The Forced Betrothal

CAMILLA

The sharp scrape of a silver knife against fine china shattered the quiet in the dining room. I kept my gaze fixed on my plate, but I could feel the suffocating tension hanging in the air.

Dad pushed his roasted asparagus around in circles, his dark eyes darting to me every few seconds. He carried a tight, pinched look around his mouth. It was the exact expression he wore whenever he geared up to drop a massive bomb on my life, only to lose his nerve at the last second. Mom sat across from him, practically humming with an unsettling, electric energy. She sat up pin-straight, her posture rigid and her face glowing like she had just been handed front-row tickets to Paris Fashion Week.

I swallowed the last bite of my dinner and wiped my mouth with a linen napkin. I waited for Dad to give the familiar nod so I could push my chair back and leave the table. My fingers twitched with the urge to hold a brush. I had a half-finished canvas waiting upstairs in my room—a sprawling piece I had started at dawn. With the final week of my second college semester officially behind me, I had poured every free hour into my art. It was the only thing that felt real.

Finally, Dad cleared his throat. The sound echoed loud in the cavernous room. "We need to discuss something with you."

"Alright…" I dragged the word out, my stomach tightening.

The last time he initiated a family meeting with that exact tone, he blindsided me with the news about my former fiancé running off with a cheap street prostitute. I had felt an overwhelming rush of relief at the time. I never wanted to marry the man anyway. But I kept that joy locked tight behind a neutral face. Mom had spent the next seven days locked in her bedroom, sobbing hysterically over the ruined engagement. She lamented non-stop about how the other mafia wives would mock her social standing. I had just turned nineteen. In her twisted reality, a nineteen-year-old girl without a ring on her finger was a walking scandal.

"We have chosen a new husband for you." Dad forced the words out.

"Oh." The syllable slipped past my lips before I could bite it back.

It was not a shock. I grew up in this syndicate. I knew this day would come sooner rather than later. But considering my age, and the fact that I had just settled into my college classes, I held onto a naive, desperate hope. I thought they might grant me a few more years of freedom. I thought they might at least let me have a small say in who I would be tied to for the rest of my life.

"He is an Underboss!" Mom announced. Her voice rang out, shrill and bursting with arrogant pride.

My eyebrows shot toward my hairline. Well, that explained her radiant mood. My late, runaway fiancé had only been the son of a Captain. Respectable enough in the hierarchy, but nothing worth bragging about at the country club. An Underboss was a massive leap up the food chain.

I sifted through my mental roster of the high-ranking men in the Chicago Mafia, desperately searching for an Underboss even remotely close to my age. I came up empty. Every man holding that title was hardened, seasoned, and brutal.

"Who is it?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Dad refused to meet my eyes. He shifted his gaze to his half-empty wine glass. "Victor Di Rossi."

My lips parted. The air vanished from my lungs.

Dad had muttered that name countless times behind closed doors. Whenever he needed a safe place to unload his deep frustrations about syndicate business, Victor Di Rossi was always the subject. Mom usually tuned out any conversation that did not revolve around charity galas or designer handbags, but even she knew the weight of that name.

Victor Di Rossi’s reputation spread through the city like a vicious wildfire. He was the most feared Underboss in the entire Chicago organization. He was the Boss’s right hand, the executioner who kept the streets dripping with blood.

He was also a fresh widower.

His wife had died recently, leaving him alone with two young children. The whispers circulating through the gilded halls of our social circles painted a horrifying picture of her demise. Some of the older wives claimed Victor possessed a temper so dark he had finally snapped and murdered her himself. Others swore she had simply withered away into a hollow shell beneath his suffocating, icy control. The most persistent rumor suggested she had taken her own life just to escape the sheer terror of sharing his bed.

None of those stories made me want to share a room with the man, let alone stand at an altar and bind my soul to his.

"Isn’t he a lot older than me?" I managed to ask, fighting to keep the tremor out of my voice.

"Ten years," Mom corrected briskly. Her manicured fingers smoothed the edge of the tablecloth. "He is in his prime, Camilla. You should be grateful we secured such a powerful match."

"Why would he want to marry me?"

I had never met the man. He did not know my face, my voice, or my personality. He needed a mother for his two young children, and I did not know the first thing about raising kids. I could barely keep my own plants alive.

"You are a Moretti," Mom stated, as if that explained the universe. "You understand how beneficial the merging of two powerful families like ours will be for the syndicate."

"What about college?" I leaned forward, my nails digging into my palms. "I just started. I am only in my second semester. How can I get married right now?"

Mom shot Dad a glare filled with sharp irritation. "I told you, didn’t I? You should have never let her enroll in that university. It only put foolish ideas in her head." She snapped her attention back to me, her eyes hard and unsympathetic. "The women in our world do not bother themselves with college degrees. Your ultimate goal must be creating a happy, stable household for a powerful man."

I turned my pleading gaze to Dad. I waited for him to step in, to defend my education, to remind her that my art actually mattered. But he remained frozen, his eyes glued to the dark red liquid in his glass.

The last thing he ever told me about Victor Di Rossi echoed in my skull. He said the Don made Victor an Underboss because the two men were cut from the exact same cloth. They were ruthless. Merciless. Built like apex predators who never stopped until they got their kill.

And now my own father was wrapping me up in a bow and handing me over to a predator.

"When?" I asked. My stomach twisted into violent knots, but I fought to keep my tone even. Judging by the sheer triumph radiating from Mom, the ink was already dry on the contract.

