Living in Power (First Draft)

Chapter One

Maria stood tall and beautiful at the head of the table, her olive toned skin making her bright white dress stand out. Her long dark hair was twisted up into an elaborate hairdo that was held together by diamond studded pins and a tiara that had been her mother's when she had married 26 years earlier. Her new husband sat beside her, beaming at his new bride. Her husband was a strong sicilian man who worked on his family's farm, which was noticeable by his deep tan and sun bleached hair. His broad body was contrasted by Maria's slim one.

The best man had just finished his speech and was being thanked by both, then Maria introduced her father, Antonio Forza as he stepped up and gave his speech.

Antonio's first language was Italian, much like everyone else in the room, but for recounting purposes, I've translated it for you: For today and its blessings, I owe to the world an attitude of gratitude. Blessed are you who enlighten the world with happiness and contentment, love and companionship, peace and friendship. A good memory is one that can remember the blessings of the day. Long live the newlyweds! Bless you!

Picture Salemi, Italy, June 25th, 2016. This Sicilian family is anything but ordinary. While the groom shares in remembrance about how him and Maria met, Danica and Luciana, the daughter and adopted niece of Antonio sneak off. This is one of the most important moments they worked for. Luciana cracks open her laptop.

"Hurry we only have a three minutes until our window closes!" Danica yells.

"What? I'm going as fast as I can!", Luciana yells back. Throughout her schooling and from her parents and older siblings, Danica had a more-than-average understanding of the english language for a foreigner and spoke in it more often than her native language in the past year. But Luciana, she never had proper English training, but had adapted to understanding it throughout living with the Forza's for nearly six years, though picking up on many other languages, (i.e French, Arabic, and Greek) and nearly being fluent, she didn't hear english at all until her second year in the Forza home.

"Luciana, go!" Danica prompted as the other, much more timid, girl opened and logged into her computer, quickly finding the closest (and weakest) wifi signal. Now that was something she had been trained in by the older members of the house, hacking, as she picked it up faster than Danica had, and they decided that Luciana was the best choice for that job.

"Two minutes and thirty-six seconds, Luciana."

"Okay, okay." Luciana opened up files and different web browsers on her computer, searching through her open tabs until one page that had been completely black flickered to life. She and Danica scanned the page quickly, cast a knowing glance at each other, prompting Luciana hit download and then opened the documents in another tab as she began to fill out pages and pages of forms, each with a different name of Forza family member, complete with an address and the signature of an immigration officer, Mrs. Oleg Hayan, who had actually been dead since April. But of course, the forms predated April, saying they were made in January.

Those three minutes had been the most important three minutes in the lives of the whole family. The three minutes when there was a flood of line open in the government systems, people logging on and off for the day, the time of day when the security was weakest, evening shift change.

Luciana saved the files to the computer.

"Perfect," Danica says in an ominous voice. The two girls returned to the reception, smoothing out their dresses as they went, the music was booming, people were talking and laughing and dancing. The Forza family, AKA the family of the bride, sat condensed into the upper right corner of the room, some staying to themselves, like Antonio Jr and his wife, the oldest boys of the family: Guido, Bartolomeo, Giuseppe, and the second oldest girl: Tiana. Others stayed out on the dance floor, the younger girls: Angelina, Marcilina, and Valentina, who tried their best to keep an eye on the youngest boy: Ricardo.

Everyone was having a fantastic time, to the pleasure of the bride and groom, and to the mother and father of the bride, both of whom had disappeared back into one of the adjoining ballrooms around 10 PM.

Later that night, well after the party had ended and Maria and her new husband, Piero, had already retired off to their hotel room, where they were staying before their honeymoon.

Once at home Danica printed out the papers onto a thick paper, very similar to the same ones used by the immigration department, which Luciana found by spending upwards of 15 seconds on the server, and gave them to Antonio.

"Great job girls," he says, with his thick Italian accent, "Now you know how it will be, we need to keep a low profile once there, so no fighting, no cheating, no getting too frisky, and no giving people a reason to look at you sideways" he looked to both girls then focused on his daughter, "Okay Danica?"

"Yes papa," she said with a hint of passive-aggression in her voice. She didn't mean to draw attention to herself, it just happened. It may have been due to her beautiful brown hair that she inherited from her mother. It possibly could be boiled down to her seemingly perfect body, which, despite her strict catholic upbringing, she liked to show off. Danica had a confident, and loud personality that seemed to scream almost violent enthusiasm, completely opposite of her surrogate twin.

Luciana was quite lanky, lacking all curves that Danica so proudly flaunted, in an almost-underweight way. She has short cropped black hair, which obviously showed that she often tried cutting it herself, chunky glasses which were courtesy of the Forza mother. Her skin was paler than Danica's, yet, average for a southern Italian. Her eyes were a crisp blue, clear as the bay, that could cut through a soul, severely contrasted with Danica's shimmering gray eyes, remeniciant of an ocean storm. Luci, as she was affectionately known, was shy and stayed mostly in the shadows. Her insanely impressive memory and intelligence helped her to be able to hack almost any server, even government sites protected with nearly impossible-to-crack firewalls. ANd if you squint really hard, you could almost see the similarities. Maybe you'd believe that they were actually sisters too.

After sending both girls to bed, Antonio Forza made his way down into the basement, a large, open space that was seemingly empty, except for a few supports staggered throughout the room. In the very back, though, there was a door that blended in to the back wall. He entered, seeing his wife, his oldest daughter, and his three oldest sons, all sitting around a table, organizing papers by person in the family

"Perfect," Antonio started, "Now we can start phase two."