by Sophie Lark
My father went into a rage.
There was no comfort for Catalina and me, no time to mourn our mother. Instead he ordered flower girl dresses.
He was already making arrangements to marry Daniela, the youngest daughter of rival Galician clan chief. Her sisters had produced two sons each for their husbands, proof in my father’s eyes that Daniela would likewise be fertile and useful.
Daniela fell pregnant on the honeymoon, but an anatomy scan showed that the fetus was female yet again. My father forced her to abort it.
I only know this because I heard him shouting at her for hours, berating her into doing it. She was sick for several weeks after, pale and unable to walk from room to room without hunching over.
I don’t know how many more times she was coerced into repeating that process.
Eventually, my father stopped trusting in fate and turned to science.
They saw fertility specialists. Daniela went through several rounds of IVF, harvesting her eggs for the sole purpose of selecting the gender ahead of time.
None of these attempts were successful. Daniela bore no babies at all.
I’d feel bad for her. But the sympathy wouldn’t be returned.
Daniela hates me. She hates my sister, too.
Her loyalty is all to my father, no matter how he abuses her. She’s his constant spy, acting as jailor to Catalina and me and helping carry out all my father’s most insidious plans for us.
Like this engagement.
It was Daniela who brokered the deal with Rocco Prince and his family. She told Rocco’s mother that I was intelligent, studious, obedient, submissive. And of course, beautiful.
When I was only twelve years old, she sent the Princes photographs of me laying by the pool in my swimsuit.
Their first visit soon followed. Rocco was thirteen — just a year older — but I could already tell there was something very wrong with him.
He came out to the garden where I was sitting on a bench under the orange trees, reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I stood up when I saw him approach, smoothing down the white muslin skirt of the summer dress Daniela had selected for me.
Back then, I was innocent enough that I still had fantasies of a better life. I had seen movies like Sleeping Beauty of the Swan Princess where the prince and princess were betrothed by their parents, but their love was genuine.
So when I heard that Rocco was coming to see me, I imagined he might be handsome and sweet, and maybe we would write letters to each other like pen pals.
When he approached me in the garden, I was pleased to see that he was tall and dark-haired, slim and pale with the look of an artist.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Zoe.”
He gave me an appraising look, not answering at first. Then he said, “Why are you reading?”
I thought it a strange question. Not, “What are you reading?”, but “Why are you reading?”.
“Are you trying to impress me?” he said.
I shook my head, confused and wrong-footed.
“I always read on Saturdays,” I said. “When there’s no school.”
I didn’t tell him there was nothing else to do at my house — Cat and I weren’t permitted to watch TV or play video games.
He picked my novel up off the bench, examined the cover, and contemptuously tossed it down again, losing my place. I was annoyed but tried not to show it. After all, he was my guest and I was already aware that our futures were meant to entwine.
“You’re pretty,” he said, dispassionately, looking me over again. “Too tall, though.”
If that meant he wouldn’t want to marry me, I was already starting to think that might be a good thing.
“You live in Hamburg?” I asked, trying to hide my growing dislike.
“Yes,” Rocco said, with a toss of his dark hair that might have been pride or disdain, I couldn’t yet tell. “Have you ever been there?”
“No,” I said.
“I didn’t think so.”
I noticed little black flecks in the blue of his eyes, like someone had spattered his irises with ink.
“What’s that noise?” Rocco demanded.
A parrot was screeching in the orange tree, swooping low over our heads, and then returning to its branch.
“It’s annoyed because it has a nest full of babies up there,” I said. “It wants us to leave.”
Rocco reached inside his jacket and took out a pellet gun. It was small, only the size of a pistol. At first I thought it was just a toy gun, and I thought it was childish of him to carry it around.
He pointed it up at the small green parrot, following its flight path in his sights. I thought he was play-acting, trying to impress me. Then he squeezed the trigger. I heard a sharp puff of air. The parrot went silent, cut off mid-cry, dropping like a stone into the flowerbed.
I cried out and ran over to it.
I picked it up out of the earth, seeing the small dark hole in its breast.
“Why did you do that?” I shrieked.
I was thinking of its babies up in the nest. Now that the parrot wasn’t squawking anymore, I could hear their faint cheeps.
Rocco stood next to me, looking down at the moss-colored bird. It looked pathetic in my hands, its wings folded and dusty.
“The chicks will wait and wait,” he said. “Then eventually they’ll starve.”
His voice was flat and expressionless.
I looked in his face. I saw no guilt or pity there. Just blankness.
Except for the tiny upward curl of his lips.
Those little black specks on his irises looked like mold. Like there was something rancid in him, rotting him away from the inside.
“You’re horrid,” I said, dropping the bird and wiping my palms atavistically on the sides of my dress.
Then Rocco did smile, showing even white teeth.
“We’re just getting to know one another,” he said.
Rocco has not improved on further acquaintance.
Every time I see him, I loathe him more.
Tonight I’ll be expected to dance with him, to hang on his arm, to gaze at him as if we’re in love. It’s all a performance for the guests.
He doesn’t love me any more than I do him.
