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They continued their conversation, but I asked no more questions.At that moment, I did feel a little like my mother. She sat quietly, all hours of the night, serving food and drink but never saying a word.

It was not her business, she would tell me.

It’s nothing that we have to concern ourselves with, she would say.

So I sat, I refilled their coffee cups when they became empty, and when the sun started to set, I began cooking because I didn’t know what else to do.

4

ZARINA

“You’re late,”I sang as Larissa walked in the door at nearly ten o’clock.

She replied with a grunt before she sipped at her steaming takeaway cup of coffee that was gripped tightly in her thin fingers.

With a roll of my eyes and a chuckle, I turned back to the display mannequin I was dressing, adorning her in our latest stock of lacy, delicate pieces of fabric.

I pulled the new bra from the box, rubbing the fabric through my fingers and turning it over in my hands.

The satin was soft, as it should be, and the hem work was seamless. After adding a complimentary necklace to the headless figure, I was done. The shimmering silver chain matched the silver link in the middle of the bra that joined the cups and completed the look.

“You look great, Margaret.” I patted the mannequin on the shoulder before hoisting her up and putting her back on the stand in the front window of BoredHeaux.

The shop had been my life pretty much since I finished school. It had been obvious to everyone but me that university would not be in my future.

Mum allowed me a year of running amok before she sat me down and threatened me with marriage. Antoni had been the one to offer the idea of a business as an alternative.

While I had been raised and primed to be the perfect mafia wife, and knew that it was an eventual fate, I wasn’t quite ready to settle for a balding man who saw me as a chess piece.

I wasn’t quite ready to turn into my mother.

And I wasn’t quite ready to succumb to the housewife role just yet. The business bought me time and freedom.

Now, I had my own money and couldn’t be manipulated or guilted by my family about how much I spent, or what I spent it on.

Because I wasgoodat being an heiress.

I was good at being the mafia princess.

I could spend money like no tomorrow. I could fill my days with nothing but shopping and hair appointments and baking pretty little cakes. But it wasn’t all I wanted to do.

I wanted that. I was not ashamed of that side of me. But I wanted more, too.

My sister was a nurse. My brother was a mechanic. And while I would never pretend that I was doing anything that was helpful or charitable, at least I could say I was doing something.

I sold bras and panties to mostly middle-aged women, sometimes strippers and sex workers, and the occasional old lady who wandered into my store by mistake.

But god, did I love making those people feel like a million bucks.Everyone that walked out of here with a BoredHeaux bag got their own chance to feel like an heiress.

I wanted them to feel luxurious, to feel like someone who was powerful because they were sexy and sexy because they were powerful.

When I opened this place, I knew I wanted to do better than the franchises, better than the lingerie stores at the shopping centres. I scoured the world for the best quality, the biggest range of sizes and styles, and I could confidently say that I had something for everyone. I cared for very little in the world apart from my shop.

Of course, it would not be possible if I hadn’t come from the family I did. I wasn’t silly enough to think that Antoni helped me start this place out of the kindness of his heart. And I wasn’t naïve enough to think that my little storefront wasn’t tied to The Family in one way or another.

Toni still did my bookkeeping to this day.

The big and scaryDon of The Santino Crime Family,the most feared man in Melbourne,sat at my neon pink desk once a month to sort through my accounts. Under the glow of my disco ball lamp and fairy-lights, he would scour through my records, flagging items with my purple glitter ink pen.