Vicious Vows

Chapter One
Gianna

Sitting in the shower under the spray of water, my arms wrapped around my knees, all I can feel is numbness. The water is so hot that the opaque glass has fogged over, and the shower is full of thick steam, but I can’t stop shaking.

There’s pink dripping down onto the tiles from the blood on my hands. My father’s blood, from where I found him just a little while ago, on the floor of his study. The scene keeps replaying in my head, over and over again, like the clip of a horror film I don’t want to watch but can’t look away from.

Today was meant to be perfect. It was perfect. Just this morning, my father was at the breakfast table when I came down, his newspaper in front of him as always, waiting for me to join him. Don Giacomo Mancini—feared or respected by everyone else in Chicago, depending on who the person is—but to me, just my father. He’d put down his paper to hug me, a hug spiced with scents of aftershave and leftover pipe tobacco, like every other morning—except this morning was my eighteenth birthday. 

It’s hard to remember, right now, how beautiful the morning started out. How perfect and sunny it all was, looking out over the manicured lawn and climbing roses that I’ve greeted every morning for every day of my life so far. How eager I’d been to see what my father had planned,  what surprises he’d have in store for me.

Right now, his consigliere, Lorenzo, is downstairs dealing with the aftermath of my father’s death. He’s the only person I could think of to call, the only person who could help—the only person that I know my father trusted completely, other than Alessio. But Alessio’s been gone for three years, and I knew better than to call him, even after Lorenzo had arrived and I no longer needed to worry about what to do next. He’d removed himself from our lives for reasons I don’t know and that my father refused to talk about, and any attempts to bring it up were always shut down completely. Still, I thought about him as I sat there on the floor of my father’s study while Lorenzo found a maid to help me get upstairs and get cleaned up. He would want to know, I thought, somewhere in the back of my grief-fogged mind.

But right now, all I can think about is finding my father on his study floor, blood black against the hardwood floor in the darkness, the fire leaping cheerily in the fireplace as if nothing were out of the ordinary. As if my entire world hadn’t just been shattered.

My hands are still bloody, but I clench them into fists, pressing them against the backs of my closed eyes until I see stars. I don’t want to see the dead body in my mind any longer. I want to see my father the way he was this morning, at the breakfast table. I want to see his expectant smile, waiting for me to notice the pastry that had been laid out for me, along with iced coffee in my favorite mug. I want to see him leaning over, striking a match, and lighting the candle in the middle of the cinnamon roll, the small flame flickering over the melted icing and pooling yellow butter across the plate. 

“I wasn’t sure when you would come down, tesoro. So I left the candle unlit. But now—”

I bite my lower lip hard enough to taste blood. He’d lit the candle, smiling indulgently at me, singing me happy birthday out of tune, as he has every year. “Your mother would have sung it more prettily. Like the angel she is now, I expect. Make a wish, cara ragazza.”

I made the same wish that I’ve made every year. Let the year to come be as happy as the one before. Every year, it’s been granted. This morning, I had no reason to see why that would change. 

“What am I supposed to do?” I whisper it aloud to the empty shower, my heart aching in my chest. The shower smells like sweat and iron in the hot steam, my own flushed skin, and the blood filling the air instead of the sweet scent of shower gel and shampoo. I want to crawl into myself and disappear, make this all disappear. 

I have no one that I feel I can turn to. My father trusted Lorenzo, but I’m not sure that I do. There are no friends that I have to call on, no one for me to go to for comfort. My father tried to introduce me to other mafia daughters, to encourage me to make friends, but I could never relate to them well enough. They all hated their fathers—hardened men who saw them as currency, as a means to extend their ambition, who raised them for marriage and nothing else.

My father was my friend, my confidante. He was someone that I wanted to be more like as I grew up—kind, honest, fair, and intelligent. He did all he could to make sure that I didn’t feel that the loss of my mother robbed me of my only chance at a loving parent. He never refused to answer my questions about anything that I wanted to learn. He never made me feel as if my only future lay in a marriage that he would choose for me.

He’d planned a perfect day for me—booked spa appointments, sent me off for a day of luxury and pampering, and left presents for me to find when I came home. The note he left me is now one of the things I’ll cherish most. This morning, it was only a birthday note. Now it’s the last one I’ll ever have from him. I can remember it by heart, even right now, even with everything tormenting me at this moment. 

To my beautiful daughter,

Although you are all grown up now, you will always be my piccolo tesoro, just as you have been since you were born. I look forward to many more years of watching you grow into the talented, intelligent, and beautiful woman that you are becoming.

Love,

Your father

I lean my head against the tiles of the shower, trying to recall the night. It was the last perfect night I’ll ever have with my father. I play it through step by step—putting on the lavender dress he’d bought me, slipping the earrings on, going down to the car waiting for me at eight p.m. exactly. I’d slipped into the cool, leather-scented interior, and he’d been sitting there, leaning over to give me a quick kiss on the cheek, smiling. A special night, to be sure, but just one of so many more we thought we would have. 

“You liked your birthday presents?” he asks, and I nod.

“Thank you. They’re perfect. Especially the earrings.” I reach up and touch them, dangling from my earlobes, and my father’s smile widens, but there’s a tinge of sadness to it.

“Those were your mother’s. I got a fresh box for them and had them wrapped, but they were hers. I have other pieces of her jewelry, but those will wait for when you’re married.”

