My Tragic Mafia Life | ✔️

21

Josephine didn't even respond, not knowing how to. She squeezed the rift of her breeches, now drying coolly into which her legs shivered against the damp heat, the fire ablaze behind her, until her fingers cramped. Not a word, but a tight nod beckoned her schoolmates to continue their plan.

Houston simpered, his endeavor priding itself in Josephine's surrender. Her obedience. "Even a dumb girl like you can understand this: think about it. With a girl like you in the palm of our hands, you'll become Camillo's greatest weakness. And then we'll have something to control Camillo."

Nothing made sense. "Camillo can't be that bad," Josephine said, her thoughts of him growing tremendously. True, he did lust over females one over the other on the daily. But Camillo was a part of the mafia? The same Camillo with the kind smile, and soft eyes?

The boy who made the exact same request to her. Beneath the looming shadows, Josephine stared at Dante and watched the flicker of flames dance between his gaze. Fall in love, win his favor. Distracted. Camillo said he needed him distracted.

Beatriz's laugh was a bit sharp, coy. "Consider Dante's offer an act of mercy. Camillo would have gutted you without a single thought."

Isla nodded. "We were lucky to send him into a coma, death would have been better. "

Houston looked as if he could have toasted to that. Dante sat in silent agreement, Deena making no remarks as she had been but levied Josephine with a serpentine smile. Josephine avoided it promptly.

Josephine couldn't comprehend their words. How Camillo acted and what they said didn't connect. "And in the meantime?" Josephine knew she was losing their patience—none of them expected Josephine to bicker and moan for this long.

"In the meantime," Beatriz snarled. "You avoid getting a knife to your stomach and do your job."

The blood in Josephine's ears pounded, making her eyesight a bit delirious. Her skin blanched.

"And I'm sure," Dante added to Josephine, his tone so ugly and cruel. "You and your family wouldn't be the most presentable as corpses, now would you?"

Josephine didn't breathe a word. Didn't want to.

Perhaps Camillo and Dante were more similar to each other than she thought. Both broken, both bad. Mafia men, ugly as she had thought.

Beatriz caught Houston's gaze from her curt position, arms crossed and willowy limbs crossed one over the other. Her eye's lighting as she spoke. "How do you know that this will work?"

"She'll make it work. And if not, we'll tear out her throat, throw her body to the Eastbay River, and watch as the news documents poor Josephine's unsolved murder case." Houston's response shattered towards Josephine, to where she could hear the tension and terror in that promise, her head throbbing.

Josephine would comply. She rocked the tremors in her knees, much being very aware of the bone and blood beneath the skin. Felt the strange aches and croak in each sliver of tendon she trembled in. Like before, the room darkened, the shadow reverberating across the student's faces revealing more sinister than before. Josephine felt like crying.

She whispered. "I want to go home."

Isla harrumphed, green locks distilling between pale shoulders. "Listen. I've heard about you, so I get the idea of who you are."

Josephine said. "I want to go home."

Isla made way of showing her sharp teeth, avoiding her response, annoyed.. "Spending daddy's money with an attitude, little miss teenage princess..." She snorted, spitting down to Josephine's feet. She didn't flinch. "Don't treat this like a pageant. We're a mafia, so act like it."