Page 2 of Tainted Princess
CHAPTER ONE
Francesca
Now
Everything was so perfect.
The banquet hall of the hotel was decked out in the loveliest shade of pale green, the chair covers a delicate ivory, and each table littered with an atrocious amount of flowers. There were candles on almost every available surface, and the dance floor was full of all our closest friends and family.
I had spent hours upon hours pouring over every detail, from seating arrangements and menus, to music and decor. And as I sat at the head table, slightly raised above the rest of the room on a wooden dais constructed expressly for this purpose, I could not have been more proud of how it had all turned out.
And this was only my engagement party.
My attention was stolen from the beauty of my color scheme when I noticed a group of frilly dresses and big hair headed my way. At least a half-dozen of my cousins were suddenly surrounding me, drawing me up out of my chair and passing me from one to the other, their congratulatory hugs coming with a side of too much perfume, but I appreciated them all the same.
“Oh my God, Frankie, you look incredible! Doesn’t she just look incredible? That dress! Ah! I could justdie!” My cousin Bernice gushed, fanning her face with both hands while she spoke entirely too loudly.
Although, cousin was a very loose description of how we were related. If we evenwererelated.
That was the issue with the Mafia; the whole thing was a little…incestuous.
Not in the sickGame of Thronesway. More like, we had all grown up so close to each other, our lives were so intertwined at every aspect, from birth to school, major holidays and events much like this one, that you tended to see the same faces over and over. So, calling them your cousin was much easier than sayingmyuncle’s second wife’s niece from her brother’s first marriage.
“I mean, it’s okay, if you like that sort of thing,” replied Giulia, another of my pseudo cousins. She could always be counted on to say something that should have been a compliment, if it weren’t for the snarky tone and the very dramatic eye roll.
That sort of thing,in this instance, was a conservative tea length dress with three quarter sleeves and a square neckline in the exact shade of green as the rest of the decor. It was very classic, very modest, and a whole lot Jackie Kennedy.
So yeah, I liked it, thank you very much, Giulia. It was exactly what a mafia daughter should be wearing on a night like this. And I was all about meeting expectations.
“It’s very lovely on you, Frankie,” interjected Rosa, one of my actual cousins on my mother’s side, her words barely above a whisper. “You always look pretty in green.” Rosa was almost seventeen and was a tiny little slip of a thing. Her waist was barely as big around as one of my thighs, and she was taller than I could ever hope to be, even though I was already twenty-three. Rosa had light brown hair, big blue eyes, and absolutely no back bone. I worried about how she would fair in our world, but it wasn’t my place to say anything.
It wasnevermy place to say anything.
“Thank you, Rosa,” I said, smiling at her and giving her hand a squeeze. “And thank you for coming tonight.”
I looked again at the packed hall, filled with over three hundred of my family’s most trusted friends and associates, all here for a chance to celebrate my engagement to the man of my dreams, Enrico Morelli,Soldatoin the De Marco Mafia.
And it certainly was an unusual event, at least in the Organization. My grandfather, Carlo De Marco, was the head of our Family, the Boss, the man who had the final say in every aspect of the business. He had ruled the De Marco crime family for over thirty years, practically unheard of in his line of work. My father, Giovanni, sat just below him, Underboss and second in command. After that came a string of uncles and family friends, men that all had one goal in common: making money.
They did it, and they did it well.
As the eldest remaining grandchild of the Don of the De Marco Family, there was a lot riding on my shoulders as far as my role in the future of the Family. I had known for a long time that I would be expected to marry and produce the next generation of Made Men, men who would carry on a legacy over a hundred years in the making.
And I was okay with that fate. The life of a mob wife was not an easy one, but it was one that was vital to the success of the enterprise, and I was prepared to do it to the very best of my ability.
What was unusual about my engagement was that I was able to choose my future husband with my heart, and not out of a sense of obligation. All my cousins, they were going to wind up Mafia wives, just like I was, but their fathers were all looking to get something advantageous out of the marriage; maybe it was a connection with a rival family, shoring up an alliance, or perhaps it was as aninto a successful business that the Family wanted to get their hands on.
Either way, it was very rare for a woman in our position to have any say in the man she would spend the rest of her life with.
But that was not going to be me.
I made a deal over ten years ago, bartered with my own life in order to have the chance to have love as well as duty in my future. My father, he had loved my mother fully and completely, and when she died, he was never the same. I would often find him sitting in the recliner in the front room, staring out the window, like he would every time she was out of the house, watching for her to come home so he could greet her with a kiss.
But, no matter how long he sat in that chair, she wouldn’t be walking through the front door again.
As if he could tell I was thinking about him, my father rose from his seat, breaking off whatever conversations he was having with the men he was sitting with, and made his way to me. Coming behind the head table, he paused and placed a hand on Enrico’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. Enrico and my father had grown close in the last five years, even more so since we had started dating officially about eight months ago. I was hopeful that having Enrico as my husband would also help fill the void left in my father’s heart by the loss of my brother, Antonio, but that was likely just wishful thinking.
I smiled at the two men in my life, noticing how Enrico’s face was a bit pale. Maybe being the center of attention was not for him; lord knows more people had come up to shake his hand tonight than I could even count. Marrying theprincipessaof one of the most powerful families in New York, and possibly the entire country, was a lot to take for a man who had only joined the Outfit five or so years ago.