The only thing he likes about me is how much I despise him. He enjoys that very much.
That’s the man for whom Daniela demands that I wax my pussy.
I stare at her with deep distrust, wondering what she knows that I don’t. Why does she think it’s important that I be perfectly smooth from the chin down? What does she expect to happen?
“I’m not doing it,” I tell her. “He’s not touching me tonight.”
Daniela tilts her head to the side, eyes narrowed.
She’s quite beautiful, I’d never deny that. She has the austere look of a saint in a painting. Like a saint, she worships a cruel and vengeful god: my father.
“You’d better learn to please him,” she says, quietly. “It will be so much harder on you if you fight. The things a man can do to his wife, when she’s trapped with him, all alone in a big house like this, with only his soldiers around them...”
She blinks slowly in a way that has always reminded me of a reptile.
“You should learn how to flatter him. How to assist him. How to serve him with your body...”
“I’d rather die,” I tell her, flatly.
She laughs, softly.
“Oh, you’ll wish you were dead...” she says.
She nods to her team of aestheticians. With something approaching force, they push me down on the chaise, prise my legs apart, and spread hot wax over the entirety of my pussy, all the way up to my anus. Then they rip the wax off in strips, until I’m bald as an egg absolutely everywhere.
Daniela watches the whole thing, then examines the final result. She checks my bare pussy for any sign of deformity that might derail her plans. Then she nods her approval.
“When I was presented to your father, I was stripped naked in fron
t of a dozen of his soldiers and they evaluated me like a horse at auction,” she says. “Be grateful it’s only Rocco you have to impress.”
She leaves me with the aestheticians so she can complete her own beautifying.
Daniela has already selected the clothing and jewelry I’ll be wearing.
The aestheticians carry out her orders, zipping me into a suffocating gown that hoists up my breasts and cinches my waist to a fraction of its usual size. The gown is long, gold, and sparkling, with the sort of sleeves that are not sleeves at all, but only fabric draped below the shoulders. My hair is piled up on my head with a gold band as a tiara.
It’s all undeniably beautiful, in impeccable taste.
I’m a glittering golden gift.
A black dress would be more fitting. I feel like I’m going to my own funeral.
I’m like those maidens the Incans used to sacrifice to the gods: the Virgins of the Sun. All year they were fed delicacies — maize and llama meat. They were bathed and beautified with feathered headdresses and exotic shell necklaces. And then they were carried to the mountaintop tombs, to be sealed inside as an offering to a god that craved their death.
Catalina comes into my room, likewise dressed for the night ahead.
Cat perfectly suits her name. She’s small and lithe, and she moves as silently as a little black cat. She has a pretty heart-shaped face, large, dark eyes, and a dusting of freckles across her nose. She’s dressed in a pale lavender gown,
Even though we’re only a year apart, she looks much younger.
She’s always been timid.
I can see how nervous she is for the party, for everyone staring at a us. Lucky for her most of the attention will be pointed in my direction. And she doesn’t have to worry about being roped into some hateful marriage contract, at least not yet. That was part of my agreement with my father: Cat doesn’t have to get married until she graduates college, and neither do I.
My father and stepmother are allowing me to attend Kingmakers for all four years, as long as I agree to marry Rocco directly after graduation.
It was a last, desperate ploy on my part to delay the inevitable.
They only agreed because Rocco is likewise at Kingmakers, as are plenty of his cousins and mine, always around to spy on me, to make sure I’m not drinking or dating or breaching any of the rules of the betrothal.
Kingmakers is no normal school.
It’s a private college for the children of mafia families from around the globe, located on Visine Dvorca, a tiny island in the Adriatic Sea.
You couldn’t imagine a more lonely or isolated place.
And yet, I almost enjoyed my Freshman year.
It was my first time living away from my father. The relief I felt, alone in my tiny dorm room, was like nothing I’d ever experienced. When I went to my classes I was free to study and learn and even make friends without constant judgement, constant criticism.
Kingmakers is a castle fortress, almost a city unto itself. So vast and sprawling that I could easily avoid Rocco most of the time. Since he’s a year older than me, we don’t share classes together.
The relief I felt was painful.
Because I knew it couldn’t last.
Tasting freedom might only hurt me more in the end.
I also felt guilty leaving Cat here alone. I know it was a hard year for her. I can see it as she sits down on the edge of my bed. She has a shrinking, flinching reaction to noise that has worsened since I was gone.
But she should experience the same freedom soon enough — she’s been accepted to Pintamonas and will be leaving in the fall, the same as me.
Cat is a talented artist. She loves drawing, painting, and graphic design. She’ll flourish at school.
The further away from our world she goes, the better off she’ll be. Maybe she’ll escape it entirely, someway, somehow.
“You look stunning,” Cat says to me, wide-eyed and impressed.
Cat is so innocent. I’ve always tried to protect her from the uglier things in our lives. Like how much I loathe Rocco.
She knows I’m not thrilled about being pushed into the marriage. But I’ve never told her how much he terrifies me. It would devastate her. There’s nothing she can do to help me.
“The Princes will be so impressed by you,” Cat says, sincerely.
