STIFLING WAS NOT a word Siena Calabrese used often, but at the moment, it was the one that best fit her life. Hot, stuffy mid-June air blew through the hallway of her oldest brother’s brownstone. It reminded her that it wasn’t only the two men looming at her back making her feel like she was roasting with suffocation. Even the muggy weather had hot, sticky hands around her small throat.
So was her life, now.
“Greta, Giulia,” Siena greeted.
The two teenaged girls stepped into the brownstone with guarded eyes. As they always did. As they should. There was nothing in that house—but for Siena, perhaps—that could be trusted, and the girls knew it.
Every time they were faced with their half-brothers, Siena highly suspected Greta and Giulia wondered about their fate. Or rather, what their fate might bring for them today.
Greta more than Giulia, likely. She was, after all, closing in on eighteen faster and faster. Giulia, on the other hand, was only fifteen. She still had a few years of safety under her belt.
Not even the girls’ mother had been able to save them.
Not when it came to Kev and Darren.
“I like the red,” Siena said, reaching out to play with a few strands of Greta’s long, wavy hair. Her half-sister only offered a slight, yet still awkward, smile in response. “I thought you were thinking about something darker?”
Greta shrugged. “Ma liked red.”
Silence saturated the hallway. Both of Siena’s half-sisters refused to look up from the floor, not even after Kev cleared his throat, and Darren let out an exasperated sigh.
“Too bad she won’t be able to see it,” Siena said.
She was only forcing herself to talk because every part of her felt like Greta and Giulia. As though she should hide away somewhere, and avoid drawing attention to herself. That would be for the best—that was what would be the safest for her.
Siena couldn’t do that.
Not now.
Not after everything.
It would be like throwing these two young girls to the wolves. Those wolves being their own half-brothers.
It wasn’t like any of the Calabrese daughters—not Siena, being the only legitimate daughter, or her half-sisters, born to her dead father’s equally dead mistress—could trust their brothers to have their best interests in mind. Kev and Darren had proved over the last few months that their interests were solely tied up in one thing, and one thing only.
Moving higher.
Ruining the Marcellos.
Taking over New York.
Siena’s mind drifted over the months that had passed since her father’s murder, and then John going into a facility. A little bit of February, March, April, May, and now here they were in the middle of June.
Her father was still dead.
John was still gone.
And yet … so much had changed.
So very much was different.
Kev had taken over as the boss in lieu of their father’s death. Darren was, of course, Kev’s right hand man. If only that was all …
A failed marriage arrangement. A missing half-sister. Two others, now orphaned. A war on the streets. Bodies piling up.
Siena shook those thoughts out of her head. She could not afford to get lost in them today, and certainly not right now. It didn’t help that Kev and Darren were at her back damn near constantly. She couldn’t move without one of them knowing about it.
Again … so was her life.
But for these two girls?
For her little sisters, so lost without their own big sister to guide them, Siena was present. She forced herself to be present and to do what she needed to do, so they saw a smiling face, and someone they could trust.
Because fuck Kev and Darren.
They would not do to these girls what they had tried to do to their missing sister. Well … to Greta and Giulia, Ginevra was missing. Siena knew the truth—and while right now, the younger Calabrese girls hurt, it would not last forever.
Missing did not mean dead. Someday, they would know that little fact, too.
“Are we all going to linger in the goddamn hallway all day, or have lunch?” Kev asked. “I’m starved.”
Greta and Giulia kept their gazes locked on the floor. Neither of them answered their brother, but frankly, they had learned rather quickly about Kev and Darren. When the two men asked a question, they weren’t actually looking for a response, but rather, an action.
They only wanted well-behaved women.
Very little else.
“Are you hungry?” Siena asked the girls.
“A little,” Greta said.
Giulia dared to look past Siena, and her familiar blue eyes narrowed. “Not particularly.”
Siena let a little smile slip through at the youngest girl’s barely hidden contempt. “I cooked, though.”
The girl’s gaze darted back to Siena in a blink. “Did you?”
“Your favorite.”
“Oh, well … okay.”
