Page 19 of The Gangster King

I was eighteen. I was aware I didn’t fit in and feel the same as the rest of my family. Leaving never felt like an option. Not after Mama had just passed.

Two years later, my father remarried. Lola is everything my mother wasn’t. Young, beautiful, and submissive. If anyone else was shocked by this sudden marriage, they never said anything.

“Meet your new mother.” Carlos told me one day.

My mouth fell open. Just being told the woman who gave me life was being replaced was repulsive.

Lola didn’t look that much older than me.

A few weeks later, I overheard my father talking to his brother—his right-hand man and also my uncle, Georgio.

“I need more sons. If something happens to Leo...it’s a risk,” Carlos had said.

“Adelina is smart,” Uncle Georgio had replied.

“She’s soft. Has no passion. No brains for business.”

Fury had plowed through me. Not that I wanted to work in the family business, but that wasn’t the point. Maybe if he’d sent me to college, I might have. I was homeschooled by a tutor all my life and when I said I wanted to go to college, my father had refused.

“I’ll use Mama’s money.” I argued, but my father had just laughed.

“Her money? What money?”

Opening my mouth to reply, I realized he was right. She’d told me I would inherit half of her wealth if something happened to her, but no one had given me any information since her passing.

Eight years ago now.

“She told me...”

“Then she lied to you, Adelina. Now go. I have work to do.” Carlos had said, dismissing me as he always had.

I couldn’t let it go. It was one of the most important conversations of my life. Surely, he didn’t think I would just accept his answer.

I was his daughter, after all.

His determination was in my blood.

“Papa, I want more education. I want to get a business degree.” I argued.

He dropped his pen and shot me a dark look—one I’d seen him use with his soldiers. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He did that already by dismissing me.

“No. I gave you my answer. You will marry and you will do your part for the family. You’ve had enough education. Put your efforts into learning to cook with your grandmother and your aunts.”

I’d felt sick.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not the fifties.” I’d shaken my head, but Papa rose and slammed his fist down hard on the desk.

The surrounding soldiers reacted, their guns clicking and feet shuffling. My father ordered them to get out of the room.

By then, fear and adrenaline had filled every pore in my body, and I knew this wasn’t going to end well.

Uncle Georgio stepped into the room. “What’s going on?”

“Your niece thinks she’s going to college to become a businesswoman.” Carlos hissed. “What the hell was your mother telling you all these years? It’s bad enough she only gave me one son.”

“Carlos,” Georgio warned him.

My uncle is the only man able to speak up to my father, and he rarely does. I’m sure it was the tears in my eyes, the ones I was fighting to hold back, that made him speak up for me.