by Sophie Lark
It’s almost midnight. In Barcelona we don’t even eat dinner until ten o’clock at night. This party won’t reach its peak until the early hours of the morning. I’m already exhausted just thinking about it.
My father takes my arm in a steel grip and steers me relentlessly toward the center of the room where I can see Dieter, Gisela, and Rocco Prince holding court amongst their many admirers.
The Princes look just as regal as their name. Dieter could be a Kaiser with his immaculately trimmed black mustache and his military-style tuxedo. Gisela is fair-haired and pale, significantly younger than her husband. Rocco stands between them, black hair combed straight back from his brow, face lean and pale and cleanly-shaven, cheeks so hollow that a dark shadow runs from his ear down to his jaw.
My father shoves me forward so I’m forced to sink into a low curtesy in front of Rocco. I can feel his eyes looking down the front of this ridiculous gown. He makes me hold that position a moment too long, before putting his cool, slim fingers under my chin and tilting up my face.
“Hello, my love,” he says, in his soft, sensual voice.
His fingers feel as smooth and cold as a snake’s tail. I want to cringe away from his touch.
Instead, he lifts me to my feet, allowing his fingertips to trail over my collarbone and the tops of my breasts as he releases me.
I give a small bow to his mother and father. Dieter Prince takes my hand and lifts it to his lips in a brief, dry kiss. I much prefer his indifference to his son’s deliberate torment.
Gisela Prince briefly meets my eye then looks away. I’ve barely spoken to Rocco’s mother, but if she knows anything about her son, she must feel some measure of guilt over the fate in store for me. I would assume there’s a reason the Princes never had any other children. They might have worried that Rocco would strangle a baby in its sleep.
“Shall we dance?” Rocco says.
He doesn’t wait for my response. He takes my hand and pulls me onto the dance floor, which is already filled with whirling couples. The light, lilting Spanish guitar is in sharp contrast to the tense repulsion I feel whenever Rocco touches me.
The musicians are playing a gentle Arrolo, but as soon as Rocco has me on the floor, he snaps his fingers, ordering them to switch to tango instead.
“I don’t know how to tango,” I tell him, trying to pull away.
He yanks me against his body, hand cradling the back of my neck, fingers digging into the vulnerable flesh at the side of my throat.
“Don’t lie to me,” he hisses in my ear.
The dual bandoneons play their introductory riff, their fingers flying over the strings. Rocco shoves his thigh between mine, dipping me back across his other leg until it feels like my spine will snap. Then he whips me upright again, our bodies pressed together from breast to hip, his face only inches from mine. He forces me to look in his eyes. He forces me to see how much he enjoys this.
He strides forward, shoving me backward in four long steps. Rocco is slim but horribly strong — there’s nothing on his frame but muscle and sinew. Struggling against him is pointless, especially when every eye in the room is turned toward us and I can’t cause a scene.
Raising his arm over my head, he spins me like a top, then bends me back again, exposing my breasts to the crowd even more than they already were.
This is the real purpose of us dancing together — so Rocco can display his control over me. There’s no passion in his tango, no sensuality. His movement are rapid and technically precise, but without any feeling. Latin dancing is all about desire. The music is raw, insistent, all heat.
There’s no warmth in Rocco.
I don’t think he even feels lust.
He’s flaunting my body because he knows it embarrasses me. All his pleasure comes from my discomfort, my desire to defy him juxtaposed with my complete inability to do so.
I feel like a marionette on strings. I actually like dancing — the few times I’ve been able to enjoy it without anybody watching. Rocco is poisoning this, as he poisons everything. My face is flaming, acid in my throat. The song seems interminable. The crowd around us is a blur of color and dark, staring eyes.
Finally the music stops and there’s polite applause from the guests. This party is such a fucking charade. No one here cares about Rocco or me, or our upcoming wedding. Everyone present is fully focused on the deals they plan to make tonight, the connections and the agreements.
Rocco hasn’t released me.
“That’s enough dancing,” I tell him. “I need a drink.”
“Of course, my love,” Rocco says.
He delights in pretending to be the doting fiancé. Using these terms of endearment, pretending that he has my interests at heart. When really everything he does is in pursuit of his own amusement.
That’s why he forces me to take his arm as we head toward the bar. He wants me close, and he wants me touching him at all times.
“Just water, please,” I say to the bartender. I already had enough to drink in the limo. I don’t want to be inebriated around Rocco.
“Two scotch,” Rocco cuts across me.
The bartender obeys him, not me. He pours the expensive liquor over single spheres of ice, then passes us the drinks.
“Bottoms up,” Rocco says, his blue eyes boring into mine.
I swallow the drink. The sooner I get through these niceties — dancing with him, drinking with him, speaking to him — the sooner we can part ways again.
“Let’s take a walk along the marina,” Rocco says.
“I...I don’t think we should leave the party,” I say.
I don’t want to be alone with him.
“Nonsense,” Rocco says, quietly. “It’s expected that the happy couple will want to slip away.”
I set my glass down on the bar, the ice sphere spinning like a lonely planet.
“Alright,” I say. “I won’t be able to go far in these heels.”