“I’m hungry,” Kev repeated.
“Then, go sit down in the damn dining room,” Siena barked over her shoulder.
The warning that flashed in both her brothers’ eyes was enough to tell Siena she was toeing a very thin line with them. Before her father’s death, she used to get away with a hell of a lot more than she did now.
Kev and Darren barely let her breathe. Apparently, even breathing was wrong. Or rather, Siena breathing was wrong.
“Let’s grab some food,” Siena told them.
The girls nodded, and then followed in front of her when she urged the two forward. Greta and Giulia passed by Kev and Darren without saying a word. Siena didn’t miss how the two sisters’ lips curled a bit in their disgust at being close to their brothers.
That could happen when a person was forced to watch brothers you barely knew do things like try and force your older sister into an arranged marriage, not to mention, how they found their mother one morning.
All by Kev and Darren’s hand.
Siena tried her fucking hardest to ignore the awkwardness as the siblings settled into the kitchen together. What else could she do at this point? What else could she possibly do for these two girls—both fighting invisible battles, and confused?
At least, she thought, Greta and Giulia had some freedom even if it was just an illusion. The two lived with an aunt, although the woman was largely paid and happily so by the Calabrese brothers. The sisters weren’t forced to be in Kev and Darren’s presence every single day of their lives. Usually once or twice a week, instead.
Siena, on the other hand …
Well, it all went back to the stifling thing again.
Her brothers were the worst.
She was rarely able to escape them.
It was a couple of hours later before Siena saw her half-sisters off. Shuffled into the back of a black town car driven by a Calabrese enforcer, Greta and Giulia were taken away once more. They were packed up like prized beauties to be brought out and dusted off for showing on another day.
Siena knew it.
The girls knew it.
A fucking shame, really.
“You’re late, Ma,” Kev grumbled.
“I had things to do, son.”
“Things like what, exactly?”
“A friend called.”
Kev scoffed. “Sure, Ma.”
As the footsteps of her mother and older brother came closer to the kitchen, Siena tried to relax the tension in her shoulders. The anger she felt toward her mother reared its ugly head whenever the two were in a damn room together.
Today was not going to be any fucking different.
How could it?
“I really did have other things come up, Kev,” her mother said.
The two were just outside the kitchen, now. Siena didn’t care to eavesdrop, but that had kind of become a part of her job.
So to speak …
“We are trying to put on a united front,” Kev reminded Coraline. “It is the most important thing right now. I’m quite aware of how you feel about Greta and Giulia, but you need to forget about it, Ma. Put it aside for now, so we can all handle our business in this city.”
“Mmm.”
“What?”
“Handle business,” Coraline said. “I suppose we’re going to pretend that another Calabrese Capo was not killed last week, are we?”
“No one is pretending—”
“Well, we can’t forget about that united front, Kev.”
“Ma.”
“I said what I said, didn’t I?”
Kev let out a harsh sigh. “We have a plan—an attack coming up. A few days after the funeral. One of their warehouses on the west end that they think we don’t know about. An answer to the Capo’s death. Darren thought it would be appropriate that we wait until after. Respect to the man, and all that.”
“Sure,” Coraline said. “Your father never would have waited.”
“I am not my father, Ma.”
“Obviously.”
Siena didn’t even bother to look up from the dishes she was washing as her mother and brother slipped into the kitchen. Coraline moved toward the island where a plate of hot food had been left to sit out for her, and looked it over.
“Really, Siena, chicken alfredo?” her mother asked.
Siena kept her attention on her work. “It’s Giulia’s favorite. I was trying to make her comfortable.”
Coraline made a noise under her breath.
It sounded a lot like disgust.
“It might have helped had you shown up like you were supposed to for dinner,” Siena added. “They were looking forward to having an actual conversation with you, Ma.”
Siena did turn around and chance a glance at her mother, then. Coraline looked like something awful had been shoved into her mouth. Horrified, displeased, and disgusted all at the same time.
The last thing this woman wanted to do was greet, be nice to, or handle anything about her husband’s mistress’s children.
