| Puppet On A String

𝐕𝐀𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀

VANESSA

I heard my father clear his throat as I approached him.

He turned and tried to muster a sweet smile, which I was sure was not humanly possible when it came to my dad.

"Everything okay, Dad?" I asked and he gave me a nod, took off his suit jacket and placed it by his briefcase before taking off his tie and loosening the top two buttons of his shirt.

I kept staring at the tattoo on the top of his hand, the symbol that represented our family-the wolf. The symbol consisted of chains weaved together to form a wolf's face, almost like a tribal sign. Both my brothers and all my uncles and cousins who have decided to devote their lives to the family business have the same symbol tattooed on their hands. My mom, like all the other women in our family, has it on the inside of her wrist. Everyone who had gone through the initiation ceremony received that symbol and wore it as a sign of their loyalty and commitment to the Bologna legacy.

I was the only Bologna who hadn't be