Stolen Heir - Sophie Lark Page 0,6
too, from all the things she’s shown me. But I still can’t believe she’s brave enough to eat in bed. My brother is very fastidious.
“Where’s Cal?” I asked her nervously.
“At work,” she said.
My brother just became the newest Alderman of the 43rd Ward. That’s in addition to his position as scion of Chicago’s most successful mafia family.
It always gives me a strange feeling when I think of us that way—as Irish mafia. I’ve never known anything else. To me, my father, brother, sister, and mother are the people who love me and take care of me. I don’t think of them as criminals with blood on their hands.
I’m the youngest in the family, and they try to hide it from me. I’m not part of the business, not the way my older siblings are. Callum is my father’s right hand. Riona is head of our legal counsel. Even my mother is heavily involved in the mechanics of our business.
Then there’s me: the baby. Spoiled, sheltered, protected.
Sometimes I think they want to keep me that way so at least one part of the family stays pure and innocent.
It puts me in a strange position.
I don’t want to do anything wrong—I can’t even crush a bug, and I can’t tell a lie to save my life. My face gets beet red and I start sweating and stammering and I feel like I’m going to throw up if I even try.
On the other hand, sometimes I feel lonely. Like I don’t belong with the rest of them. Like I’m not really part of my own family.
At least Cal married somebody awesome. Aida and I clicked from the start. We’re not alike—she’s bold and funny and never takes shit from anyone. Especially not my brother. At first, it seemed like they’d kill each other. Now I can’t imagine Cal with anybody else.
I wish they would have kept living with us longer, but I get that they want their own space. Unfortunately for them, I intend to keep coming over to visit pretty much every day.
It makes me feel guilty that I don’t have the same relationship with my own sister. Riona’s just so . . . intense. She definitely picked the right line of work—arguing is an Olympic sport for her. Paying her to do it is like paying a duck to swim. I want us to be close the way that other sisters are, but I always feel like she’s barely tolerating me. Like she thinks I’m stupid.
Sometimes I feel stupid. But not today. Today I’m driving over to the ballet theater to see the programs they’ve printed for our newest show. It’s called Bliss. I helped choreograph half the dances, and the idea of actually seeing them performed on the stage makes me so excited I can barely stand it.
My mother put me in ballet classes when I was three years old. I took horseback riding and tennis and cello lessons too, but it was dancing that stuck. I could never get tired of it. I walked everywhere on my toes, with strains of “The Rite of Spring” and the “Pulcinella Suite” floating through my head.
I loved it like I loved breathing. And I was good, too. Very good. The problem is, there’s a difference between being good and being great. A lot of people are good. Only a handful are great. The thousands of hours of sweat and tears are very much the same. But the chasm between talent and genius is as wide as the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, I found myself on the wrong side.
I didn’t want to admit it. I thought if I dieted more, worked harder, I could still be a prima ballerina. But by the time I graduated high school, I realized I wasn’t even the best ballerina in Chicago, let alone on a national scale. I’d be lucky to secure a position as an apprentice with a major dance company, let alone move up to a core member.
Still, I took a corps de ballet spot with Lake City Ballet while attending classes at Loyola. I wanted to keep dancing while I got my degree.
The director and head choreographer is Jackson Wright. He’s a bit of an ass—what director isn’t, I guess. “Director” and “dictator” seem to be synonymous in this industry. Still, the man is brilliant.
Lake City Ballet is contemporary, experimental. They put on all sorts of insane shows, like one done entirely in black light and florescent body paint, and another with no music at