The Body #2: Lucio and Janie

Chapter 1 (Ginevra/Janie): In Shock

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

When I was sixteen years old, I met Lucio Feroce, who was five years older than I was. Traditionally, the daughters of men in the Body are promised at sixteen to men who are twenty-one, men who have just begun their lives in the Body.

The Head of the LaForte Body, Dario LaForte himself, had told my father I would marry Lucio Feroce, his only sister's only son.

"A good match," he'd told my father. "They'll give the Body strong boys for the future."

Lucio's father was dead, so my father and Dario signed the agreement, and then Lucio and I had done the same. We all added a drop of blood from our fingertip next to our signatures.

The Note of Promise that we had all signed was as binding in our world as a marriage license. The state, however, only recognized an official, government-sanctioned license, so the wedding would take place, as tradition held, on the day I turned eighteen. In the meantime, I would live at home and see Lucio four times a year. Times I would come to treasure because I was so infatuated with this man.

Lucio was beautiful with his dark hair and watchful, dark eyes. Even more than his beauty, however, I loved the power he exuded. Every time he saw me, he smiled and when I smiled shyly back, his eyes would narrow on me, as if trying to ascertain what type of girl I was. 

I knew what type of girl I was, but nobody other than my father and my crew of girls knew. When I had first begun accompanying my father on his nighttime missions, he made me vow on my mother's soul to never tell anyone what I had seen and, later, what I was capable of. I hadn't told my girls in so many words, but they trained with me, so they were aware.

"It's not for girls, the life in the Body. But your mother cried out to me, Ginevra, and she wanted me to give you talents so you had them if you needed them."

Christmas Eve was one of the prescribed times of the year that I would see Lucio. The last Christmas before I turned eighteen, my father had nodded when Lucio had asked my father if he could escort me from the party for a few minutes so he and I could take a walk along the creek. Two of my father's men were trailing close behind us as chaperones, and two of Lucio's men were trailing my father's men.

We'd walked side-by-side, and Lucio made a few comments, to which I responded with one-word answers. I was awed by this man's dark beauty; as first a sixteen-year-old girl who had instantly fallen in love with her future husband and now an almost-eighteen-year-old girl, I saw Lucio as far beyond the boys in my school. Boys working for the Body went away for a few years after high school and when they returned, they were men. Strong, ruthless, tough...and with something different in their eyes that was never there before and could be scary.

Lucio turned to me as we walked along, his hands clasped behind his back. "You don't have much to say for yourself, Ginevra. I find that to be a most admirable quality in a wife."

Don't show them who and what you are, Ginevra. My father's advice rang in my ears.

"I'll try to be an admirable wife for you...Lucio." Demure and respectful. Two qualities I had no doubt Lucio wanted in a wife. But how long could I fool him?

Up until my mother had been murdered, I'd been trained to be a wife of someone in the Body. Since my father had been forced to take on the task of raising me, I had seen a whole new side of life...and death.

And I liked it. I liked helping my father with the tasks set for him by Dario and others above my father. But it was definitely not something a good girl of the Body should do. We were trained to be the mothers of the future generation, not working members of the actual Body.

"In four months we'll be married," Lucio was saying, then he handed a small box to me. "It's time you wear my ring."

I opened the box and made all the appropriate exclamations, but inside I was thinking I would have to find someplace safe to leave this sparkly rock when I went out with my father on our nighttime excursions. Then I stilled as I wondered if I could still help my father with his tasks. If Lucio were to find out what I helped my father with, it would be my father to suffer the consequences.

With a chaste kiss on my cheek, Lucio watched me slide the ring on my finger. It felt like a weight I had to carry around. And that, in turn, felt like a premonition. 

Three months later, my father had left me as my mother had. Shot dead.

One month after my father died, Dario LaForte had stood beside me as I married Lucio at City Hall. I hadn't been able to entertain the idea of a big wedding and the accompanying festivities without my father, so Dario had granted me this concession.

Six hours after marrying Lucio, after seeing his girlfriend in what was supposed to be our marital home, after seeing Lucio take another woman into his bedroom on our wedding night, I had set into motion my escape plan.

For the last five years following that unconsummated wedding night, I had successfully lived far away from Lucio, messing with his life in many and various ways.

And because I'd been so successful at avoiding Lucio for so many years, because I'd convinced myself that he was not looking for me any longer, not after all this time, I'd grown somewhat complacent in my new life as Janie Paulson. 

Which could explain why I'd been taken completely unaware when Lucio Feroce had popped up in my backseat as I buckled myself in. He'd wrapped one hand around my neck, the other over my mouth.

"Gotcha," he hissed.

For a second, I froze in shock.

"And, now, wife, it's time for our wedding night."

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA