“That’s a standing order for family dinners,” Nora reminds me.
“Yeah, well, it’s especially important tonight.” I glance at Kate, but she doesn’t look at me. She keeps twisting her fingers in her lap and chewing on her lower lip. “Kate? Did you want to say something?”
“Honestly, Nate,” my aunt says, finally looking up, “I don’t know how I feel. We need a wedding quickly, of course. Weddings must follow funerals to keep the family numbers up and that strengthen us. Not having one invites further tragedy, and we’ve seen recently how true that is. Who gets married and to whom they get married isn’t necessarily of consequence. That said, I’m not sure why you haven’t reached out to the other families for a suitable arranged marriage. Then you wouldn’t have this problem. Some poor, backwater girl enamored and blinded by your money and power is fine for your bedchamber but hardly an asset to the family.”
The room goes quiet for a moment.
“You asked,” Kate says. She squares her shoulders and holds my gaze for a long moment before looking down at her clipboard.
“I suppose I did.” I lean back a little in the chair. “I think she’ll fit in just fine with legitimate business. I’m also in the process of making her more familiar with the maple syrup business, and she might very well run that factory for us in the future if she’s so inclined.”
“We can hire any high school graduate to make syrup.” Kate narrows her eyes at me. “It’s your decision to make, Nataniele, but I don’t know why you haven’t even considered asking about Moretti’s daughter or someone from the Franks family. That’s how it used to be done.”
“Moretti is still recovering from his war with Grecko,” I say. The very idea is ludicrous. Those families—though distant relations far back somewhere—were way out of our league. If I were to ask Rinaldo Moretti for his daughter’s hand, he’d probably have me shot for the insult. “Besides, he only has his daughter to run the business after he retires. She isn’t going to move from Chicago to fucking Cascade Falls!”
“Pretty sure he’s setting up his hitman to take over,” Threes interjects.
I glare at him.
“Just sayin’.” He shrugs and looks over to his sister.
“I thought he died in the last tournament,” Antony says.
“Oh, yeah. Forgot about that.” Threes wriggles his eyebrows. “Though no one ever found a body.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Even if I were so inclined to make such an inquiry—which I’m not—no Moretti is going to marry an Orso. It would be a step down for them, and I wouldn’t risk the insult by asking.”
“Nate’s right,” Antony says. “They’re big time, and we’re not. We weren’t even asked to take part in their little game up north.”
“Be glad of that,” Threes says. “If we were, you’d probably be dead.”
“I would have nominated you,” Antony says with a grin.
“Can we get back to the actual topic?” Nora blurts out. “Cherry is coming to dinner. I, for one, am excited to meet her. And Kate, no one is doing arranged marriages anymore. You need to get into the twenty-first century.”
“That’s worked out so well thus far.” My aunt’s eyes are uncharacteristically dark.
“Really?” Nora glowers at her. “You’re going there?”
“It’s the way it was for generations,” Kate says, “and no one ever questioned it until now. Even Micha, God rest his soul, had his marriage arranged. If she weren’t already promised to someone else, we might have set her up with Nataniele, but we waited too long. Marriages and children are how we kept the peace between the families all the way back to—”
“Dear God, not another lesson about the old ways!” Nora sighs loudly.
“Stop it, all of you.” I lean back and run my fingers into my eye sockets. I’m starting to get a headache from all of this. “Aunt Kate, I’m not going to marry some woman in Seattle. Nora, stop being a pain in the ass. Everyone, remember what’s important here—Cherry is coming for dinner. We’re having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and you’re all going to love it. You’re going to do everything you can to make her feel at home. Clear?”
*****
Dinner goes remarkably well. Cherry is happy and comfortable with my family as the night goes on. Nora made far more effort than I thought she would, and she and Cherry seemed to bond a little. Even Twos got into the mix, and the three of them seemed to be making plans together.
Aunt Kate had been a little strange in the beginning, but then she’d been acting a little strange all day. If she suggests another arranged marriage to me, I am going to explode. Yeah, I know it was done that way in the past, and I’m not trying to be disrespectful to her generation, but I’m not having the family matriarch choose a wife for me. She needs to understand that times have changed, even here in Cascade Falls.
The whole evening had me feeling positively giddy. When I drive Cherry home, I throw all caution to the wind and nearly declare my intentions to her in the car.
My heart is still racing when I get back home, and I swear it starts beating even faster when I glance at her car still sitting in the driveway and know I’ll be seeing her first thing in the morning. The only thing that could possibly ruin my mood is my sister standing in the doorway when I head inside.
“Nataniele, what are you doing?” Nora leans against the wall with a robe wrapped around her. She shivers before I manage to shut the door.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”