Novel - Drama Chapter 11
Gifts
Chapter 11 – Betrothed–1
I’m laying back on my bed, all cried out, when I hear a knock at my door. I raise my head and groan inwardly. What’s next?
Before I can get up to answer it, the door creeks open a little. I sigh. No such thing as privacy in the Mafia palace.
“Fay?”
My mouth drops open as I hear a voice that I recognize. I’m too shocked to speak as I see him peek around the door, smiling shyly.
“Are you okay, Fay?”
Daniel. I just stare at him.
He grimaces and comes into the room, pressing the door shut behind him. Then he leans back on it, staring at me, quirking his mouth into that sweet smile I used to love.
I groan and lay my head back on my pillows. “Go away, Daniel. We can talk about our engagement later.”
“Fay,” he says, and I can hear the apology in his voice. I hear him come closer to the bed. “Come on, Fay,” he says. “It could be worse.”
I open my eyes and glare at him. “Are you serious, Daniel?”
He shrugs and again gives me that charming smile, sliding his
“Shh!” He puts a hand out towards me and looks anxiously at the door. “Seriously, Fay, watch what you say. We can’t talk about that sort of thing here.”
I glance at the closed door, confused. “Can they hear us in here?”
“My dad has ears everywhere,” he murmurs. He turns back to me. “Are you mad at me?”
I sigh and sit up on the bed, feeling awkward. I never wanted to see Daniel ever again, let alone have this weird conversation about why I didn’t want to be his mafia bride just because our parents promised us to each other.
“Daniel, I’m not mad at you,” I say quietly. “It’s just… I want to be married to someone who loves me. Not to someone who is only marrying me because of who my father is, and certainly not someone who –“
He gives me a worrying look and I sigh, watching my words.
“Someone who isn’t attracted to me,” I finish.
He sits hesitantly next to me on the bed, reaching out an arm to put around my shoulders. I shoot him a look, though, and he pulls his arm back.
“There could be good things about this, Fay,” he says quietly. “Not all marriages work out anyway, and at least we know we like each other.”
I look up at him, aghast. Is he serious?
“Are you actually on board with this, Daniel? Don’t you want to marry someone you love?”
“I have to marry someone, Fay,” he says, shrugging, his voice defeated. “This is not a world where what I want, personally, really matters. And with you, well. At least I know we get along, like the same
things.”
I huff a laugh at this.
“I mean, you were really upset when we broke up!” Daniel continues, trying to be upbeat. “And I really am sorry about what happened in the coffee shop. But isn’t it kind of weird that we found each other out there on our own anyway, and we were engaged the whole time? It’s kind of like…fate.”
“It’s not fate, Daniel, it’s fake,” I say, looking at him with all of my pain showing. I can’t help it – he was my first love, and he totally betrayed me, and now here he is asking me to jump right back in?
“I don’t want a husband who is unfaithful to me,” I say,
spreading my hands out in emphasis. I lower my voice to a hiss. “And I don’t want a husband who is into men, considering I’m a girl. Do you really want us to be in a fake marriage for the rest of our lives? Just because it’s what your dad wants?”
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Gifts
Chapter 11 – Betrothed–2
“Please, Fay,” Daniel says, his eyes skittering for the door. “I get that you’re upset –
I nod fervently at this.
“But seriously, that’s not something we can talk about there. Please,” he turns worried eyes to me and I’m surprised to see true fear in his face. “You’ve got to promise to keep it a secret.”
“Daniel,” I say, my heart going out to him. “Why is it such a big deal? It’s the twenty–first century – it’s so backwards to think that way about sexual orientation –”
“You don’t understand,” he says, shaking his head and looking down at the floor. “It’s a different world here, Fay – that’s why I spend so much time outside of it, at school, in the bookshops and coffee shops.”
“This world, this family,” he says, “all their values are 100 years old, maybe more. And tradition is everything, family is everything. If I don’t get married, don’t have kids to carry on the family line…not only will they consider me a failure, but it will cause massive chaos in the city as the other bosses try to grab what my dad has built. What I will inherit, whether I want to or not.”
I study Daniel’s perfect face, feeling for him. He’s trapped and
he knows it
“Do you know what they do to people like me, Fay?” Daniel asks, turning to look at me, agonized.
I shake my head no, not even wanting to imagine it.
“They beat the crap out of them,” he says, “make them denounce their sexuality, who they are, and if they do it again, they…they mutilate them…”
He says quickly, shaking his head. “One of the other boss’s sons. He shamed the family and…” Daniel shakes his head, unable to finish. novelbin
“Why don’t you just leave, Daniel,” I say, horrified for him. “Why not just run?”
He laughs, a harsh thing. “You think I haven’t thought about it?” He shrugs. “They’ll just find me, Fay. There’s no getting out of it. I’m the sole heir to my father’s game. If run, they’ll find me. If I defy
expectations about the kind of life I’m supposed to life – wife, family, taking a role in the organization, they’ll…well, they’ll straighten me out.”
His lips quirk at his little play on words. Mine do too.
“Daniel, this all sucks,” I say, and he laughs at my understatement. “But is the solution really just to give them what they want? You know what your dad did to me today – made me give up everything I love, say horrible things to my family so that they’ll let me go.”
Daniel looks at me, hopeless.
“Why give them what they want? Why don’t we both min?
He shakes his head, sighing. “You don’t get it, Fay,” he says. “You can’t just disappear anymore. Your in his world now, there’s no escape.”
“My mom did it,” I say quietly, realizing it myself for perhaps the first time. “She ran from my father, stayed away.”
“Yeah,” Daniel says, looking me in the eye. “And even after she died, the world came and found you, her daughter, and pulled you back in even when it couldn’t take her. Don’t you get it, Fay? Even if you got away, got married, had kids, had the life you wanted – my dad? Your dad? They would find your kids, and pull them in. There’s no getting out.”
My stomach drops like a stone when I realize that he’s right. Even if my mother did get out – here I was, right back in it.
—
But still. I couldn’t just give in. Maybe Daniel has been more beat down than me or maybe just more realistic – but this isn’t the life I want. I have to try. And in order to try, maybe this means I have to go
deeper into this world. Study it. Figure out what makes it tick.
And then, when I find a loophole. I’ll run.
“Well, Daniel,” I say, taking his hand again and giving them a squeeze. “You may have given in, but I’m not sure I have yet. All I ask is that when the time comes, you don’t stop me from leaving.”
He looks at me, sadness etched on his face, and says nothing.