BOUND TO YOU

EMMA

I’ve heard a couple of times that when in doubt, you should dye your hair and book a flight to your dream country and I wish that was my case. I stared at my reflection in my compact mirror, I looked different, more like a stranger to my own self. I'd never dyed my hair in the past and now, here I was sitting in the airport with a new identity. Technically, it’s not exactly a new identity, it’s my middle name and my mother’s surname. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to run away from facing the truth but I was just about to find out.

Sometimes, I’d wonder what it felt like to have a normal family, to have people around who were just simply normal. Two days ago, I ran away from my own wedding. I’m twenty six and you’d think that I was old enough to choose my own husband and fall in love but that wasn’t the case for me. My father controlled my life ever since I was a child, the schools I attended, who I kept as my friends and who I even dated. The only thing he let me have was my journalism degree after I put up a great fight.

I know my life sounds complicated but here’s the backstory, my name is Emmaline Genovese and I come from a very wealthy line of mafia. My father, Carlos Genovese took over the family’s business when he was thirty and he prided himself in what he did. When I was younger, he would say in passing how I was the next in line since I had no siblings. He had so many expectations for me and as you know I have failed him. When I became a journalist and started writing about petty crimes like stealing going on in our community, he was livid. He told me, without mincing words that no child of his was going to be a snitch.

Now, it may sound like my father is so horrible but he’s not. I know for sure that he loved me so much and he had sacrificed so much for me but his obsession with the mafia and me taking over was what eventually made me run away. He arranged a wedding between me and the son of his old friend’s son. He believed that if we joined forces together, we would be unstoppable and stronger. My mother was a typical housewife, there wasn’t much she could do to change my father’s mind. My father would never let a woman make a decision for him. On the night of the wedding, she sent me a letter, a passport and some money all hidden in the layers of my wedding dress. She wanted me to go to her mother’s holiday home and hide there for a while until things were sorted out. It was the bravest thing I’ve seen my mama do and I was genuinely scared for her, if my father found out about it, he’d never forgive her.

On the day of my wedding, I asked the driver to pull up at a little restaurant so I could pee. He was reluctant but he obeyed me anyway so I quickly rushed through the back door where a cab was waiting for me. My father would never believe I would run away because I was always an obedient child and I never liked to stay far away from home. He might never forgive me for what I did but I had to choose myself, I wanted no part in the mafia and I was ready to disassociate myself from my family name if that’s what it meant. Not to mention, The Genovese name has affected me so many times. As a journalist that never withheld the truth or names involved in crimes, I was constantly called out as an accomplice to the mafia. Not to mention that my father had made so many enemies and mafia rivals all through the years. His major rival and forever enemy were the Marchetti family, their feud had begun even before the previous generation according to my father. By being a Genovese, I had inherited the same enemies. When they couldn’t get to my father, they tried to get to me. Someone had sent in an anonymous letter to my management asking that they fire me for code of misconduct. It wasn’t the first time I got things of that sort, I once received a shawl covered in pigs blood as a warning.

Moving to the holiday home seemed like a good idea, it was a fresh start from all the unnecessary threats and drama, I could work with the local newspaper and I could finally be free from my father and his rivals.

I sighed and stared at my little luggage, I didn’t have much time to pack so I stuck to essentials only, three boxes only. I wasn’t sure what kind of life awaited me at the other side, I wasn’t even sure I was making the right decision by running away. If things turned out badly, it would only mean that my father was right again and I’ll have to be at his mercy. It means I’ll have to go back to a life of crime.

I blinked back the tears that threatened to drop, I couldn’t back down now. I’ve been loyal to my father and my family, I would never write a publication tarnishing him or his image. This felt so wrong, a part of me wanted to run home and beg my father for his forgiveness. I’d get married to whoever he wished for me to get married to. My father knew me best, I trusted him, he’d never put me in a dangerous situation and he'd give up his life for me.

I lifted my head when my flight was announced, it was now or never, whichever decision I was going to make was going to affect my life forever.