of the fact she doesn’t stand up to my father. But who would dare to speak up to Signore DiGiovanni? Any person who does is immediately shot down, and no, that isn’t a metaphor or an exaggeration.
I hate the way that I’m treated but I’ll take every minute of agony if it means that my little sister, Alessandra, doesn’t have to endure the same horrors. Sometimes when I lay awake in the middle of the night all I can occupy my time with is wondering about when my father will force her to make the same sacrifices I do.
I’m in New York right now at my friend Angelina’s apartment on the Upper East Side. Her father owns a massive cybersecurity company, but also caters to the famiglia’s physical needs as well. She’s the apple of her father’s eye, his absolute pride and joy. Growing up I had always looked at their relationship with jealousy, or maybe it was a longing feeling. Either way, I craved the sort of affection that I had witnessed Angelina get when we were children. Even now, well into our mid-twenties, her father showers her with love. I’ve accepted that I’ll never have anything close to it with my own.
All I want to do is get up and leave, to abandon my family and the things that tie me to it. The only thing that they bring me is misery, or more specifically my father does. My brothers are close behind him on that train, though. I’m only here to protect Alessandra, and that’s it. I want her to come with me, to leave this place, to go anywhere. The only way we could ever escape my father’s clutches is if we disappear to someplace that no one knows us. My only problem is that she doesn’t see him in the same light that I do. That’s only because she’s a naïve seventeen-year-old girl who hasn’t been thrown into the bloodied trenches.
The only reason she’s escaped is that I’ve protected her, and she doesn’t even see it. She wants to believe that our father is a good man and while I want to allow her to keep that innocence— I can’t let her believe in a fairytale. Our father is not a good person. There was a time that I had been like her and believed it, but those years have gone and past. I see him for what he is now.
He did something horrific to me that has made me view him in an entirely different light. Alessandra has no idea of the atrocities he is guilty of, and I’m not talking about the deaths or his bad dealings. I don’t care about any of that. The only thing I care about is what he’s done to me and will do to my dear sister, and what he’s already done to my daughter. I haven’t seen her in over five years. She was ripped from my hands the day she was born and given straight to her father— Rafael Ramirez. It wasn’t a tale of love for Rafael and I. No, I was a gift given to him after my father and he had struck a deal. It’s always the same. My father tosses me to his associates as a reward. He acts as if my body isn’t my own and it belongs to the famiglia. It doesn’t, and I won’t ever allow it to.
“When are you and Alessandra leaving?” Angelina asks, eyes peering up in a concerned gaze.
I sigh because I haven’t uttered a word of it to my sister. I’m simply taking her in a rush and hoping we get far enough away to where my father won’t find us. “Tomorrow.”
“Is your plan solid?”
I nod. “As solid as it can be. I have new passports for us with brand new names, had the photos altered so our hair colors are different. You know our deal,” I remind her, smiling. “I can’t tell you anything because we know he’ll ask you what I’m doing and where I am. He’ll try to use you as a way to get to me and it’s safer for everyone involved if I don’t say anything.”
Angelina shrugs. “I know. I just wish things were different. I wish my best friend wasn’t carting herself and her sister off to God knows where. I just . . . wish I could know something.”
I start to open my mouth but am cut off by Angelina. “But I can’t.”
I nod, looking down at