A/N: Heyyyyy everybody! *waves excitedly* Now that Life After Death has at long last been concluded, I am unbearably excited to get my next full-length fic underway, this little baby right here :D This is going to be quite different from anything I've written before and it's definitely a unique take on Bucky and Summer, which is probably a very good thing considering how much I've written about them already lol. I have been chomping at the bit waiting to get to start writing this for MONTHS, and it's already my favorite thing ever and I'm only one chapter in, lol. I hope you guys like it and enjoy this first chapter! I'm gonna try to update once a week, and I just really really hope you guys like this as much as midnightwings96 and myself do. It's gonna be one heck of a ride, that's for sure :D my thanks to you guys for reading, and my thanks to midnightwings96 for coming up with the premise of this fic and SO MUCH of the details and ideas, and for just being an amazing person. I'll see you guys soon! Leave a review and let me know what you think! :D

Sitting at the top floor of a skyscraper, waiting outside of her father's office and watching as the clock behind the receptionist's desk tick-tocked away, Summer let out a breath and wondered what the heck was taking so long. She picked up her cell phone and checked her email, but there was nothing new and nothing to pass the time with, which had been the case for the last 20 minutes.

She clicked off the phone and dropped it into her purse, then picked up a book that she'd forgotten she kept stashed in there for boring moments like these. She admired the cover of the book for a moment, unable to help but stare in awe every time she gazed upon the glamorous power couple who had authored the book. They were not only at the helm of one of the fastest growing and successful corporations in the country, but they were also...

"So hot," Summer sighed. When she realized that she had said that out loud, she looked up and, to her chagrin, saw that the receptionist was now eyeing her rather strangely. Summer smiled and held up the book for her to see, chuckling uneasily and gesturing to the photo in question as if to say well, can you blame me, then let the smile fall off of her face when all the woman did was stare even more judgmentally.

Deciding to ignore the receptionist and pretend that she wasn't now horribly embarrassed, Summer opened the book to a random page and started reading somewhat aggressively. Mild humiliation aside, the authors of the book really were her role models and the bearers of the standard that she hoped to meet one day, even more so than her own father. Much more so than her father, if she was being honest.

A few moments passed, and she looked up when the door to her father's office opened and two older men that she didn't recognize walked out. They looked at her as they passed by, something about their gazes making her feel inexplicably uneasy. She looked away, able to feel their eyes still, and she only felt normal again once they had cleared the area.

Weird. She shook it off and refocused on the book in her hands, but that was when she heard the door open again, followed by her father's voice.

"Come on in, Summer."

She looked up and felt that sense of unease come back tenfold. The tight, pinched smile on his face and the almost white-knuckled grip that he hand on his door was more than a little alarming. She closed her book and threw it back into her purse, stood up and smoothed out her office-appropriate skirt, then walked past him into his office.

"Dad, are you okay? What's..." She trailed off after he closed the door and her eyes flickered to her mother, who she didn't expect to see sitting there in front of the large desk. The fact that her eyes were red-rimmed and her features appears distinctly irate was even more concerning. She hardly ever had a hair out of place in public, always dressed to impress - almost a little too impressively sometimes - and never looking anything like well-aging glamorous blonde that she was. But something had clearly broken that image today.

"Take a seat, honey," her father said, ushering her to sit next to her mother.

Her mind raced as she did as he said, taking the empty seat and almost immediately blurting out, "Am I fired or something?"

"No," he chuckled, leaning against the desk. He rested his hand on the surface of it, almost touching the plate sitting on engraved with the words Michael B. McAdams, Chief Executive Officer. "No, you're not fired."

"Oh. It's just, I know I've made mistakes during this apprenticeship, but -"

"You've done nothing wrong," her mother said, sniffing and then turning steely eyes on her husband. "Just get on with it."

Summer looked at her in great confusion, then at Michael as he said, "I'm trying to, Lizzie."

