One of those rules was not to desire a girl that wasn’t promised to you, especially if said girl was your stepsister.
As Underboss of Cleveland, my father needed to remarry after his first wife, my mother, died. I was eleven when she passed away, still a boy and yet well-acquainted with death. Growing up in the mafia, especially if your father was one of the Famiglia’s Underbosses and ruled over hundreds of men, you were introduced to the dark underbelly of the business early, to harden you for future tasks.
Father waited exactly the expected year before he married Felicitas and disappeared into their cocoon of wedded bliss, leaving me to deal with something I hadn’t bargained for: a kid-stepsister. The first time I met Stella, she was seven with braces and ridiculous pigtails, and so goddamn shy, she didn’t talk to me for a week after she moved in. That changed quickly though and as her mother began popping out three babies in short succession, forgetting about her oldest daughter’s existence, Stella became my shadow and I, her—at first not so willing—protector and companion.
Stella had always been a kid in my eyes, a girl I needed to protect because we were family, albeit not by blood and not even by choice because nobody asked us before our parents sealed their bond. Being five years my junior, I hadn’t noticed the gradual changes in her body because I didn’t pay any fucking attention to her body. Small shifts right before my eyes just didn’t register. Until Father sent me away to help our family in Sicily in their fight against the other mob famiglias. I was gone for a little over a year and when I saw Stella for the first time after all that time, I did a double take. She rushed toward me with a huge smile and flung herself into my arms. I hugged her back after a moment, suddenly feeling her curves, her breasts pressing against my chest. When I pulled back, I actually checked her out. Something I’d never done. She was Stella, my stepsister, not a girl I checked out. And yet my eyes lingered on all the right places, and fuck, they were spectacular. Stella shared her mother’s breathtaking beauty, but luckily not her self-centered vanity or air-headedness.
Had I just never noticed her curves or had Stella developed them all in only a year?
It seemed impossible. I must have been oblivious, and it was a state I needed to reach quickly again. Stella was completely off-limits. Fuck, we shared a last name. We were family.
After that day, I made an extra effort to not look at her body, focusing only on her face. Yet, even that didn’t help matters. Because Stella’s blue eyes and teasing smile haunted my nights, and sometimes even popped up when I fucked another woman. It was maddening.
Stella had become a fucking star, shining so brightly that she’d burned herself into my mind. No matter what I did, the image of her smile, of her curves, flashed up, even when I closed my eyes. It was like closing your eyes after you’d looked directly at the sun for too long: speckles of light kept dancing against the dark of your eyelids, reminding you of the enticing brightness you’d closed off.
I cleaned my hands of the blood. The cleaners took care of the body and the cut off parts. Torturing Bratva assholes for information was one of the perks of my job, which currently was jack-of-all-trades because at twenty-three, my father wanted to show me the ins and outs of every area of the business in our city before I’d take over from him in a few years.
My phone rang and I dried my hands before I took the call.
“Mauro, I need you to come over right away to watch Stella.”
I paused. “I thought you were leaving for Vermont today?” At every family dinner, I’d been forced to attend in the last few weeks, Felicitas hadn’t shut up about their upcoming ski trip to one of those uptight luxury resorts.
“We are,” Father said impatiently. “But Stella’s not coming with us.”
“What about the midgets?” That’s what I called my three little half-siblings.
“Of course, they are coming with us. Felicitas would go crazy if she had to be separated from her children for a week.”
“Stella is her kid too, she knows that, right?”
“I don’t have time to talk about this. Come over. You need to stay here the days we are gone and protect Stella.” He hung up, not waiting for my reply. Naturally, he expected obedience. His soldiers always followed his command after all, and as his son, I was little more than that in his eyes.
I grabbed my car keys, left the torture room and hurried toward my car, a new Aston Martin model that Father had given me on my last birthday. What he lacked in praise and affection, he made up with money and pricy gifts tenfold. I wasn’t a little kid anymore who craved his love or approval, so I was fine with our arrangement. I froze with my pointer finger against the start engine button when I realized what Father’s newest task of babysitting meant for me. I’d have to spend an entire week under a roof with Stella, my off-limits stepsister who visited my dreams almost every night.