"I CAN'T BELIEVE he got you to look after me like I'm some silly school kid." Carlotta snorted, standing with her back to Tony and cradling herself with her slender arms.
Tony had embarrassed her, and she hated him for it.
She had made plans with a friend to meet at Fulton Park, across from the Boys and Girls High School, then take the bus to Manhattan and shop for clothes in the afternoon. Instead of glimpsing her friend Francesca, she had been confronted with the sight of her boyfriend.
She had noticed him almost immediately.
"Sweetheart, you know your papà told me to look after you. He's getting suspicious, and if I said no, he would be on to us." Tony stroked his thumb across her exposed arm, sending shivers down her spine. She turned away, slipping into her winter coat.
"He thinks you're goin' steady with some disgraziat'." Tony elaborated, his lips curling up into a grin.
He's not wrong, Carlotta thought to herself.
"You were spying on me." She repeated, resisting his grasp on her arms.
"I was only protecting us." Tony contended. "What do you think, amore mio? Do you expect me to tell him no when he asks me to do somethin'?"
Despite her momentary fury at his secrecy, Carlotta couldn't deny that she wouldn't stay mad for long. Tony was the man she loved, and she knew what he said was true.
She just didn't understand why her papà had sent his men after her. Sure, it had happened before, but she was a girl back then. Now that she was a grown woman, she needed her privacy, her own life. Or, perhaps, no matter how old she got, her father would never understand that.
"I love you, Tony. I'm sorry we fought." Carlotta relaxed her shoulders, welcoming Tony's hands to rest upon them.
The park was silent. All the kids from the school had gone in after lunch, but from experience, she knew anyone could listen to them, night or day.
"Believe me, sweetheart. If the boss found out about the two of us, that you are my gumad, he would never speak to me again." Tony locked her into an embrace, combing his hands through her curled hair and kissing the side of her neck.
Carlotta bristled and jumped back.
She hated the word gumad. It was the same word she had heard some men call their mistresses and flings: classless American women who dated wise guys for money and lacked respect for themselves or their men. Carlotta was not a fling or a gumad. She was an honest woman like her mamma.
"Hey, what gives?" Tony angled his head sideways to secure a better view of her countenance.
"Nothing!" Carlotta lied. "I just wish you woulda told my papà about us by now, that's it. If we had gotten his blessing a long time ago, none of this woulda happened."
She knew it wasn't true.
Her papà had a way of blowing things out of proportion, especially with the boys she dated. Though Tony was as close as a son to him, he wasn't Johnny Siciliano, and it would humiliate him that one of his men was courting his daughter without his permission.
Tony blew a breath out of his mouth and sighed. "C'mon, I can't just do that."
Carlotta inched away from him, almost tipping over in her stiletto heels. "What do you care more about, Tony? Me? Or your stupid, dead-end job?"
Tears flooded her eyes. She didn't know if she could hold them back for much longer.
Tony groaned in exasperation, infuriating Carlotta even more.
YOU ARE READING
Daughter of the Mob (Sample)
Historical Fiction{EDITORS' CHOICE} {MAFIA ROMANCE} New York, 1954. Pamela Kelly gets an exciting job as a salesgirl. But there is a dark side to the glittering lights and fashions of New York City, complete with corruption, threats and La Cosa Nostra: an intricate a...
