Page 1 of Under the Influence

GREEN EYES SUPPOSEDLY SIGNIFY A MYSTERIOUS PERSONALITY TRAIT.

I don’t know if I am mysterious, but secrets I have a lot of them. Buried tight and hidden away.

Submerged in the darkest and deepest places of my consciousness. Contrary to popular belief, the truth willnotset you free, at least not in this case because if anybody ever found out the truth, life as I knew it would beover.

“Once I had love, it was divine, soon found out I was losing my mind. it seemed like the real thing but I was so blind, mucho mistrust, love’s gone behind.” Blondie reverberates the room as I attempt to sing along with her,unsuccessfully.

“Lost your mind indeed.” Mama’s voice comes from behind me and almost makes me jump out of my skin. She has a habit of sneaking up on you when you least expect it.

Mama gives me one of her famous sideways knowing looks, and instinctively I know what her look is referring to even if she doesn’t say anything.

“I’m almost ready, Ma,” I say, ignoring the growing tension in the air.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she says, annoyed.

“Would you prefer if I called you Gabriella instead?” I smirk.

“It’s just you and me tonight, papa has other commitments,” she says, ignoring me.

Other commitments is code for ‘Mafia business,’ and it always amuses me how coy she is about what Papa does, as if I’d really believe that the mansion, the cars, and the private jet were all a result of him working a regular job. The thought of it almost makes me laugh out loud.

My Papa would rather die than be a law-abiding citizen. There is nothing ordinary about Paolo Falcone, the notorious Don of the Falcone family, one of the five founding families of New York’sLa Cosa Nostra. Respected as much as he was feared, papa is not a man to be disrespected in any way, and if you ever did cross Don Paolo Falcone, it was likely to be the last thing you did.

Mama feigned ignorance to ‘his ways’ and constantly implored the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell policy’ that most women in our circles followed so rigorously.

“The florist called and said you haven’t gotten back to them about arrangements,” she says icily.

“I will call them back,” I say, sighing.

“Yes, you will,” she says firmly, giving me another one of her famous scathing looks before walking out the room.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love Ma, it was just that we were complete opposites. My refusal to conform to her expectations of a Mafia daughter had caused a rift between us, and in the last few years, that rift had become a permanent fracture.

One year ago seemed so far away when I agreed to the marriage but now, like the sands of an hourglass, time seems to be slipping through my fingers at an alarming rate. When I say Iagreed, it was never like I had achoice; it was more of a rhetorical question. There is no romance or courtship involved in these matters,Mafia matters.

The famousLa Cosa Nostradidn’t have time for sentiment and heartfelt meaning. Papa’s business is organized crime in every shape or form. I knew he was a Don—a powerful Mafia head, and I knew what that meant. In the Mafia, marriage is two families coming together and strengthening each of their business interests. In this case, papa would lose nothing and gain everything, our family held the most strings, controlling every hand and transaction in the city; that is how he wanted to keep it. On my twenty-first birthday, I formally became betrothed to Pietro Rossi, the son of Don Vincenzo Rossi, therefore, fortifying the relationship between two of the most powerful families in New York. It wasn’t explained to me in these exact words, but living apart of this world, I learned at an early age to read between the lines. I had spent my adolescence overhearing things I wasn’t meant to, something I would later come to regret. Seeing what my papa and all my ‘uncles’ were truly capable of left me with an uneasy feeling, and all the fancy clothes and expensive vacations couldn’t rid me of the fact that I knew it was all tainted.

Pietro is only a year or two older than me. A wiry-looking boy with blonde hair is how I remember him. According to mama, Pietro has now become even more handsome than the last time I saw him. I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that he could be a direct descendant of Thor himself and I still wouldn’t be able to drum up any interest in him. I guess the feeling was mutual by the look of indifference he gave me when we had met before.

“Sophia, are you listening to me?” She huffs from outside the room.

“Yes, Ma, I’m just finishing getting dressed,” I say, trying to placate her. Although papa was the Don, it was my mama who really ran things, and her temper, like most Sicilian women, was legendary. My pensive nature seemed to piss her off the most out of all my siblings; Gennaro, Claudio, and Massimo. I already knew they would be following in papa’s footsteps, three ready-made Dons to keep the Falcone name alive. Mama always interred that I was permanently lost in a daydream, but sometimes daydreams were a lot less brutal than reality. I know what the Falcone name means and who papa is and what exactly he does to keep our family on top. The looks we receive when we are out are mingled with fear bordering on reverence. The murky underworld of crime will permanently mark us forever.

I remember it clearly as if it were yesterday, starting college in the city and being followed by whispers and stares everywhere I went. The words ‘Mafia princess’ seemed to stalk me all over campus. The only people who wanted to befriend me were those who thought it would be cool to have a mafioso as a friendship accessory, or they gaged me as a plug they could use for accessible drugs or to further themselves. Papa owned this city; if you were friends with a Falcone, it could get you anywhere you wanted. I had practiced discernment from a young age, and it kept me out of the clutches of all the users and leeches. It was also that discipline that led me to meet him, the man I gave everything to and nearly lost everything for.

“I’m almost ready,” I reply as I fumble with my mask, two hours of careful eye makeup only to be compromised by this masquerade mask. Tonight, I am attending the engagement of Pietro’s sister Angela. I don’t know who the intended is, only that he is a made man and already a Don. Angela and I were the same age, so she was either marrying a man who was fairly older than her or somebody who had been made early in life. The second option being more menacing, for a man to be made too early meant he had either a proclivity for violence or crime or both.

However, I could barely find it in myself to ask mama about this. I was just going through the motions, like a clock in my head was counting down to me walking down the aisle and seeing the docile blonde Pietro looking back at me.

One year had slowly petered down to eight weeks. Why was it when you dreaded something, it seemed to speed up the event even further? Mama picked the wedding dress and planned most of the wedding, I was too disheartened to do anything myself, apart from the floral arrangements which even I had cast aside in boredom. I often fantasized that I would hightail it before I even got to the end of the aisle, throw my flowers and heels to one side, and run until there was no oxygen left, only the burning of my lungs. I knew it was just a pipe dream, and I would probably be dead before I even reached the outside building, and if they didn’t kill me, then the shame I brought on the Falcone name would. How many marriages are based on love anyway? Perhaps I would grow to like Pietro and, in time, love him. I thought I had experienced love, but maybe that was just an infatuation and not the real thing because all I had left from what I experienced was a deep sense of guilt mingled with shame. Everything in this family came down to image, there was no way I could ever get away with half the things my brothers or cousins get up to.

Virginity was a prerequisite for women and not even a concept thought about for men. I very much doubted my betrothed is a virgin. In fact, I am hoping he isn’t. Trepidation builds within me, as I realize that the first time I will be intimate is with a virtual stranger. I blank it out of my mind as I do one last make-up touch up before leaving my room.

“Where are you going dressed like that?” My brother says frowning slightly at my attire. “You look like you’re going to one of those kinky joints,” he says smirking.

I am trying to follow the masquerade theme, wearing a black dress with mesh panels on either side. My signature black Jimmy Choo heels, with a classic red lip and now obscured smokey eye.

“How would you know about them, baby brother?” I ask, smirking and enjoying the flush of color on his face.

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