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“B reathe.”

It’s hard to do, but I force in an inhale as I let myself fall into a booth in the lounge section of Demos.

“You can’t think without oxygen in your brain,” my cousin, Valentino Andretti, chides with a frown.

I huff. Tell me about it. My lungs have seized up for a good hour now, only the bare minimum of air filtering through with my shallow breaths in and out.

A longer exhale barely calms me. “The stunt he pulled…”

“He’s your father. He means well.”

Yeah, right. He means to steer my life so it resembles his own in every way. When my father says, ‘My son will follow in my footsteps,’ he isn’t kidding.

“Why can’t he let me decide?”

Valentino shrugs, his face grave as he thanks the waitress who came to deliver our negronis. I don’t have it in me to be nice right now, so I let him take the lead. And thank goodness he’s here, and I don’t mean just now. Had my American cousin not been at the family gathering tonight, hell would’ve broken loose. Parents are sacrosanct in Italy, but damn it, my father makes it hard to respect those vows as a son.

Val’s silent pleas via narrowed eyes throughout dinner helped keep me in check as he steered the conversation around small talk and away from the elephant in the room my father wanted us to discuss with his guests. Diplomacy is his forte—it will serve him well when he goes back to New Jersey in another year or so to take over his father’s Borgata . His mom—my father’s late sister Alessia—always wanted him to learn the ways of the Old World, and he’s been here now for a while, learning, growing, and being my rock. It’s not easy being the eldest son of a formidable, headstrong man, let alone his only child. Valentino has three younger brothers and a sister, and he’s taken me under his wing as a surrogate sibling, too. He’s teaching me how to cope with a determined patriarch.

He hasn’t sworn Omertà to my Don, but he took the right decision in apprising Don Rossi of the happenings tonight. We got summoned to the club, the call coming straight to my father’s phone. No way the old man could keep us at the table once that happened.

Now here we are, waiting to see what Don Rossi has to say about this matter. We may have been summoned, but everyone knows you wait to be called in.

“Drink,” Valentino urges.

Usually, I prefer to meet the Don with an unclouded mind, but my head’s already fucked up today, so a negroni can’t make much of a difference. The contents of the glass go down in a single swallow.

“Easy, man.”

I shake my head, a few beads of water still flowing from my hair. My head had been overheating so much, I dunked it under a tap somewhere along the way to try and cool my temper. Can’t say it did much to help.

Dino, one of Don Rossi’s bodyguards, comes up to our booth, stares at me and says, “Boss is asking for you.”

Valentino and I share a long look, then I haul myself out of the leather banquette and make the trek up the stairs to the mezzanine office. A knock later, I’m inside the Don’s sanctum.

“Don Giacomo,” I say with a respectful bow.

“ Figlioccio ,” he says as he approaches to push a tumbler of whiskey in my hand and kiss me on both cheeks. “Sit.”

So he’s called me in tonight as his godson and not his soldier sworn in to do his bidding. That’s good to know. Maybe I can relax a bit now, knowing I have him in my corner.

I let myself fall in a heap on his leather sofa, not caring if it makes me look a bit churlish and temperamental.

“Gennaro means well,” he says as he sits down beside me.

Does he? Maybe Don Giacomo can help me understand.

“She’s eighteen, Padrino .”

I’m appealing to my godfather here, the one who’s to step in as my father should my own be incapacitated or dead. And this is indeed what the Don has been to me. His own son is only fourteen, and I’ve been treated like his eldest since I was born and my mother had the crazy idea to go up to Giacomo Rossi, the heir apparent of the current Don at the time, and ask him to be my godfather.

“That is a bit young,” he concedes.

“She’ll be nineteen next March. As if that’s a magic number. A few months doesn’t make a girl grow up into a woman.”

“And you’ll be thirty next February.”

A groan escapes me. I’d thought I’d have until then to bat myself off the marriage mart. Seems I was wrong.

“The mammas and nonnas will all be on your back then,” he continues with a small laugh.

