Page 14 of Bad Bishop

“Watch your mouth.” Papa heaved in his seat, catching his ragged breath. “I’m your father and your don.”

“I don’t care if you’re the fucking pope. You touch my mother—you pay.”

My father poured himself a drink with trembling hands. A conversation ping-ponged between him, Luca, and Achilles. Since Luca took a recliner across the room and Papa had hisback to me, Achilles was the only person I could clearly see and whose lips I could read.

I was going to have a baby I didn’t want. A baby by a man who raped me. How could I love it? How could I take care of it? Would they even let me keep it? Would Iwantto? Both options were frightening and overwhelming.

My father and brothers thought I had intellectual disabilities. Only Mama knew the truth.

“He owes Luca a favor.” Achilles lit himself a cigarette. A heavy ball of lead settled in the pit of my stomach. “He’ll do.”

Him? Him who? What will he do?

Did they know who did it? Were they going to force me to marry him?

I’d long come to the conclusion true love was a myth. Like Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy. I’d yet to find one happy couple in the entire Camorra. But I never thought I’d be paired with the man who did this to me. Surely, not even my family was this cruel.

Luca said something that made Achilles scowl and mutter, “Right, because we have plenty of accountants and nice, respectable dentists to fucking choose from, don’t we?”

I blinked, registering the unfathomable.

They were marrying me off.

Not to the beast who raped me, but rather, to the first willing man who’d accept such a foul deal.

“His character aside, he’s the only motherfucker who can protect her as well as the Camorra. The king of disorganized crime.”

Character aside?That sounded hardly promising.

Achilles took a drag of his cigarette, releasing two wrathful streams of smoke through his nostrils. “And say what you will about the Irish, but they take care of their own as much as we do.”

Luca must have stood his ground because Achilles added, “He’s the only man deranged enough to entertain this fuckery. Of course I’m protecting Lila.”

“Have you lost your goddamn mind? You can’t marry our sister off to that dipshit.” Enzo bulldozed into my vision, tossing a hand toward Achilles. “He’s a psychopath. I’ve seen him cut a man’s tongue and feed it to his wife for snitching. Lila is pure and innocent and—”

“Pregnant.” Papa slammed his palm on his mahogany desk, rattling the entire floor with its force. “She’s pregnant and can’t give birth out of wedlock. We can’t marry her off to anyone in the Camorra because word would get out. They’ll know someone dared rape her, and we’d be a laughingstock.”

“She’ll give birth here at home. It’ll be our secret,” Mama said decisively. “Then we’ll give the baby awa—”

“No. Too many people coming and going.” Papa shook his head. “Too much staff. It’ll leak.”

“We’ll go to Ischia—” she started again.

“And have an abortion,” he finished for her, mouth twisting crookedly into a sneer. “I’m not dumb,Amore mio. You’re not going anywhere with that girl.”

That girl.

This was what I was reduced to. A problem. An embarrassment. An issue to sweep under the rug. Anger bloomed in my chest. For the millionth time, I wondered if I did the right thing by deceiving the entire world about my so-called condition.

I could’ve been a debutante. Suitors and made men would’ve jumped through hoops to impress my family. I could’ve bargained a better position for myself to enter a marriage. Now I was leftovers. Scraps. A hot potato my family wanted to toss into someone else’s hands.

“All you care about is prestige!” Mama grabbed a Deruta vase from the mantel midstride and threw it at my father. She nicked his temple before the antique shattered on the floor. Plucking a fire poker next, she swung it in his direction, this time aiming for his chest. “Madonna Santa!Who cares what people say? You’re not handing her off to a murderer. She is mine.”

Luca pried the poker from Mama’s hand before she managed to land another strike on Papa, but it didn’t stop her kicking the air in protest. I’d never seen Mama this way. Not even when Papa got one of his mistresses pregnant.

“This is all your fault.” Papa stubbed his finger in my brothers’ direction. “You’ve been soft. Soft on the Russians, on the Irish, on the Chicago Outfit. There’s someone out there who thinks he can walk all over us.” He pointed at the window. “What happened to your sister sits squarely on your shoulders. Now look who we have to give her to.”

“Vello, no.” Mama switched from fighting to pleading, dropping to her knees, folding over. “Please. Don’t do this. She’s everything to me.”