“Oh.” The gift takes on a new meaning, even more special than it was before. “I’m so glad I have them.” I brush my fingers over the earrings again, suddenly wanting to never take them off. There’s a bit of anxiety mixed in with the emotion now, though, with the mention of marriage. My father so rarely brings up the topic that anytime he does, it makes me wonder if this is the moment that he’s going to tell me he’s chosen someone, or that he’s looking for candidates to begin choosing from. “I’ll wear them every chance I get.”

The ride to the restaurant is quiet—my father seems lost in thought—and I glance over at him as the car pulls up to the curb. He shakes himself a little as he gets out, the driver coming around to open my door, and I see he’s brought us to a restaurant in the city that we’ve gone to before, a fancy sushi place that I love. We’re escorted to a private booth in the back, and my father gives me a conspiratorial smile as the waitress brings a bottle of chilled lychee sake to the table, along with water for us both.

“You shouldn’t technically be drinking this,” he says, pouring sake into small ceramic cups for us both, “but what’s the point of being one of the three most powerful men in Chicago if my only daughter can’t have a drink on her eighteenth birthday? Anyway, we have someone driving us home.” He winks, tapping the glass against mine as I pick it up, and we both take a sip of it.

I’ve had a little alcohol before—a glass of wine at holidays, mostly—but this is different. It’s sweet enough that I like it, even though it burns the back of my throat, but I cough a little, and my father chuckles. 

“Not too much,” he cautions, although he lets me refill the cup. “But a special treat, for your birthday.”

“How did your meetings go?” I ask as the waitress brings us our appetizers, and I see his smile falter for a brief second, ever so slightly. I don’t think I’m supposed to see it, but I do.

“They were fine,” he says, recovering quickly. “But tonight isn’t a night to talk business, tesoro. This is your night. And I want to talk about your future.”

That anxiety clenches in my stomach again, and I take another small sip of the sake, picking up the jade chopsticks by my plate. “What do you mean?” I ask nervously. “Is this about me getting married?”

My father snorts. “No, Gianna. I’m not marrying you off at eighteen. I want to talk about whether or not you’d like to go to college. We can enroll you for this fall—you can study whatever you’d like. It’s up to you. I can hire another private tutor to teach you at home, but I thought you might like the experience of going to the campus to learn. You’ll have security with you, and you’ll still live at home, of course, but—”

“I would love that.” The idea is a little bit of a nerve wracking one, but new and exciting all the same, and I feel my heart leap in my chest at the thought. “Maybe I could study literature?” The possibilities are thrilling, and I look at my father, waiting to see his reaction.

“You don’t have to decide tonight,” he says, chuckling. “Just think about it, and we’ll discuss it later.” His expression turns a little more serious then, and he sits back, looking at me. “You will have to be married eventually,” he says quietly. “But I think there’s plenty of time for that. And we don’t need to talk about it just yet.”

Not just yet is good enough for me, for now. The rest of the dinner is relaxing and fun, the two of us talking about lighter things—about what I want to do for the summer, the possibility of a vacation, my father admitting he works too much. We eat far too much food and still split dessert, and on the way home, I can see that he’s tired. It must have been a long day for him, with all of the meetings, and once we’re home and back inside, he gives me a smile.

“I’m going to retire early, I think,” he says. “Good night, tesoro.”

“Good night.” I go up on my tiptoes, giving him a hug and another kiss on the cheek, and then go upstairs. I’m tired too, thoroughly relaxed from the day at the spa and full of sake and expensive sushi. I go through the motions of getting ready for bed, washing my face, and slipping into my favorite pair of pajamas before getting into bed and reaching for a book.

I read for an hour or so before I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, switching out the light. I’m almost asleep when I hear a sudden noise downstairs, something that almost sounds like a cry of pain, and then a heavy thud—like something falling.

I sit half-upright, unsure if I was dreaming or not. The cry could have been an animal outside—a cat that wandered through the fence, maybe, or a bird. But the sound—

I had thought it was only a dream. But I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that something was wrong, even as I lay back down. I shouldn’t have been afraid in my own house, but as I’d finally gotten up, padding across the bedroom and into the hall, all I can remember feeling was an awful, cold knot of fear deep in my stomach. Something had felt wrong from the moment I started down the stairs.

I remember trying the master suite first. I could see that my father hadn’t gone to bed yet—the king-sized bed was neatly made up, his slippers at the edge of it, the room quiet and dark. 

I thought of going back to bed then. But every instinct in me screamed to go downstairs, the same instinct that warned me not to turn on a light when I went down, finding the lower part of the house dark—except for my father’s study, where the door was cracked open, buttery warm light spilling out. 

I told myself it was nothing. That the sound had been a book dropping. A stubbed toe. That I would walk in and see him in front of the fireplace with a glass of port and a cigar. 

When I pushed the door open, I did see him in front of the fireplace. But he wasn’t sitting in the leather wing chair he loved so much, or holding a glass of wine, or smoking one of his favorite cigars. He was—

Sitting in the shower, I rub my hands over my face, hard enough to hurt, seeing the last of the blood wash off of my hands and down the drain. I want to wipe away the memory, the sigh of my father facedown on the hardwood, one hand outstretched in front of him as if reaching for something, the table next to the chair overturned with a shattered glass next to it, wine mingling with the blood slowly leaking over the floor. I want to forget the sound of my own scream as I saw him, the way I collapsed to the floor, the smell of blood that I know I’ll recognize all my life now.

I don’t know what happens next. But I know that my life as I knew it—my life as the beloved daughter of Don Giacomo Mancini, is over. 

Who I’m meant to be now, I have no idea.