“Precisely. Then .” I groan again. “Why does she have to be so fucking young? A girl doesn’t even know her own mind at that age.”

Let alone a man knows his own at thirty, but it is the magic number in Italian society. Turn thirty and all the women of generations prior to yours start asking for wedding bells and babies, as if a man’s supposed to flip a magic switch on his thirtieth birthday and produce a wife who will get pregnant on her wedding night and deliver a full-grown baby a week later.

“Lorena Bruno is a beautiful girl,” Don Giacomo says. “Good hips.”

I frown at him. He’s taking the piss, I hope. Yeah, the sardonic lift to his lips implies he is. I’d gladly throw out a ‘ Vaffanculo’ had he been anyone but my Don, much less an elder.

My father married my mother a week after he turned thirty—she was twenty-one at the time. They didn’t have me until three years later. Is that why he’s foisting an eighteen-year-old on me, because her eggs are supposed to be more fertile the younger she is?

“You’re sure it’s her age you have a problem with?”

This time, I do frown outright to his face. “A year ago, she would’ve been jailbait.”

We may be Mafia, but there are things even our kind doesn’t touch, like underage girls.

He waves his glass in the air. “It’s not because you have your eye on someone else?”

This makes me sit upright. What’s he getting at?

“Like my girl Kaya, perchance?”

I could’ve said ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ but you never lie to your Don. Doesn’t mean I can’t deflect, though.

“You said it. She’s your girl.”

“Is she?” he asks, then takes a leisurely sip of his whiskey.

My stare must convey what I’m thinking. Everyone knows she’s the only woman who frequents the Don’s office when he’s at the club, and that means only one thing.

“She’s yours if you want her,” he adds quietly.

I know he doesn’t mean it like she’s property to be peddled and exchanged. Don Giacomo is not that kind of Mafia leader. Anyone who thinks they own his girls or boys is clearly shown the error of their ways, an eye opener usually delivered by my father and his crew, Gennaro Beccario being the Don’s enforcer.

One day, I’ll ascend to this post, too. And that’s going to happen sooner rather than later. My father is past sixty, a ripe age few enforcers get to see thanks to the dangerous nature of their job. Death hasn’t taken him yet, but retirement will. I’ll have to step up then—it’s what I’ve been groomed for all my life.

“I’m not looking…” I start, letting the words dwindle.

“Aren’t you?” The smile lifts some more. “That’s not what I’ve witnessed.”

Fine. I’ve had my eye on the alluring blonde just about every time I’ve visited Demos and she’s on duty.

A sigh escapes me. “I can’t foist myself on her, Padrino . That’s not the kind of man you’ve raised me to be.”

“I don’t think she’ll need much convincing.”

Right. That woman exudes Ice Queen energy from a mile away. It must take a stern, no-nonsense hand like Don Giacomo’s to thaw her out even a little and make her comply.

“If you’re interested, you may need to get yourself in gear,” he continues. “She won’t be here for much longer.”

That’s not a threat in his words, but still, I sit up straighter. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “Her debt is almost paid off.”

And he’ll let her go when it is. She can walk away never be seen again. I know she’s American—she’ll surely want to go back to her homeland.

“She can be a good distraction,” he continues.

My chest constricts upon hearing this. Society will expect me to marry sometime next year, before I get any closer to thirty-one. If my father had his way, I’d be getting hitched before this very year is out, to the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of Don Giacomo’s capos . Mafia marries Mafia and begets Mafia children—that’s how it’s supposed to be in our world.

“Whatever you do, don’t break her heart.”

“Who, me?” I ask with a smile before taking a sip of whiskey.

I’ve left a trail of women behind me, sure, but they’d all been waiting with shackles to tie me into holy matrimony. As the Don’s future enforcer, I’m considered a catch in our circles.

The last thing American Ice Queen Kaya Norton wants is marriage, I’m sure. As such, she’s safe for me. Would she be open to the idea of some fun? Right now, I can’t contemplate the idea that my own family is coming up against me to foist a bride I don’t want onto me. Thank the Good Lord for Don Giacomo and Valentino who are on my side.