It wasn’t like it was the girls’ fault. They hadn’t asked to be born, or for their father to be an unfaithful bastard. Yet, here they all were.
Coraline had been perfectly fine, pleased, and pampered in her life before Matteo’s death. She had not minded turning cheek to her husband’s behaviors, and dalliances with women. She even pretended like she didn’t know her husband’s mistress had once lived in a bigger house than she did simply because she birthed him the same amount of children that Coraline had given to Matteo.
No, none of that had mattered to Coraline before.
Now, with Matteo dead, and the girls’ mother dead, Coraline had no choice.
Despite knowing it might cross one of her brother’s many lines, Siena didn’t mind reminding her mother of her place at the moment. Sometimes, it was the only thing that actually worked where Coraline was concerned.
“It would not look very good for you to shun the only Calabrese principessas della mafia,” Siena murmured, letting her finger edge along the line of the island as she spoke. “Even if those mafia princesses are illegitimate daughters born from a several decades-long affair. You know this, Ma.”
Coraline scowled.
Kev passed a look between the mother and daughter, but said nothing.
“They are not the only principessas of this family,” Coraline said, smiling in that cruel, cold way of hers. “And don’t you forget that, Siena.”
Dread slipped down Siena’s spine.
A cold fear met it with open arms.
Siena knew all too well how open and vulnerable she was to her brothers’ games. She could just as easily be used as fodder for her brothers’ plans as her half-sisters.
And shit …
Maybe better her, than them.
Siena didn’t show her fear, or her weakness. Not to a woman like her mother. Coraline ate that shit for breakfast.
“Maybe that’s what bothers you the most, Ma,” Siena said, shrugging. “That one of the illegitimate daughters will be used before I ever am—the only legitimate daughter. Your daughter. What a fucking shame that would be, huh?”
Coraline’s gaze narrowed.
A silent threat.
A vicious promise.
“Legitimate in name and birth only,” Coraline hissed right back. “We all know how you’ve betrayed this family with all you have done to us, Siena. None of us will ever forget the disgrace you are. Marrying you off to get you off our hands, or getting rid of you by some other means would be a blessing. Nothing more.”
Kev chuckled. “She’s got a point.”
What a life this was.
The disgraced one.
Siena wished she cared.
• • •
The church quieted as the Calabrese family slipped inside. Siena stayed firmly behind her older brothers, yet still in front of her mother. Appearances were everything, and even how they entered a space was now a well thought out event.
Kev stayed a half of a pace ahead of Darren. A subtle, yet still clear, message about which of the two men now ran the Calabrese show. Darren never seemed to mind, as his brother’s right-hand man, seeing as how he still had quite a bit of control himself.
Siena was always made to be in between her brothers and mother—a clear indicator that she was both protected, and watched. Enforcers trailed behind them all. One for each person, and sometimes more.
Somedays, it felt as though Siena couldn’t breathe. Every direction she looked, someone new was watching her. Someone else would be reporting back to her brothers on her latest behaviors.
She found it easier to be compliant and complacent, but inside, she was a raging monster battling against the walls of her cage. A prison cell that no one else could see, sure, but that she was all too aware of when it came right down to it.
Siena’s gaze drifted over the people already sitting down and waiting for the funeral to start. She didn’t linger on one person for any length of time, and she didn’t even give them a smile. What would be the point?
She was only there for show.
Much like her brothers.
At the front of the church, standing at the closed casket of a now-dead Calabrese Capo, was the family of Arty Moretti. Siena stayed back beside her mother as Kev and Darren greeted the dead man’s wife first, and then his oldest daughter, and one son. Both of the man’s children were adults—Siena counted that as a blessing in disguise when it came to this war between the Calabrese and Marcello families.
At least this way, the two were not young children now left without a father. They were already adults into their own lives, and would not be left feeling abandoned and alone. Or … that was her hope for them.
She suspected it still hurt them, of course. Grief was a lot like the ocean—wide, sometimes clear and sometimes murky, and always dangerous. It could swallow someone whole, and drown them in pain.
Siena stepped up to the family when her brothers moved away. As Kev and Darren moved to speak with a couple of their men gathered close by, she and her mother took to comforting the family.
