Bad Medicine (Underworld Kings)

I knew I would marry Ferro Fetulli before I even knew my multiplication table. And since this was how my mom and dad, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and most of the other people I was permitted to be around lived, I didn’t know any different. Sure, I’ve read and heard about those who marry for love. I’ve seen TV shows and movies about “normal” people finding a love match and getting their happily ever after. But to me, that isn’t normal. That is strange. In fact, it sounds a bit exhausting. So not a single question was ever uttered from my lips when it was time to make it official with my betrothed, which was four years ago, the day I turned twenty-one.

We consummated the marriage that night, just like my mother had told me. And a week out of every month since then, he’s come to me in order to try to get me pregnant, whether for an heir or for a bargaining chip just like me.

But what he doesn’t know… and what I would be punished severely for if he were to ever find out… is that I’m on birth control—one of my very few acts of rebellion.

I know my place. I may act in my role as the perfect mafia wife. I may not be familiar with any other lifestyle. But in no way do I want to carry on the Fetulli bloodline. Because I would never want my child to have to live this life, a never-ending cycle of rules and fear. Especially if I were to have a daughter who would be matched with a man like Ferro.

Thankfully, I only have to deal with him a few nights a month. The rest of the time, he’s God knows where. My penthouse is my own. He doesn’t live here with me. My ivory tower. He has mistresses, his own home in a skyscraper on the other side of the city, and runs his family’s business—a highly profitable prostitution ring disguised as high-end tanning salons—with an iron fist.

I had hoped, in the beginning, that our marriage might turn out like my parents’, an arranged one that turned into a friendship that blossomed into actual contentment. Not necessarily love, but they’re happy in their companionship. But alas, Ferro never even gave us the chance for that to happen. I barely even know the man, and I’ve been around him my whole life. And what I do know about him—he is not a good person.

But I’m… here. Not happy, yet not miserable. Just… going through the motions of being alive. Alive, but not really living. I can’t complain though. I do whatever the hell I want—under tight surveillance, of course. I’m not told “no” often. I have an endless bank account, the opportunity to study whatever I want if I were to go back to school for a fourth degree, can get into any hobby I could possibly desire. But…

I think I’m lonely.

I have my parents, and Ferro whenever he comes to sow his seed. I have my security team. But I have no friends. Hell, I don’t really even have any acquaintances. Even my yoga instructor is some nameless guru I found on the internet, not an actual person I know, who’s livestreaming or something. I’m completely isolated. Like I said, Rapunzel in her tower.

My most recurring dream is of a prince coming to take me from this place, or sometimes he just stays here with me. I’ve never been outside Desolation, NY, so my imagination is limited during my dreams as to where he might take me. But in every one of those fantasies, we fall in love. True love built from a foundation of friendship and admiration, just like my mom and dad.

It’s those dreams that keep me going. My husband is a bad man with a scheming job in a dangerous city. While I shouldn’t wish harm on anyone, I secretly hope for the day he either makes a mistake big enough to land him in jail for the rest of his life, or that death comes knocking on one of his tanning salon doors. Because then I’d be free.

I have no idea what I’d do with that freedom, never really gotten past imagining the act of being set free itself. It feels too taboo to even fantasize what my life would be like outside this world. But I know it’d be great. I’d make friends. I’d go to a brick-and-mortar school for college instead of taking online classes, meet people, go to a gym and work out among peers. Hold conversations past polite greetings—

“You know, maybe you’d be pregnant by now if you didn’t work out so much.” The deep voice tinged with an Italian accent comes from behind me while I’m in a warrior pose, interrupting my thoughts. “There is a reason they’re called ‘child-bearing hips,’ which you barely have any to hold onto with all this… yoga you do.”