When She Falls （The Fallen, #3）
Gabrielle Sands
CHAPTER 1
GEMMA
I tap my fingertips against the limo’s armrest as we glide around a bend in the coastal road that leads to my sister’s house. Glimpses of the Mediterranean peek out from between the greenery lining the road, and when the trees suddenly recede, I get treated to an open view of the sea below. A vast expanse of azure stretches all the way toward the horizon, shimmering with the afternoon sun.
My breath catches.
Cleo leans over me to get a closer look, practically pressing her nose against the window.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” she mutters, her voice dropping into the well-practiced whisper we use when we don’t want our parents to hear our conversations. They’re sitting just across from us, but we’ve perfected keeping our communication private over the years. “Gem, is this place for real? Look at that water. Just look at it.”
“I’m looking.”
“I’ve never seen water that shade of blue. I mean, in pictures, sure, but I just assumed it was the filter.”
A smile tugs at my lips. This is the first time Cleo’s been outside of the States, and her excitement is palpable.
She huffs a breath, making condensation appear on the glass. “I could drown in it. In fact, I think I’d rather do that than go back to New York in a week.”
And just like that, the smile melts off my face.
My younger sister has always been dramatic. I’m used to it, but we’re about to spend a week around people who aren’t, and I can already imagine the repercussions of her saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
But Cleo doesn’t care about that.
“Consequences be damned” may as well be her life mantra.
She really outdid herself back in January, though. She was caught in bed with a baby-faced pizza delivery boy from Brooklyn who clearly had no idea who our family is.
That mistake probably cost him his life, although Papà’s neither confirmed nor denied it.
It was a real scandal. The eighteen-year-old daughter of a New York City don disgraced. Her maidenhead taken by a literal nobody. Papà had frothed at the mouth, his anger so palpable that even his soldiers left for a long smoke break outside. Mamma whisked Cleo away after Papà was done screaming at her. I stayed behind in Papà’s office, and when he leveled his heavy gaze on me, I knew that my fate was sealed.
The responsibility to save our family was now all mine.
His last eligible daughter.
I smooth my palms over my linen pants. “How many times do I need to ask you not to joke about things like that?”
Cleo gives her head a shake. “Who says I’m joking? But here’s a less morbid thought. Let’s run away like Vale. We can live on the beach like a pair of bums.”
I glance at our parents to make sure they’re still oblivious. We only have two guards with us on this trip, but the moment Papà hears any talk about running away, he’ll fly in a dozen more. It’s a sensitive topic after our older sister, Vale, did exactly that. The azure sea on the other side of the window beckons me. The thought of staying here doesn’t seem half bad, but I know better than to encourage Cleo.
“How will we eat?” I inquire.
A curly coppery strand slips from behind Cleo’s ear and falls across her cheek. “Dumpster diving. Have you heard of it?”
“You’ve never even taken out the garbage back home, and now you want to dig around someone else’s trash?”
Cleo presses her fingertips to the glass, her gaze still fixated on the water. “You’re such a buzzkill. Don’t act like you want to go home any more than I do. You know, if our places were switched, and I was the one engaged to Rafaele Messero, I’d be opening this door and rolling out of the car right now.”
At the mention of my fiancé, my throat tightens.
Rafaele became the newest don in New York when his father died from cancer last year. Papà was gleeful. He’d been trying to set me up with Rafaele even before the Messero patriarch fell ill, and now the marriage would prove even more advantageous since I’d be marrying a don.
I didn’t think Rafaele was interested in me based on the few in-person interactions we had, but somehow, Papà made it happen.
And he made one thing very clear to me.
This is an alliance the Garzolos desperately need.
“You’ve seen what happens when we go to war with another clan. We may have won against the Riccis, but we paid a high price for that victory.”
Three cousins, two uncles, and a half-dozen soldiers had died.
I attended every funeral. Held crying mothers and wives in my arms. Gave gifts to confused children, some of them so young they couldn’t understand what had happened to their papas and brothers.
“Our enemies know we’ve been weakened. You’re our last hope to regain our footing in the city.”
I clasp my hands on my lap. My family is in trouble. And according to Papà, their future rests in my hands.
“You hardly know Rafaele,” I say to Cleo. In truth, neither do I. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve spoken to my fiancé.
Cleo wrinkles her nose. “Thanks, but no thanks. Cracking my skull open on the asphalt would be better than getting married to that stony-faced fucker.”
Cold dread trickles down my back. Cleo is never one to hold anything back, but sometimes, I wish she would.
A second passes before Cleo realizes what she said, and she shoots me an apologetic look. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” That’s a lie.
Nothing’s been fine for a long time. But this week is supposed to be a reprieve before I have to face the music and plan my wedding to a man who is a stranger to me.
A stranger who became a murderer at thirteen.
I stop picking at my cuticles when I accidentally make myself bleed.
Enough.
I promised myself I wouldn’t think about all that while we’re in Ibiza. After all, we’re here to celebrate. One week, two weddings.
The final wedding of the week is between Vale and Damiano De Rossi, the new don of the Casalesi. Two days before them, Martina De Rossi, Damiano’s sister, and Giorgio “Napoletano” Girardi, Damiano’s advisor, are getting married as well.
I don’t know the De Rossis well, but my sister says Damiano is her perfect match.
I’m happy for her. I really am.
They actually want to be married.
Must be nice to do what you want.
Cleo opens the window, letting warm, humid air invade the inside of the limo, and takes a deep inhale. “Do you smell that? That’s the smell of freedom.”
“Close the window,” Mamma snaps, her thin hands sliding over her hair to keep down the frizz. She spent an hour on the plane getting herself ready for our big arrival at Vale and Damiano’s house, and even though she’d never admit that she’s nervous, an angry kind of anxiety is emanating off her.
It’s the first time our whole family will be together since Vale ran away from New York. I don’t blame my sister for doing what she did—her ex-husband was a monster who made her torture people. She did what she had to in order to survive. But while she was starting a new life on this side of the world, I had to watch our friends and family struggle like they’ve never struggled before.