TOGETHER TILL ETERNITY ❤️

THE BETROTHAL

Three years prior.

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 didn’t know what I could have done wrong. Usually Lily and I were the obedient ones; Jiya 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 chew 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 familia 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 Familia to rest and combine
forces if we want to fight back the Bratva and the Triad.”
Peace with the
Familia?
Father and every other member of the Chicago Outfit hated the Familia.
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.

“There is no stronger bond than blood. At least the Familia got that right.”
I frowned.
“Born in blood. Sworn in blood. That’s their motto.”

I nodded but my confusion only grew.
“I met with Anant Singh yesterday.”

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 Rudra Rathore who ruled over the Outfit and with it the crime in the Midwest.

“We agreed that for peace to be an option we had to become family.”

Father’s eyes bored into me and suddenly I didn’t want to hear what else he had to say.
“Singh and I agreed that you would marry his oldest son Anubhav, the
future Capo dei Capi of the Familia.”

I felt like I was falling. “Why me?”
“Singh and Rudra have been talking on the phone several times in the last
few weeks, and Singh wanted the most beautiful girl for his son.

Of course, we
couldn’t give him the daughter of one of our soldiers. Rudra doesn’t have daughters, so he said you were the most beautiful girl available.” Jiya was just as beautiful, but she was younger. That probably saved her.

“There are so many beautiful girls,” I choked. I couldn’t breathe.

Father looked at me as if I was his most prized possession.
“There aren’t many Italian girls with hair like yours. Rudra described it as
golden.” Father guffawed.

“You are our door into the New York Familia.”

“But, Father, I’m fifteen. I can’t marry.”
Father made a dismissive gesture.

“If I were to agree, you could. What do we care for laws?”

I gripped the armrests so tightly, my knuckles were turning white, but I
didn’t feel pain.

Numbness was working its way through my body.
“But I told Anant that the wedding would have to wait until you turn
eighteen. Your mother was adamant you be of age and finish school. Rudra let her begging get to him.”

So the Boss had told my father the wedding had to wait. My own father
would have thrown me into the arms of my future husband now.

My husband.

A wave of sickness crashed over me. I knew only two things about Anubhav Singh ;
he would become the head of the New York mob once his father retired or died, and he got his nickname ‘The Vice’ for crushing a man’s throat with his bare hands.

I didn’t know how old he was. My cousin Tanya had to marry a man
thirty years her senior.

Anubhav couldn’t be that old, if his father hadn’t retired yet.
At least, that’s what I hoped. Was he cruel?
He’d crushed a man’s throat. He’ll be the head of the New York mob.
“Father,” I whispered. “Please don’t force me to marry that man.”
Father’s expression tightened.

“You will marry Anubhav Singh. I shook hands on it with his father. You will be a good wife to Anubhav, and when
you meet him for the Engagement celebrations, you’ll act like an obedient lady.”

“Engagement party?” I echoed. My voice sounded distant, as if a veil of
fog covered my ears.
“Of course. It’s a good way to establish bonds between our families, and it’ll give Anubhav the chance to see what he’s getting out of the deal. We don’t want to disappoint him.”
“When?” I cleared my throat but the lump remained.

“When is the
engagement party?”
“August. We haven’t set a date yet.”

That was in two months. I nodded numbly. I loved reading romance novels
and whenever the couples in them married, I’d imagined how my wedding would be.

I’d always imagined it would be filled with excitement and love.
Empty dreams of a stupid girl.

“So I’m allowed to keep attending school?”

What did it even matter if I graduated? I would never go to college, never work. All I’d be allowed to do was to warm my husband’s bed.

My throat tightened further and tears prickled in my eyes, but I willed them not to fall. Father hated it when we lost control.

“Yes. I told Singh that you attend an all-girls Catholic school, which seemed to please him.”

Of course, it did. Couldn’t risk that I got anywhere near boys.

“Is that all?”
“For now.”

I walked out of the office as if in trance. I’d turned fifteen four months
ago. My birthday had felt like a huge step toward my future, and I’d been
excited. Silly me.

My life was already over before it even began.

Everything was
decided for me.

Heyy guys...
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For the second time 😂

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