing themselves.

It’s well known in the family that Uncle Junior doesn’t care for his two older sisters, and now that Grandpapa is gone, he has no reason to support them.

I swallow hard as he approaches, looking at my mother and Aunt Caterina up and down. I can’t hear what he whispers, but the scowl on Aunt Caterina’s face tells me she’s not thrilled.

My mother straightens her spine, her tell that she’s feeling defensive, and my father has his lips pursed into a thin line.

Despite my mother’s lifelong goal of pleasing her father, she married a man that he didn’t like. Maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t like him as much as he saw through his motives. Hell, half of New Orleans can see through Damien Romano’s motives. He’s transparent, and it’s clear his intention is to take the boss’s seat.

“You look nervous.”

I turn my head quickly to lock eyes with Sam. I was so focused on my parents’ body language that I didn’t notice him creep up on me.

“I’m not,” I spit out with more venom than I mean to.

Sam smirks and shoves his hands into the pockets of his Tom Ford dress slacks. He leans his back against the wall that I’m standing by. “You know what they want to do?” he asks.

Despite our parents’ hatred of each other, Sam has been nothing but kind to me our entire lives. He’s seven years older than me, three years older than Lily is.Or was. The two of them were protective of me since the day I was born, always keeping me under their wings and looking out for me.

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