"The day after your birthday," she answered without missing a single beat.

"I am honestly surprised you waited until I was of legal age," I shot back, the bitterness bleeding through. "It is not like the Mafia is famous for following the law."

Mom’s mouth tightened into a thin, furious line. "You had better lose that sharp tongue before you meet Victor. A man of his stature will not tolerate a disrespectful, bratty wife."

Beneath the heavy mahogany table, my hands curled into tight fists. I had zero doubts about how this arrangement came to be. This marriage was her grand scheme from the very beginning. She spent her days plotting ways to push the Moretti name higher up the treacherous ladder of the Chicago Mafia, and I was just a pawn on her blood-stained chessboard.

She offered a sickeningly sweet smile, looking like she had just secured the crown jewel of her matchmaking career. She rose gracefully from her seat. "I need to start scouting wedding venues before the other families snatch up the prime locations. This will be the social event of the year."

She walked past my chair and patted my cheek. She touched me like I was a prize-winning show dog she planned to parade in front of wealthy judges. When she saw the cold, unimpressed glare on my face, her smile faltered.

"I am not sure Victor will appreciate that sulky attitude," she sneered, her eyes raking over me. "Or that messy hairstyle."

"She looks fine, Luciana," Dad finally spoke up, his tone carrying a rare, jagged edge.

"She looks pretty and young. But she does not look refined or womanly," Mom countered, refusing to back down.

"If Victor wants a mature lady, maybe he should stop trying to marry a teenager," I muttered under my breath.

Mom gasped, her hand flying to her chest like I had driven a blade through her ribs. Dad coughed loudly into his napkin, though the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed a fleeting sense of amusement.

Mom was not fooled by the fake cough. She turned her wrath on him, wagging a perfectly polished finger in his face. "You had better talk some sense into your daughter right now. You know Victor. I always told you to be stricter with her. Now she is going to ruin everything."

With that final decree, she spun on her heel and swished out of the dining room. Her long silk skirt trailed behind her, acting as the final, dramatic punctuation mark to the argument.

Dad let out a slow, ragged sigh. His broad shoulders slumped forward as if the physical weight of the conversation was crashing down on his spine. "Your mother only wants the best for you, Camilla."

I stared at him, my expression flat. "She wants what is best for her social standing in the Mafia. How exactly is marrying me off to a ruthless older man supposed to be good for me?"

"Come on," he murmured, pushing his chair back from the table. He stood up and adjusted his suit jacket. "Let’s take a walk in the garden."

I trailed after him, letting him loop his arm through mine when he offered it. The moment we stepped through the French doors, the heavy Chicago summer air wrapped around us. It felt thick, warm, and deeply suffocating. The scent of damp earth and blooming night jasmine did nothing to calm my racing heart.

"Victor isn’t old, Camilla," Dad said softly, guiding me down the stone path. "He is thirty-one."

I searched my brain, trying to picture what men in that specific age bracket looked like. I never paid much attention to the older men in our world. I usually hid upstairs when they came over for cigars and whiskey. Wasn’t Dante, our terrifying Don, around that age? The mere thought made my stomach knot even tighter. My Uncle Dante was a dangerous, unforgiving monster. If Victor was anything like him, my life was truly over.

What if he was some cruel, heavyset brute with dead, soulless eyes?

I glanced up at Dad’s profile, searching for a lifeline. His dark eyes softened with a heavy dose of paternal guilt. "Do not look at me like I have betrayed you. Being Victor Di Rossi’s wife isn’t as terrible as you think it will be."

I stopped walking and narrowed my eyes at him. "Cruel. That is the word you used to describe him. Don’t you remember?"

A shadow passed over his face. He looked away, staring into the dark hedges. "He is cruel to his enemies. To people who double-cross the family. Not to you."

"How can you be sure of that?" I stepped into his line of sight, forcing him to look at me. "How did his wife suddenly die, Dad? Tell me. What if he killed her? What if he treated her so terribly she chose the easy way out just to get away from him?"

My voice cracked on the final word. I forced a sharp breath through my nose to steady myself.

Dad reached out and gently brushed a stray lock of hair away from my face. His expression broke, revealing the tired, trapped man beneath the tailored suit. "I have never seen you this frightened." He exhaled a long, heavy breath into the humid night air. "Dante swore to me personally. Victor had absolutely nothing to do with Bianca’s death."

I scoffed, taking a step back. "Do you actually trust Uncle Dante? You told me yourself he has been trying to tighten his grip on power over the last few months."

"There are a lot of things I should have never told you."

"And how can Uncle Dante be so sure?" I pressed, refusing to drop it. "You know how our world works. No one ever interferes in another man’s household. Not even the Don."

Dad stepped forward and planted his heavy hands firmly on my shoulders. His grip was tight, desperate. "Victor will not lay a hand on you if he knows what is good for him."

We both stared at each other in the dim garden light. We both knew those words meant nothing. They were just empty promises meant to soothe a panicked girl.

Once the rings were exchanged and the vows spoken, Dad would lose all authority over my fate. And the brutal truth was, Enzo Moretti was not the kind of man to risk his own life fighting a battle he could never win. The Don trusted his Underboss more than he ever trusted my father. If a dispute ever arose between them, Dad would not survive the week. I was being thrown to the wolves to secure a political alliance, and no one was coming to save me.

"He is coming here to meet you tomorrow."

I froze. The words hit my chest like physical blows. I stepped back, my shoulder slipping out of his grip.

"What?"