The Rocchetti Queen - Bree Porter Page 0,75

his daughter, Rosanna Ossani, on his hip. Aurelia di Traglia ran pass, chased by her father, their laughter lifting up into the clouds.

So domestic, so suburban, but home to some of the world’s fiercest gangsters.

Over the ten years that had passed since I had married Alessandro ‘The Godless’ Rocchetti, so much had happened. People had fallen in and out of love, children had been born and blessed, marriages arranged.

The Outfit had shifted, the Rocchettis had shifted. Mafias outside of Chicago had changed. More stories than I could ever tell had passed, tales filled with pain and loyalty, blood and duty.

I looked down at my children, staring into their dark eyes.

And so many more stories would come to pass.

“Miss Sophia, your father wishes to see you.”

I looked up from the dough I had been kneading. Dita stood by the doorway to the kitchen, moving foot to foot.

“Tell him I will be there in just a moment.”

“He was quite…insistent, Miss Sophia,” Dita said. She looked over her shoulder, like she was afraid of something.

I wiped my hands. “I will go right away. Would you mind…”

“Of course not.” Dita took over my spot in the kitchen, working the dough with an expert’s hand.

I washed my hands and hung up my apron. Papa would not be pleased if I walked flour into his office.

Papa’s office was the most important room in the house, I had always thought. It was where our uncles and cousins went in after dinner, smoking heavily and discussing Outfit business. Whenever the mahogany doors were closed, we knew to give the room a wide berth. Being summoned to the office was equivalent to being sent to the principal’s office.

If Papa was a king, then his office would be the seat of his power.

The doors were cracked slightly open, but I still knocked. “Papa?”

“Come in, bambolina.”

I slid into the room, closing the door softly behind me.

The office was dimly lit, the only source of light was the sun rays spilling under the curtains. If you peered through the smoky air, you could make out the old books with their unopened spines and paintings of Sicilian battles lined up against the walls. In the middle of the room, the large desk sat, with my father at it, overseeing the room like a 17th century monarch.

Papa gestured to me. “Sit down, bambolina.”

I sat down obediently, the leather chair sinking under my weight. “Is everything okay, Papa?”

My father didn’t look happy—not that he was a man known for his positive outlook on life. But usually, I got a thin smile.

“I have some news,” he said.

News? What sort of news? Good news or bad news? “Oh?”

Papa linked his fingers in front of him. “The Don has approached me with a very…very generous offer. More generous than we deserve.”

The Don? My stomach tensed. I was not going to like where this conversation went.

“He has offered for you to marry one of his grandsons.”

All thoughts eddied from my head, then came crashing back in a single anxious wave. Don? Marriage? Grandson? I could hardly form a coherent thought—could hardly believe what I was hearing.

“You will become a Rocchetti. It is a good match, all things considered,” he said.

I parted my lips, but no words came out.

“I had hoped for someone softer for you,” Papa said apologetically. “But…there are no more men equivalent to your status and you’re nearly twenty-five, my dear. Much too old not to be married.”

“I’m only twenty-one” was all I could say.

His words were still repeating through my head, not truly sinking in.

“You will be twenty-two by the time you are married,” he said.

Papa looked at the photos lined up along his desk. Photos of my sister and I. His countless wives had never made the cut of being presented on the desk, so I use to feel a strange sort of accomplishment over it. Now, they were a reminder that I had once had a sister and I did not have one any longer.

I looked over to the chair beside me. Two leather chairs were in front of my dad’s desk. I had always taken the one on the left and Cat had always taken the seat on the right.

The empty chair mocked me silently.

“Sophia?” Papa prompted.

I looked to him.

In his defense, Papa did not seem very happy with the offer. But I knew he would get power and money out of allying me to someone, even if he, himself was terrified of my new groom and his family.

“I am getting old, Sophia,”