“You can lean on me,” Rocco says, with a thin smile.
There should be plenty of people on the marina at this time of night. The docks are lined with restaurants, nightclubs, and shops. Still, I know he isn’t taking me out there for no reason. He always has a reason.
I glance around for Cat as we’re leaving, hoping to make eye contact with her so she’ll know where I’ve gone. She’s dancing with one of my father’s associates, a lecherous old fuck with a spotty bald head, who’s holding much too close to him and whispering god knows what in her ear. Cat’s smile looks pasted on her face.
She doesn’t see me.
Rocco notices where I’m looking though, and he smiles in a way that I don’t like one bit.
He tucks my hand into the crook of his elbow once more and begins to parade me down the marina.
“You’re very close to your sister, aren’t you?” he says.
“No more than normal,” I say.
The lie is instinctive and automatic. Rocco will use any leverage he can find to fuck with me. I don’t want him to know that the one thing in the world I truly care about is Cat.
But he already knows. He doesn’t ask a question without already knowing the answer. And he can always tell when I’m lying.
“Did she make that bracelet for you?” he asks, touching it with one long, slim forefinger.
I snatch back my wrist, irrationally outraged. I don’t want him tainting the bracelet.
“No,” I lie again.
It’s my only protection against him — to refuse to answer him truthfully, even in the smallest details. I try to build a wall around myself, shutting him off from anything genuine. It’s the only way to keep myself safe.
But I think he likes making me lie.
This is what he wants: to break me down. To twist me and change me.
We’re passing a seafood restaurant, the open patio full of diners enjoying their wine and poached fish.
Swifter than I can blink, Rocco grabs my arm and jerks me into the narrow alleyway between two restaurants. He sho
ves me up against the wall, the reek of empty mussel shells and fishbones filling my nostrils.
He seizes my jaw in his hand, pinching hard on both cheeks. The pressure of my flesh against my molars is intensely painful. He forces me to open my mouth.
“You weren’t very friendly to me last year at school,” he hisses, his nose inches from mine. “I almost felt like you were avoiding me, Zoe.”
My bare back is shoved up against the filthy alley wall. My jaw is aching and I feel absurdly vulnerable with my lips forced apart. I expect him to try to kiss me.
Instead, he spits in my mouth.
The cold saliva hits my tongue. I lash out instinctively, wrenching my face free and hitting him away from me while I wretch and gag. The unwanted scotch comes heaving up and I vomit on the cement, splashing my bare toes in their golden sandals.
My flailing arm knocks Rocco across the face. He scowls at me, either from the blow or from my extreme reaction to his spit on my tongue.
At least he doesn’t want to touch me anymore now that I’ve puked.
“I expect your attitude to improve come September,” Rocco says, coldly.
He strides away from me, leaving me alone in the alley.
My legs are shaking so hard that I can barely make it back to the party.
As soon as I enter the room, Daniela appears at my side hissing, “Fix your makeup, you look like a whore.”
I stumble off toward the bathrooms. Sure enough, my eyes are watering from vomiting and my mascara is smeared as if I were giving an enthusiastic blowjob in that alley.
Daniela had no problem with that — it’s what she expected me to be doing. It’s the lack of care in my appearance that she can’t abide.
Rocco’s spit in my mouth was almost as bad as the alternative.
I wash my mouth out at the sink, rinsing over and over until I’ve recovered the ability to swallow without heaving.
I don’t like this new demand from Rocco, but I don’t see how he can enforce it. I agreed to marry him after graduation. I never said we’d be best friends at school.
He leaves me alone the rest of the night and I think that’s all he has in store for me. I think I got off relatively easy...
The next morning my father and stepmother breakfast with Dieter and Gisela Prince, to see them off before they head back to Hamburg, and no doubt to discuss details of their new collaboration.
I’m not invited. My spirits begin to rise, knowing that I won’t see Rocco again until I board the ship to Kingmakers.
When we meet again, at least I’ll have friends around me — Anna Wilk and Chay Wagner, for instance, who shared the same dorm with me Freshman year. They’re formidable women, both proper Heirs who will actually inherit their families’ businesses instead of being given the title in name only, and then immediately married off.
Anna will run the Polish mafia in Chicago — she’ll have a dozen braterstwo under her command. Chay is the Heir of the Berlin chapter of the Night Wolves, a Russian motorcycle gang. With those two girls beside me, I’m not afraid to face even Rocco and his friends.
That is, until my father calls Cat and me down to his study.
I hate entering my father’s office. This is a place I’m never invited unless I’m in trouble. Cold sweat breaks out on my skin just stepping foot over the threshold.
Cat is even more frightened. Her teeth are rigidly clenched to keep them from chattering.
We enter his study, which is dark and oppressive, the walls lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves in ebony wood, most of their spaces filled with fossils instead of books. My father is immensely proud of his collection, which includes several dragonflies preserved in limestone, the pelvis of a woolly rhinoceros, and a full archaeopteryx.
I’m not looking at any of that because I see Rocco Prince standing next to my father. Rocco is dressed in a dark suit and tie, with a ruby pin in the lapel that glimmers like a droplet of blood, as if it fell from the corner of his mouth.