“You look lovely, too,” I tell her.
“I made this for you,” Cat says.
Gently, she lays a bracelet in my open palm. It’s delicate and intricate, a net of tiny golden beads strung on woven wires. I can’t imagine the hours of painstaking work to braid those fragile strands.
It makes me want to cry.
Knowing you’re loved, truly loved, by at least one person makes all the difference in the world.
I put my arm around my sister and hug her hard, closing my burning eyes.
“Thank you Cat,” I whisper.
“I’ll help you put it on,” she says.
She circles it round my wrist, closing the tiny clasp. It fits perfectly.
Daniela will be furious if she sees that I’ve augmented her meticulously curated look, but I don’t give a fuck. I can’t express to Cat how much it means to me to wear something I actually like, one good omen in this awful night.
“We’d better go down,” I say to Cat.
Even though Cat and I are early, our father and stepmother are already waiting in the airy foyer. It shows how anxious they are to close this deal with the Prince family.
Daniela is wearing a sleek gown of deep bronze, her hair in an elegant bun. My father has on a black velvet jacket with a matching bronze pocket square. He’s a man of substantial height and breadth, though Daniela is still always careful to select heels that will put her at least an inch or two below him. He has a mane of grizzled gray hair that makes him look like an elderly lion, and a broad, aristocratic nose. His mouth is the only weak feature about him — his lips are thin and fleshless, always pulling down at the corners.
They turn to examine Cat and me as we come down the stairs. I slip my left wrist into the folds of my skirt so Daniela won’t notice the bracelet.
Daniela frowns, displeased with something in our appearance. Maybe it’s Cat’s flyaway curls that can never be tamed, despite the best efforts of the professionals. Maybe she doesn’t think my waist looks small enough. It’s always something, and usually nothing we could actually fix.
My father nods his approval, so Daniela keeps silent.
“Be sure to curtesy to Rocco when you see him,” my father says.
I crush down the rebellious part of me that cringes at that instruction. I hate this formal parade of false affection. I hate that I’m expected to bow and simper all night long in front of all these hateful strangers.
I follow my father out of the house to the waiting limo.
We live in a traditional-style villa in Sitges, on the south coast of Barcelona. My father bought this place because of the unusually large plot of land and the clear view to the ocean. The grounds include a spa and sauna, a Turkish bath, several ponds stocked with exotic fish, a large outdoor dining area, and an orchard. Surrounded on all sides, of course, by hedges and stone walls.
He likes to think of himself as a gentleman, though we’re descended from fishmongers.
The Galician clans were all fishermen to begin with.
Then the Bay of Biscay ran barren, and they turned to tobacco smuggling instead. Smuggling was far more lucrative than fishing had ever been. The fleets multiplied and the fishermen grew rich with empty nets and cargo holds stuffed with tobacco, hashish, and cocaine.
The Galicians made contacts in Columbia and Morocco. Spain became the entry point for the vast majority of the high-quality cocaine smuggled into Europe.
We built distribution routes to Portugal, France, and Britain, we made alliances with the Albanians and the Turkish mafia to bring in heroin, too. We bought politicians and won the love of the people by sponsoring festivals, schools, and football teams. J
uventud Cambados became the highest-paid football players in the nation, despite being located in a tiny town, all thanks to narco money.
But what had been a local operation between the tight-knit Galician clans became an international enterprise. The clans began to feud. Long-seated resentments flared up all over again, this time with exponential force behind them.
Threats turned into kidnapping. Kidnapping into torture and murder. A cycle of bloody reprisals split the clans apart.
This is where my father finds himself now: caught between the powerful Alonso clan who have allied themselves with the Brits, and the Torres family who own the People’s Party and the Galician Premier.
My father needs a partner, or he’ll be swallowed up by one of the other clans. Or worse, crushed under their boot. He’s only clinging to his empire by his fingernails.
That’s where the Prince family comes in.
The Princes own the most powerful distribution network in Germany. With our product and their network, we’ll all become wealthy beyond measure.
For the small price of my marriage to Rocco Prince.
I’m sure his parents know they’re raising a psychopath.
He bounced around boarding schools across Europe to hush up the rumors of his cruelty, his depravity, his senseless violence...
I doubt there’s a mafia family in Germany who would give him one of their daughters.
But a desperate Spaniard...yes, my father will gladly hand me over. As long as he gets the protection he needs.
As we seat ourselves in the backseat of the limo, my father pops a bottle of chilled champagne. He fills four flutes, his hand steady even with the unpredictable motion of the moving car as we head into the city.
“To securing our fortune,” he says, raising his glass.
Daniela watches as I drink mine down.
They used to ply the Incan virgins with alcohol and coca to keep them docile. To help them accept their gruesome fate.
“Have another glass, why don’t you,” Daniela says to me. “For your nerves.”
We drive down to Port Vell, to the Royal Shipyards. The old medieval dockyards have been renovated into grand venues for weddings and galas. The vast spaces that once held the bones of barquentines now host the elite of Spanish society in their tuxedos and gowns, their genteel laughter echoing high up in the rafters.
