My Brother's Rival, A Mafia Curse

Lucia's Pov "Lucia, you need to come home. Now." My brother Marco's voice cut through the phone like a knife. I pressed the device closer to my ear, trying to block out the sound of skaters practicing around me at the Chicago Ice Center. "I'm training at the moment, Marco. The Olympics are eight months away..." "The Olympics can wait. Papa wants to see you." My stomach fell. Papa only called family meetings when someone was in serious trouble. Serious trouble. "What's going on?" I whispered, stepping away from the ice where David was working on our program alone. "Just get home, Lucia. Don't make me come get you." The line went dead. I gazed down at my phone, my palms shaking. That was precisely what I had been going out of my way to prevent for six years. When I committed myself to figure skating, Papa had sworn he'd keep me out of family politics. The Romano name was trouble enough without introducing blood into the mix. "Lucia! Where are you headed?" My practice mate David Chen shouted when I went over to grab my bag from the bench. His neatly done black hair and unruffled locks looked great despite two hours of rehearsal. That was the first sign it should have been. David never sweat like the rest of us. "Family emergency," I said, never glancing up at his face. "We'll catch up tomorrow where we left off." "We still haven't accomplished the triple twist. The competition season begins in three weeks—" "I'll be awake when it's competition season, David." I cut off, already regretting saying it. He had every right to be upset. We had been working up to this moment the whole time. "I'm sorry. I'll be here tomorrow morning, I promise." He eased his face, but his eyes had an expression that I could not make sense of. "You okay? You look ill." "Everything's all right." I lied like it didn't matter. As a Romano kid, you learn how to lie before you're able to tie your shoelaces. "Just family stuff." I moved silently out of the rink, my skate bag hung heavily on my shoulder. The Chicago streets were congested with afternoon rush hour traffic, but I hardly even noticed. My mind was in chaos with what-ifs. Did the FBI find anything? Was it regarding the construction company? The restaurants? We had half Little Italy going on and people believed that we were just successful businessmen. Nobody ever suspected Papa's "construction projects" sometimes meant getting rid of trouble once and for all. I arrived in our driveway twenty minutes later. The home appeared normal outside…magnificent Italian-themed home with yard landscaped with precision. There was nothing about it that indicated difficult Chicago choices had been made in the basement office. I found Papa in his study, behind his huge oak desk. Vincent Romano, fifty-five years old, was still a good-looking man, his hair white, his green eyes alert, with an unsettling ability not to miss one detail. The same eyes had seen altogether too much blood in his lifetime. "Lucia." He rose when I walked in. "Sit." I brought the chair in front of his desk, the one I had sat in when I was little as I sat in trouble for having broken something or as I had fought with Marco and Isabella. "There's trouble," Papa said pointblank. "Somebody's been inquiring about our firm. The wrong sort of questions." My heart began to pound. "What's this about?" "The kind that go with federal agents and wiretaps." Papa's voice was cold as ice. "There's somebody in this family having discussions with people they shouldn't be having discussions with." I went white. "Papa, I give you my word I haven't told anyone one thing. My skating future relies on it.I keep clean." "It's not you, bambina." His tone eased somewhat. "You're good. You keep your nose out of family business like you should. But somebody isn't being so discreet." Relief washed over me, changing instantly to fear. If not me, then who? "Marco thinks perhaps it could be somebody in your world," Papa went on. "Somebody close to you, who could possibly listen." I went cold. "You mean skating, under 'my world'?" "How well do you know this David Chen?" It was a gut blow. David had been with me for three years. We had spent hours communicating with each other each day. He had spent Sunday dinner at our house. Isabella had been in love with him for months. "Never say 'David would never'!" I began, but Papa raised his hand. "It's not his fault. I'm saying be careful about who you trust. Family's family, but other people." He raised his shoulders. "Other people's cost." I left Papa's office with a stumbled head. David never would betray me. He wouldn't. We were two Olympic hopefuls with fate bound into one. Together, if I failed, he failed. But whereas heading home, I could not help but feel something was off. Little things were adding up in my head. The manner in which he always knew when I was heading home for family dinner. The way he casually inquired about Papa's businesses. The instances when I had caught him rummaging through my bag, saying he searched for lip balm or chew gum. My phone was ringing with a text message. David. *How's it going with your old man? Catch you later. We're going to take over this season.* I looked at the note forever. Three years previously, I'd have glowed with gratitude over his encouragement. This night, the words sounded ominous. I thought about accepting Isabella or Marco, but what could I explain to them? That I'd had a gut instinct? That my skating partner might be the federal informant jeopardizing our family? I, however, went where I always went when the world made little sense. I went to the rink. Chicago Ice Center was desolate except for the night watchman and me. I was, however, familiar with him, so he had no cause to panic about having me skate with an escort. I strapped on my skates and off onto the ice I went, enjoying the peaceful silence that could only be experienced when skating around the ice pad. Out here, I was not mafia princess Luciana Romano, figuring an escape from the shadow of her father. I was a skater, with an objective that had nothing to do with blood, with business, with betrayal. I run the drill over in my head, review his lines, mine. Each jump, each spin, each hoist we had down pat over three years as partners. If he was in fact betraying my people, then none of this mattered. It caused me to stumble over an innocuous turn, something that I had not botched since I had been fifteen. Sitting there on the ice, fighting to breathe, I could sense that both of my worlds were headed towards one another in the most disastrous of fashions. And when they finally did, someone was going to get hurt. I only wished it wouldn't be me.