It was also their job.
Another one added to the pile.
And what did they say to these poor people?
“We’re so sorry.”
Sorry our family has taken from you.
“We’re here for you.”
So long as you are here for us.
“He is with God.”
And more men will soon join him.
Because that was the way of war, and that was all that could be guaranteed for these people, and their pain. More deaths would follow, and it would be all the Calabrese family’s fault.
Why?
Siena’s gaze drifted to her brothers again. Sure, they looked as though they fit the part of mafia principes turned kings in their black suits, shined shoes, slicked back hair, and straightened postures. Their cold eyes held little warmth, and their tones delivered orders with a sharp flatness that could both chill, and slice at the same time.
Matteo—during the years that he lived—had certainly trained her brothers well. They stepped into the positions they needed to without hesitation, and without batting an eye. The rest of the Calabrese organization didn’t think to question the brothers when they moved up in power, and replaced others that might have been a better fit. No one said a thing when they first tried to strong-arm the Marcellos into a peaceful deal, and then turned on them when said deal went sour.
Fingers pointed.
Bullets were readied.
Blood spilled.
The city tasted like war now.
Nothing could stop them. Kev and Darren were obsessive in their desire and assurance that the Calabrese family would soon be the one running New York City with an iron fist.
Well, that’s how it felt, anyway. They still had to get the little issue of the Marcellos out of the way. The Marcello family made it very clear that would not be an easy task.
Siena patted the hand of the Capo’s widow, and offered her a smile. A forced smile, sure, and one that didn’t reach her eyes, but who could tell? It was a funeral, after all. No one was supposed to be happy or true.
“Anything you need, I promise,” Siena repeated.
The woman nodded. “Thank you, Siena. You’re such a sweet girl. Your brothers must be so proud of you.”
Siena smiled a little more honestly at that statement. Bitterness coated her tongue with the taste of bile, and she patted the woman’s hand once more.
“You have no idea,” she murmured.
As quickly as Siena had greeted the woman and her adult children, she turned away from them, and followed behind her now-moving brothers. Kev and Darren weaved through the group of men who had come to talk to them, and made for their designated seats.
Only because this was not their family’s funeral, and this was not their church, did they sit in the pew directly behind the family. Unfortunately, while sitting, there was no chance for Siena to hide her displeasure or discomfort behind her brothers’ backs. She was forced to take a little more care with her appearance, and the mask she put forth.
Darren looked over at her. “Did you really have to pick a purple dress?”
“It’s a dark color.”
“Black is appropriate.”
“I’m fucking sick of black, Darren.”
All she ever seemed to wear anymore was black.
Once this was all over—she had not forgotten what Andino Marcello told her months ago when she was ripped away from John, after all—she was never going to wear black again. Not unless someone fucking forced her into the color.
This won’t be forever.
Those words rang and rang.
They echoed and echoed.
She kept them close.
What else could she do?
A few minutes before the service was supposed to start, murmurings passed between the people in the pews. Heads began to turn in the direction that the whispering started. Hot, humid heat from the outside slipped up the church’s aisle.
Siena turned, too.
She wanted to see, too.
There, at the back of the church dressed in black on black and standing in a close line of at least ten men, were Marcellos.
The boss. His men. John’s father.
Dante Marcello—the boss of the family—smiled and ticked a finger forward. His men moved behind him as he took a step forward, and then another. Slow, purposeful strides. A confident, uncaring stroll.
Beside Siena, her brothers and mother hissed back and forth between one another. Clearly, they had not been expecting this move.
Siena was kind of impressed.
“How fucking dare they?” Kev asked.
“Stop sitting there—do something,” Darren snarled.
“What should he do?” their mother asked. “He cannot make a scene in this church.”
No, Kev certainly couldn’t.
Once again, it looked like her brothers were bowing down to the Marcellos. It seemed as though not every battle was started and finished with bullets, blood, and funerals. Some battles were won with killer smiles, and a simple show of power.
Siena was starting to believe she should keep score.
Calabrese family—zero.
