Jilani Corsetti is a seventeen-year-old trying to live as freely as she can. Having an unfortunate upbringing full of pain, fear, and hate, she wishes to move forward and actually enjoy life. With her trustworthy friend, Joseph, and his uncles, Jila...
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JILANI
Jilani felt like she could spend hours comparing her and her father's identical looks. Looking back on it, Jilani had no idea how her young self had ever considered her aunt and "step-father" to be her real parents.
Where Jilani's aunt had straight, light brown hair and her step-father blonde, Jilani had a dark brown, almost black, that fell in ringlets. Where Jilani's aunt had hazel eyes and her step-father green, Jilani had a brown so rich, Joseph once swore that when she got angry, her eyes looked like boiling coffee. Where Jilani's aunt had stood short and her step-father equally short and fat, Jilani grew to stand tall, with shoulders broad even before she had begun training. In the awkward months before and at the beginning of puberty when she had chopped all of her hair off, she was often teased for resembling a young boy.
Now at the age of seventeen, knowing neither of her legal guardians were her biological parents, it was easy to see where she had gained all of her physical characteristics as she walked side by her side with her father to the interrogation room she had been in hours before.
Ava made the suggestion that since the two had never met and were unaware of each other's existence, it was in Jilani's best interest, because Ava was currently her advocate until official papers were signed, for the two to sit down and just talk to get to know each other. Ava had sent her father and brother, who Jilani learned was one of six, into the interrogation room first so she could pull Jilani aside to have a private discussion with her.
"Now, Jilani, I can understand how overwhelming this moment is for you right now," the woman said yet again, "but if you find you really do not wish to stay with him, we will make the means necessary to put you in a new home." Jilani assumed the woman was speaking of foster care, and while staying in America was an interesting prospect, her father, a Capo, was much more intriguing.
Jilani knew there was much more to consider, and that this decision wasn't one to make on pure curiosity, but what did she have to lose? Jilani knew her limits. She knew of her strengths and of her weaknesses. Going with her father would mean putting herself in a direct line of fire, but...
When he said her name, Jilani thought she had breathed for the first time.
And from the way her father had spoken her name and looked in her eyes, she couldn't help but think he felt the same.
Stepping into the room, the chill of the AC and lack of bodies hit her first and she was pinned by two pairs of eyes that were carbon copies of her own. They were seated nearest to the door, where she had sat previously during her meeting with Ava. Keeping her eyes pinned to her father, Jilani smoothly walked passed them and sat down across the table. They were quite tall, so once seated, she had to look up a bit as it wasn't a very long table. She could reach across and touch her father's hands if she so wished, it was that small. A bit useless to be an interrogation table, Jilani noted passively.
