Chapter 0036


    As I fall into the routines of the Lippert house I’m surprised to find that I’m quickly bored by them. Life at


    my home with David and Janeen was also boring – but they’re just normal people. A little of me, I think,


    expected everyday gang life to be more exciting.


    It’s not that the house is empty, really. Every day starts with a flurry of activity. Breakfast in the kitchen


    is a big affair, with everyone rushing through. Kent’s top guys – mostly older gentlemen - drink their tiny


    sses of espresso at a table in the corner, bantering. Lower-level guys, dressed in thousand-dor


    sweatsuits, run briskly through, reporting and getting new orders.


    Guards are all around – watching everything, but mostly wishing, I think, that they were important


    enough to be included with the others. If they work hard enough, though, they can level up.


    As the day passes, everyone spreads out to do their work. Daniel goes out a lot – to school, mostly,


    wrapping up his spring semester. I’ve been expressly forbidden to go out with him, to school or


    anywhere else. Apparently, I’m still a kidnapping target. Kent has told the Mafia world that I’m out there,


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    but until he locks me down as part of his family I’m forbidden any freedom.


    The first day Daniel left me behind, Fiona hade into the house just as he was leaving. Seeing my


    sad face, she wrapped an arm around my shoulders, her voice full of pity.


    “I know,” she said, giving me a little squeeze. “It’s like you’re a mafia widow already, stuck in this house.


    May as well dress yourself head to toe in ck crepe and spend your day saying the rosary for his


    soul.”


    “At least it would be something to do,” I moaned, slumping my shoulders forward in misery. “It’s so


    boring here.”


    And it really is. Again, not that there’s not a lot going on in this house at all times, it’s just that I’m…not


    at all a part of it.


    Everyone – the guards, the captains, the made guys – they’re all very nice and polite to me. They smile


    at me when they pass me in the hall. But no one really talks to me, even if I try. I get the impression


    that Kent expressly forbade it.


    My only friend is Fiona, and she’s very sweet, but we don’t have a lot inmon.


    Fiona is, I think, a mafia boss’s dream girlfriend. She’s sweet, funny, and has enough bite in her wit to


    keep from being boring. She’s incredibly sexy, but she spends most of her day building and maintaining


    that sexy appearance for Kent.


    When she’s not here, she’s out getting her hair and her nails done. When she’s in the house, she’s


    doing aerobics, or facials and beauty treatments, or ying with makeup and clothes. Fiona always


    looks stunning and keeps up with thetest fashions, but it’s a ton of work.


    Fiona has swept me up in her world a bit. I think she likes it, giving me a whole master’s course in


    makeup and hair care that I never, ever would have even thought about before she came along.


    But so much of the world just seems…ridiculous to me, though I’d never say it to her. For instance,


    once, her Botox doctor came by the house and she asked me if I wanted a little. “Just here and here,”


    she had said, tapping the corners of her eyes and between her eyebrows.


    Worried, I had touched my fingers gently to my skin in those ces. “Seriously? Do I need it?”


    Laughing, she had told me that I didn’t. “It’s just preventative,” she said, snapping her bubblegum as


    she leaned back in her chair and let the doctor do his work. “If you start when you’re twenty, you’ll look


    thirty when you’re fifty.”


    I had smiled at her and declined the treatment. What, really, was the problem of looking fifty when


    you’re fifty? After all, Kent was forty and he looked –