“I mean it, Stefano. She’s precious to me,” my godfather—my Don—tells me. And it also sounds like a warning is threaded in there.

“I won’t hurt her, I promise. If something happens, it will be on her terms.”

Don Giacomo doesn’t need to know I always let a woman set the pace and conditions for her being with me, but at the same time, maybe he does already know this. All my life, he’s the man I’ve emulated and looked up to. My ways aren’t so different from his own.

“Good,” he states. “Valentino is here with you tonight?”

He knows my cousin has been at my side for most of the time he’s been in Torino. Sent to shadow my father to learn the ropes of managing crews and Mafia business, Valentino has been drawing closer to me and consequently to Don Giacomo himself as time passed. The Don is a good role model for him, I’d say. Better than my strict, by-the-book father, at the very least.

“Go. Enjoy your night.”

I follow suit when he gets up. He grabs my shoulder with his free hand and leans forward to kiss my cheeks again.

“Bear with your padre ,” he says softly. “He’s from a different generation.”

I nod, not wanting the vitriol stirring inside me at the stunt my father has pulled over me today to spill out and much less onto him. Don Giacomo is only twenty-one years older than me. He understands my world better than my father, who never even deigned to recognize this. Looks like I’m going to get piss-drunk tonight.

After a pat on the back, I exit the office and make it back down to the lounge. A pretty brunette is wrapped around Valentino in the booth, whispering things in his ear, kissing his neck. My cousin looks like a cazzo about to get very lucky. Bastardo gets all the girls he wants with just one smoldering look, the epitome of the tall, dark, and handsome Italian. Doesn’t matter a whit he’s as American as boxed mac and cheese.

I shake my head as I land in the booth across from him.

“ Vai, vai ,” I chide with a wave of my hand. In no way do I plan to cock-block him tonight.

The brunette giggles, then she’s up and tugging on Val’s hand. He follows without much resistance, and they disappear around the bend next to the bar, toward the private rooms at the back where a party or an orgy can happen, depending on the occupants.

Resigned to spending the rest of the evening alone, I turn in the direction of the bar, in order to catch the barman’s attention so he’ll send another drink my way and keep them coming.

A whiff of a scent that’s never tickled my nostrils prior to this moment registers, making me frown. No, actually, it’s making me want… It’s a hint of roses and something green like juniper on a crisp gin. But something’s missing, a level of sweetness just evading the senses and thus making a person smelling this scent yearn.

As the fragrance deepens, the presence of someone in my vicinity clocks in. When my gaze alights on smooth alabaster skin, my mouth waters. There—that’s where the sweetness missing from that scent is. It’s to be lapped up from the creaminess of that pale expanse, to be tasted from this woman’s body and breasts and, I’m sure, the plump folds of her soft pussy.

My eyes, having latched onto the sight of her, track up from the lean thighs bared by her dark-brown leather miniskirt to the exposed strip of midriff before a bustier clasps her torso and props the swelling flesh of her breasts onto a wide decollete. Her long neck leads to a pointed chin, a mouth pursed so her lips plumped up with just a right amount puffiness, her cheeks hollowed out to display a formidable bone structure rendered even more arresting by the upturned lift at the outer corners of her deep brown eyes. Women pay plastic surgeons a fortune to give them this cat’s eye look—she has it naturally.

It's not often I’m rendered speechless. In fact, the biggest comment I got growing up was ‘Stefano won’t shut up in class’ and nothing’s changed much since then. It’s just who I am.

Yet, in this moment, words escape me. Ice Queen Kaya is standing next to me, her perfume clouding my mind and her very presence making everything inside me tense and hard. Damn, what a gorgeous woman she is.

“Stefano,” she says, her voice a soft lilt discrepant with her aloof demeanor.

I like the sound of my name on her lips. Just that one word is making my jeans tight.

Then she nods softly. “Come with me.”