The Mafia Princess Who Slept in the Storage Room

The day we moved into the new estate on the hill, every bedroom had a name next to it. The master suite for my parents. The east wing for my brother, Luca. And the best room in the house, the south suite overlooking the Hudson, was labeled Sofia's Room. My name wasn't anywhere. Out in the hallway, a workman was screwing brass nameplates onto every bedroom door. None of them said Chiara. Ten years ago, Sofia's father, Dad's underboss, walked into a burning warehouse to get Luca back from the Ferrantes and never walked out. At his funeral, my father swore that Sofia was his daughter now. In our family, the Don's word is law, and somehow the debt had always been mine to pay. When I asked Mom where I was supposed to sleep, she replied casually, "Aren't you leaving for grad school in a few days anyway? Why bother giving you a room?" Then she went back to helping Sofia pick out pink curtains. Luca crouched on the floor holding up fabric samples. Gideon, my boyfriend of three years, hung every one of Sofia's paintings himself because he didn't trust the movers to do it. I sat on a moving box and finally understood. They hadn't forgotten me. They had decided Sofia deserved my room, my family, and even the man who was supposed to love me. So I opened the contract on my phone. A classified federal research facility in the Nevada desert. Five years. No contact with the outside world. I signed it. In ten days, I would disappear from their lives for good.

...

The screen said "Submitted".

I pressed a knuckle under each eye before anything could spill over.

In our family, a daughter didn't leave without the Don's blessing. Leaving without it was the closest thing to betrayal a woman in this house could commit. If Dad's men found out before I was behind federal fences, they would simply bring me home.

So I couldn't let anyone find out about my plan.

Gideon came out a few minutes later, sleeves shoved past his elbows, sweat beading along his hairline. He grabbed a bottle of water off the coffee table and tipped half of it back in one long swallow.

"Hey," I said. "You've been on your feet since noon. Sit with me for a minute?"

He dragged the back of his wrist across his mouth. His eyes never landed on me. They were already back on Sofia's doorway.

"Can't yet. Two frames are off by like half an inch. It'll drive her crazy."

He put the bottle down and walked right past me. He didn't look down. Not once.

Three years together. I couldn't remember a single time he'd fussed that much over anything of mine.

Freshman move-in day, I'd had five overstuffed boxes and a room on the sixth floor of a dorm with a broken elevator. Gideon swore he'd be there by ten.

At nine, my phone buzzed. Family thing came up. I'm so sorry, babe. Make it up to you.

I hauled every box up those stairs myself.

That night, Sofia posted pictures from an amusement park. Gideon was in almost every one.

He called me around midnight to ask how the move went.

"It was fine," I told him.

That was my answer every time. For three years, everything he did to me was fine.

"Chiara." Mom stuck her head out of the kitchen. "Why are you sitting there doing nothing? Go help Sofia put her paints in order. The maids keep mixing up the colors."

I turned and looked down the hallway.

My boxes were shoved against the wall at the bend, half blocking the way.

The movers had sorted everything by the nameplates. Every box in this house had a door waiting for it.

Mine had nowhere to go. So they'd just left them where the names ran out.

"Mom." I made myself say it evenly. "Where's my room?"

She looked at the boxes like she was noticing them for the first time. Then she jerked her chin toward the laundry corridor, at the narrow door at the very end of it.

"The storage room. Just until you leave."

"The storage room?"

"Oh, don't look at me like that." Her mouth tightened. "You've done it before. It's not like we're sending you to sleep in the garage."

I had done it before.

It was the fall Sofia came to live with us.

Nobody in the family ever said it out loud, but everybody knew. On the day the Ferrantes took Luca, it was Mom who had sneaked him out of the house without his guards, just to have one normal afternoon. Two nights later, with Dad still bargaining over the phone, it was Mom who'd called Tommaso in tears and begged him to go in and get her boy.

Tommaso went.

Mom had been carrying both of those things ever since.

When Sofia arrived, she was a skinny, silent little girl in a black funeral dress two sizes too big. Mom held her on the couch and cried for hours.

"You're home now," she kept whispering. "I promise you, nobody in this house will ever make you feel like you don't belong."

That night she knocked on my door.

"Sweetheart, Sofia needs a real room right now. You can make do somewhere else for a few days, can't you?"

I was twelve. I said yes.

The few days stretched into a year.

Whenever I asked when I could move back in, Mom looked at me like I'd said something cruel about a grieving orphan. After a while, I learned to stop asking.

Ten years later, here I was again.

I picked up my pillow and the blanket I'd packed on top of my last box and started down the hall.

Ten days, I reminded myself.

I just had to endure ten more days before I could finally leave this place where I never belonged.