I stare at my father, at a loss for words.
“You promised.” I can’t believe this. “You promised you’d let me finish my courses! Is that so much? Just a few more years to live my life as if it’s actually my own, before I need to surrender it to serve Cosa Nostra and be married off?”
Nuncio Veronese reaches for his whiskey glass and takes a seat on a big recliner in the middle of his study. “Things change, Nera. The situation was different then.”
I bite my tongue in an effort not to scream. “So, how long do I have left?”
He looks down at his tumbler, rotating it, the ice cubes cracking and clinking within the glass. Each fractured sound makes me feel as if I’m facing the countdown clock on death row, waiting for my sentence to be carried out. Waiting for the inevitable. Without hope.
I k
