Page 1 of Made to Sin

PEOPLESAIDTRYINGTHEDEVIL’Spowder was worse than submitting yourself to Hell. They said cocaine made people go insane, derailed goals, and brought out the ugly.

They were right.

I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, my sunken eyes and battered cheeks staring back. Erratic emotions flooded each pupil, dilating them to where there were more blacks than whites. The view coasted a chill down my spine, eliciting a full-body grimace.

The cocaine could mask what it wanted, but as I blinked away the foggy haze, I saw the inevitable: my life was as glamorous as a dumpster’s.

Rotten and messy.

Not knowing if I wanted to laugh or cry at the revelation, I let out a strangled mix of both. A choked cough rose to the base of my throat as I let out indistinguishable sounds.

No wonder cocaine was the most imported good in theCosa Nostra.This place was no better than Hell. Being in the mob robbed my happiness, my youth, my will, and anything else I had to give away. The only thing it spared was the sickeningly put-together shell of my appearance.

The name “Katarina Camello” floated around theUnderworld’s gossip like the ideal mob wife. Prim, proper, polite. The three P’s I was forced to follow whenever in public.

I never spoke too loud despite the urge to yell, never argued back against the misogynistic comments thrown at me, always ate a tiny chunk of the chocolate cake I wanted to devour, always kept my hair long even though it weighed heavily on my shoulders… My life was filled withneversandalways, so the uncertainty festered inside my head.

What everyone didn’t see was that the very marriage that got me the leading role was also nothing but a lie. My marriage didn’t include greeting my husband at night with a glass of wine or massaging his shoulders while I asked about his workday.

No, my marriage included beatings and bitches.

I got the beatings, and he got the bitches.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I told you to get ready three hours ago,” my dear husband and don of the Camello Mafia, Marco, screamed while storming into the small ensuite.

Rage fueled in his brown eyes as the ever-so-loving don immediately got to action. He yanked my hair by the roots and lifted my head to the light.

Slap.

My face burned as his handprint added to the already bruised skin of my left cheek. Another reason why I preferred the highly-intoxicating drug was because it made me so manic, I forgot what pain was— at least temporarily. My husband’s abuse fell into just another numbing high.

“Wake the fuck up, you whore. You’re lucky I don’t have time to deal with you or your drug addiction right now.”

When I didn’t react, standing in front of him with a dazed expression, Marco threw me onto the tiled floor and gave my ribs a suffocating goodbye kick with the threat of coming back if I wasn’t downstairs by the hour.

For a minute, I lay there and looked at the barren ceiling,wondering where my life went wrong. It was too easy to think I deserved the beatings. Marco did tell me to get ready, but I chose to do a line of coke instead. Maybe I wouldn’t have been hit if I had just listened…

“Meu Deus, help me,” I heard my housekeeper, Maria, before I saw her.

“May God help us all,” I repeated.

The graying-haired Brazilian stood under the archway of the bathroom door, glaring at my motionless form. “Meu bem, are you high again? And may the Lord have mercy, you’re not even dressed!”

I rolled my eyes at her dramatics. There was no point in denying I was as baked as her famous chocolate chip cookies, but she already knew I would rather jump off the side of the Manhattan Bridge than go to some event for theCosa Nostra.

“Do I have to go?” I complained, my words annoyingly pitchy.

“Yes, so go wash away the drugs. You stink.”

I frowned at the rude comment but didn’t do so much as inch forward.

Maria huffed at my stubbornness and walked over to turn on the shower herself. Without the energy to argue or deal with her chastising, I got up and dragged myself under the water’s spray. I stood still, letting it wash away the pieces of my high. The coldness drenched through the T-shirt I had forgotten to take off, biting at my skin.

There was a time when I did enjoy these vain events, ornating myself with the expensive socialite lifestyle. My father was a man of high status once, so my family had our share in meaningless charities and galas. Albeit, it wouldn’t be fair of a comparison as it was short-lived. Everyone blacklisted us after my father’s gambling debt accumulated anyway.

Now, the events I went to were from pure force by my husband. Marco was unjustifiably my owner due to some inhumane contract Papà signed when he foolishly asked the mob for help.In return for the generous payments Marco made on my Papà’s behalf, he got to “play” with me.

Guilty or not, it would be wrong to fully blame Papà for my misery in marriage. As a young and impressionable child, I had fallen for Marco’s heroic impressions too. I thought he was how a perfect Made Man should be. He had the confidence, the money, and the power. It was a no-brainer why young and abandoned me loved his attention.

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