TOGETHER TILL ETERNITY ❤️

THE BETROTHAL 2

I couldn’t stop crying. Jiya stroked my hair as my head lay in her lap.

She was thirteen, only eighteen months younger than me, but today those
eighteen months meant the difference between freedom and a life in a loveless prison.

I tried very hard not to resent her for it. It wasn’t her fault.

“You could try to talk to Father again. Maybe he’ll change his mind,”
Jiya said in a soft voice.
“He won’t.”
“Maybe Mama will be able to convince him.”

As if Father would ever let a woman make a decision for him.

“Nothing anyone could say or do will make a difference,” I said miserably.
I hadn’t seen Mother since she’d sent me into Father’s office. She probably couldn’t face me, knowing what she’d condemned me to.
“But Hasee—”
I lifted my head and wiped the tears from my face. Jiya stared at me
with pitiful blue eyes, the same cloudless summer sky blue as my own.
But where my hair was light blond hers was red. Father sometimes called her witch;
it wasn’t an endearment. “He shook hands on it with Anubhav’s father.”
“They met?”

That’s what I’d wondered as well. Why had he found time to meet with the
head of the New York Familia but not to tell me about his plans to sell me off like a better whore?

I shook off the frustration and despair trying to claw their way out of my body.
“That’s what Father told me.”
“There has to be something we can do,” Jiya said.
“There isn’t.”
“But you haven’t even met the guy. You don’t even know how he looks!
He could be ugly, fat and old.”

Ugly, fat and old. I wished that were the only features of Anibhav I had to worry about.

“Let’s google him. There have to be photos of him on the internet.”
Jiya jumped up and took my laptop from my desk, then she sat down
beside me, our sides pressed against each other.

We found several photos and articles about Anubhav. He had the coldest brown eyes I’d ever seen. I could imagine only too well how those eyes looked down at
his victims before he put a bullet in their heads.

“He’s taller than everyone,” Jiya said in amazement. He was; in all the photos he was several inches taller than whoever stood beside him, and he was
muscled. That probably explained why some people called him the Bull behind his back. That was the nickname the articles used and they called him the heir of
businessman and club owner Anant Singh . Businessman. Maybe on the outside. Everybody knew what Anant Singh really was, but of course
nobody was stupid enough to write about it.
“He’s with a new girl in every photo.”
I stared down at the emotionless face of my future husband. The
newspaper called him the most sought after bachelor in New York, heir to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Heir to an imperium of death and blood, that’s
what it should say.
Jiya huffed. “God, girls are throwing themselves at him. I suppose he’s
good looking.”

“They can have him,” I said bitterly. In our world a handsome exterior
often hid the monster within. The society girls saw his good looks and wealth.

They thought the bad boy aura was a game. They fawned over his predator-like
charisma because it radiated power. But what they didn’t know was that blood and death lurked beneath the arrogant smile.

I stood abruptly. “I need to talk to Umberto.”

Umberto was almost fifty and my father’s loyal soldier. He was also
Gianna’s and my bodyguard. He knew everything about everyone. Mother called
him a scandalmonger. But if anyone knew more about Anubhav, it was Umberto.

           ††††††††††

“He became a Made Man at eleven,” Umberto said, sharpening his knife
on a grinder as he did every day. The smell of tomato and oregano filled the kitchen, but it didn’t give me a sense of comfort as it usually did.
“At eleven?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. Most people didn’t
become fully initiated members of the Mafia until they were sixteen.

“Because
of his father?”
Umberto grinned, revealing a gold incisor, and paused in his movements.

“You think he got it easy because he’s the Boss’s son? He killed his first man at eleven, that’s why it was decided to initiate him early.”
Jiya gasped.

“He’s a monster.”
Umberto shrugged.

“He’s what he needs to be. Ruling over New York, you can’t be a pussy.” He gave an apologetic smile. “A wuss.”
“What happened?”

I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. If Anubhav had
killed his first man at eleven, then how many more had he killed in the nine years since?

Umberto shook his shaved head, and scratched the long scar that ran from
his temple down to his chin. He was thin, and didn’t look like much, but Mother told me few were faster with a knife than him. I’d never seen him fight.

“Can’t say. I’m not that familiar with New York.”

I watched our cook as she prepared dinner, trying to focus on something
that wasn’t my churning stomach and my overwhelming fear. Umberto scanned
my face.

“He’s a good catch. He’ll be the most powerful man on the East coast
soon enough. He’ll protect you.”

“And who will protect me from him?”

I hissed.
Umberto didn’t say anything because the answer was clear: nobody could protect me from Anubhav after our wedding.

Not Umberto, and not my father if he felt so inclined. Women in our world belonged to their husband. They were his
property to deal with however he pleased.

I was doomed in all senses.

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