“Sit,” my father says, indicating the chairs in front of his vast, gleaming desk.
Cat and I sit down, while my father remains seated in his own grand chair and Rocco stands next to him, like a king and his executioner.
“Your fiancé is worried about you,” my father says, glaring at me from under his grizzled eyebrows. “He says you were in low spirits last night.”
I chance a swift glance at Rocco, trying to guess his purpose.
He’s punishing me for slapping him last night. But what does he want, exactly?
I don’t know how to reply. Arguing will only get me in more trouble.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Rocco says you were unhappy all last year at Kingmakers. He said you seemed lonely.”
My eyes dart back and forth between my father’s scowl and Rocco’s smooth, impassive face.
What is this game?
Is he trying to get me to promise to fawn over him at school?
Is he trying to get me to drop out? No...Rocco still has two more years at Kingmakers. He wants me there where he can keep an eye on me, I’m sure of it.
“School was new and different at first,” I say, cautiously. “But I think I adjusted eventually.”
“Your fiancé disagrees. After some discussion, I’ve thought of a way to make you more comfortable in your Sophomore year.”
I try to swallow but my mouth is too dry.
“What?” I say.
“Cat will be attending Kingmakers with you.”
Cat gives a terrified squeak in the seat next to mine.
Before I can stop myself, I cry, “What? You can’t!”
My father’s face darkens and his head lowers like a bull about to charge. “Excuse me?”, he says.
I see the flicker of a smile on Rocco’s lips. I’m playing right into his hands. By challenging my father, I’m only entrenching his decision.
I try to backtrack. “I only meant...what about Pintamonas? Cat’s already been accepted—“
“She’ll go where I tell her to go,” my father growls.
“I’m perfectly happy at Kingmakers! I’ve adjusted already, Cat doesn’t need to—“
“Art school is pointless,” my father interrupts. “Rocco has been telling me all he’s learning at Kingmakers, the variety of skills taught amongst the various divisions. Cat is timid. Cowardly, even. It would do her good to learn the real work of the mafiosi. If only so she can appreciate what her husband does, when the time comes.”
Cat gives me a desperate, pleading look, begging me to think of some way to get her out of this. I’ve told her how challenging Kingmakers is, how brutal it can be. For me it’s a welcome distraction. For Cat it will be hell on earth.
“Please, father,” I say, “Cat is delicate. She could get injured—“
“It’s time for her to toughen up,” my father says, ruthlessly. “I’ve made my decision.”
Rocco made the decision, more like. Then he manipulated my father into thinking it was his idea.
I don’t want to look at Rocco, but I can’t help myself.
I turn my full, furious stare on him.
He just smiles at me, showing his sharp white teeth.
“Don’t worry, my love,” he says. “I’ll take care of your sister...”
Miles
For Iggy’s album drop, I throw the biggest party of the summer at an old charcoal factory in Bucktown.
I’ve thrown some ragers, but this one tops them all.
I call in every favor I’ve got to get The Shakers to do the opening set. That’s crucial to bring in top-tier guests and to give the impression that Iggy is even more famous than the most popular band in Chicago.
I set up the stage and sound system on the roof, preemptively bribing the on-call cops to ignore any noise complaints.
Then I pack the guest list with models, influencers, musicians, and photographers, plus all the sexy young socialites from my parents’ circle, warning them not to tell anybody about the private event
so I can be sure they’ll message every last motherfucker they know.
I get the swag bags on the cheap, bartering with friends who want to put their luxury goods in the hands of the Chicago elite.
And finally I liberate a freight car of Bollinger from the rail yard, because I want fountains of champagne, and there’s no way to get the top-shelf stuff for a reasonable price.
There’s no better place for a party than an old factory. The vast open spaces, the hulking furnaces in the corner, the raw concrete walls and the bare beams overhead...it gives that sense of gritty authenticity you could never find in an event center. The glitterati want to feel like they’re slumming it, and the actual artists need to feel at home.
I’ve got four of my boys running security.
Much as I want the appearance of an out-of-control bacchanalia, everything needs to run smooth tonight. Iggy is about to sign a seven-figure deal with a record label in LA. They want music from the streets, but no actual criminal charges attached to their newest star.
I’ve known Iggy since we were kids. His dad used to chauffeur my father around when he was mayor of the city. Iggy and I would crowd into the glassed-off front seat, playing music and fucking with the lights, while my parents rode in the back, strategizing for the night ahead.
Iggy is wildly talented. His hooks are catchy, and his rhyme schemes are so dense and interconnected that I feel like I have to listen to his songs five times over before I can truly appreciate them.
Iggy’s a sweetheart, more poet than gangster. His only personality flaw is his willingness to trust the wrong people.
Which leads us to the biggest tripwire of the night — Iggy’s piece-of-shit uncle.
“Declan Poe doesn’t get through this door,” I say to my boy Anders, nodding my head toward the double steel doors at the entrance. “If you see him, you call me. Don’t wait for him to cause trouble.”
I run the party like a maestro in front of an orchestra. I deploy the drinks, the food, the music, the lighting, and the flow of guests with obsessive precision, while creating the illusion of free movement and free choice.