Bound | H.S.

Chapter 1

☆☆☆

I was curled up on the chaise longue in our library, reading, when a knock sounded. Liliana's head rested in my lap and she didn't even stir when the dark wooden door opened and our mother stepped in, her dark blond hair pulled back tightly and fasted in a bun at the back of her head. Mother was pale, her face drawn with worry.

"Did something happen?" I asked.

She smiled, but it was her fake smile. "Your father wants to talk to you in his office."

I carefully moved out from under Lily's head and put it down on the chaise. She drew her legs up against her body. She was small for an eleven year old, but I wasn't exactly tall either with five foot four. None of the women in our family were.

Mother avoided my eyes as I walked toward her.

"Am I in trouble?" I asked timidly.

I didn't know what I could have done wrong. Usually Lily and I were the obedient ones, Gianna was the one who always broke the rules and got punished.

"Hurry. Don't let your father wait." Mother said simply.

My stomach was in knots when I arrived in front of Father's office. After a moment to stifle my nerves, I knocked.

"Come in."

I entered, forcing my face to be carefully guarded. Father sat behind his mahogany desk in a wide black leather armchair. Behind him rose the mahogany shelves filled with books that Father had never read, but they hid a secret entrance to the basement and a corridor leading off the premises.

He looked up from a pile of sheets, grey hair slicked back. "Sit."

I sank down on one of the chairs across from his desk and folded my hands in my lap, trying not to gnaw on my lower lip. Father hated that. I waited for him to start talking.

He had a strange expression on his face as he scrutinized me. "The Bratva and the Triad are trying to claim our territories. They are getting bolder by the day. We're luckier than the Las Vegas Famiglia who also has to deal with the Mexicans but we can't ignore the threat the Russians and the Taiwanese pose any longer."

Confusion filled me. Father never talked about business to us. Girls didn't need to know about the finer details of the mob business. I knew better than to interrupt him.

"We have to lay our feud with the New York Famiglia to rest and combine forces if we want to fight back the Bratva and the Triad."

Peace with the Famiglia? Father and every other member of the Chicago Outfit hated the Famiglia. They had been killing each other for decades and only recently decided on ignoring each other in favor of killing off the members of other crime organizations, like the Bratva and the Triad.

Father looked me in the eyes. "There is no stronger bond than blood. At least the Famiglia got that right."

I frowned.

"Born in blood. Sworn in blood." Father continued. "That's their motto."

I nodded but my confusion only grew.

"I met with Salvatore Styles yesterday." He said.

Father met with the Capo dei Capi, the head of the New York mob? A meeting between New York and Chicago hadn't taken place in a decade and the last time hadn't ended well. It was still referred to as the Bloody Thursday. And Father wasn't even the Boss. He was only the Consigliere, the adviser to Fiore Cavallaro who ruled over the Outfit and with it the crime in the Midwest.