The Marcellos—one.
• • •
It was almost funny how one simple action could change all kinds of circumstances. Suddenly, the enforcers that rarely left Siena alone when she was outside of her brothers’ sights were now fully distracted by the show happening inside the entrance of the church.
With the funeral over, it seemed Siena’s brothers had finally decided to take action with the Marcellos.
Better late than never.
Siena hung back behind the crowd—her interest in watching men verbally spar over their growing feud was nonexistent. None of this would do her or the cause she was silently fighting for any good at the end of the day.
She kept one eye on her mother as Coraline edged along the crowd. Her mother’s eagle eye was fully pointed on Kev, Darren, and the Marcellos.
Siena never would have taken her mother for a woman who involved herself in mafia politics, or the business of men. And yet, there Coraline was on a daily basis. Doing exactly those things with her sons, and never thinking twice about it.
Who knew why.
The name she carried.
The man—now dead—she had married.
The legacy behind her.
The promise of one ahead of her.
Siena didn’t know.
It wouldn’t matter when this was over.
A form slid in beside Siena. She stiffened a bit at the man’s presence, and the scent of his familiar cologne. He wouldn’t typically be so bold, but it seemed like everyone around them at the moment was currently distracted.
Andino smiled a bit when Siena looked at him. “What do you have for me?”
This little game of theirs had started months ago. It started with nothing more than a single sentence in passing from Andino—perhaps you should take up a hobby … like yoga. Back when there had seemed like a chance of settling this feud between their families with something like a marriage was possible, he had given her that line, and she ran with it.
Yoga it was.
It was the only time—two hours twice a week—that her brothers allowed Siena any kind of privacy and peace. The enforcers stayed outside the complex. She slipped out the back. Andino was always waiting.
John’s cousin was fighting this war in a far dirtier way.
Siena respected him for it, really.
“Well?” he asked again. “What do you have for me?”
“A west end warehouse,” Siena said. “An attack in a couple of days. Retribution for Arty’s death. That’s all I know.”
Andino’s face cleared of emotion, and his gaze hardened. “All right. You don’t know what, or how many—”
“I would tell you if I did. You know that.”
Andino’s hand touched her shoulder lightly. “I know.”
She glanced back at him again. “I miss him.”
John.
She always missed him.
She hadn’t seen him in months.
Andino nodded once. “I know that, too. Soon, Siena. I know he’ll be getting out soon. He made the choice to stay in the facility for this long because of his own health. He chose stability. That’s the thing about John, and being bipolar. I don’t think he’s ever really chosen stability before now. And with that comes taking a hard, long look at a lot of things in his life. I don’t think he felt it was good for him mentally to try handling his personal business while dealing with everything outside of it, too.”
“I want him to be good.”
She wanted John to be healthy, and happy.
Safe.
He was not going to come out to stability, or safety.
Not now.
“He’s going to be fucking great,” Andino said with a grin, “as long as you’re still waiting for him when he’s ready to come back, then nothing else matters.”
“Of course, I’ll be waiting.”
She loved John.
Nothing was ever going to change that.
Andino nodded. “So, hey, what’s the thirtieth looking like for you?”
“Of this month?”
“Yeah.”
Siena shrugged. “Yoga.”
Andino chuckled. “Thought so. I’ll be waiting. We should really go visit John.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, girl, really.”
That made everything so much better.
“Okay, go before someone sees you with me,” she said, flicking her hand at him.
Andino rolled his eyes. “Trust me—they’re all too stuck up their own asses to even think about you right now. You didn’t seriously think this whole show was just about fucking with their heads, did you?”
“Well …”
Yeah, kind of.
Andino smirked. “I will always find a way to get my message in, Siena, no matter how protected they think you are. Do you have a new phone?”
“Yeah, Kev changed it again last week.”
“Same old, same old.”
Siena nodded once. “Random wrong numbers, I know.”
“This whole thing isn’t forever, remember. Soon, you’ll have what you want.”
Not what.
Who.
She reminded herself daily that this wasn’t forever.
No, it was just for right now.
Forever was going to be far more beautiful.