Summer's eyes widened. "... Are you dying? Are you sick? What the hell is going on and why are you two acting like somebody died?"

"Yeah, why don't you tell her?" Lizzie asked Michael, eyes flashing angrily.

He pursed his lips and dragged a hand across his face before biting the bullet and finally coming clean. "I've... I've made some mistakes during my time here. I've made mistakes with this company, with... funds and... other resources."

"... What kind of mistakes?" Summer asked, having no idea what to expect.

"The kind that gets people into trouble that can get them killed," he replied truthfully.

Summer's eyes widened. Then her mother sighed and said, "Just spit it out, or I will."

Michael again eyed his wife both wearily and a bit pained before he followed her advice. He looked his only daughter in the eye and said, "We've been working with the Russian mafia for some time now. I've kept it hidden well. Lizzie didn't even know. And last year, I... mishandled a few accounts."

"He blew a few million dollars on gambling alone," Lizzie interjected somewhat bitterly, Nobody could have blamed her.

Summer's eyes grew less panicked and more sad and disappointed as she turned back to her father and asked quietly, "You've been gambling again?"

Michael nodded, shame as clear as day in his eyes. "And... thanks to my... errors, I nearly exposed the company's... less legal activities. I needed their help to cover it up, and they did, but... in order to keep the company afloat and keep us alive, I had to make some major concessions."

"... To the Russian mob?!" Summer gaped. What she was listening to barely qualified as English in her mind, it was so entirely bizarre. "What kind of concessions?"

"We're going to merge with the corporation that most of their operations are conducted through," Michael replied. "Pierce Consolidated. And... to ensure our compliance and silence... they took... extra precautions. And I want you to know, Summer, that I never wanted anything like this for you. This is the last thing that I ever wanted to agree to, but it's keeping us alive. I had no choice."

Summer's heart was pounding in her chest. A thousand worst-case scenarios ripping through her head, she asked barely above a whisper, "What?"

Michael paused, unable to look either her or his wife in the eye as he replied, "You... you have to marry one of them. Their American captain. To them, it's insurance."

Whatever Summer had expected, whatever she had feared and whatever increasingly far fetched things she had come up with... this was the very last thing she ever would have expected. Shock overcame her like ice, her ears suddenly ringing and face burning, and she couldn't get a single coherent word out. She simply stared at her father - her father, who had sold her to the mob like cattle, it seemed - and gaped in disbelief.

"He's... there's no way out of it," he added. "He runs all of their operations here in the states. I've never met him - hardly anyone has - but Summer, I promise you, as bad as this is, it's a blessing compared to what they could have done to us."

Lizzie went from watching Summer with concern and tears in her eyes to glaring at Michael. "A blessing? That's what you call this? You sell your daughter to the devil and its a blessing?"

"At least she'll be alive," Michael replied desperately. "Do you have any idea what they would have done to her if they hadn't given me a second chance?"

"And whose fault is that? Who put her - who put all of us - in that position to begin with?"

"I know, I know, but I'm protecting her. I'm doing everything I can to protect this whole family."

"And you're handing her over to a man we don't know, who could be 80 years old for all we know or worse, young, who could do God only knows what to her for the rest of her life!"

As her parents argued, Summer found that she couldn't breathe. Her airway was restricting and every attempted breath burned down her throat, her vision narrowing and all the classic signs of a severe panic attack taking hold of her. There was nothing she could do - she was as powerless to the panic as she was to everything else.

Her choice, her free will, her hopes and dreams... what were they now? What would become of her?

She looked up at Michael, the one man in the world who she was supposed to be able to trust to protect her and keep her safe, and he had just given her away. Regardless of his reasons and the desperation that had led him to make such a decision, it was the sharpest sense of betrayal that she had ever felt in her life.

She stood up, glared at him, and didn't say a word as she turned to leave.

Michael blinked, watching her leave. "... Sweetie?"

"Don't you sweetie her," Lizzie replied. "Let her go."

He didn't listen. "Summer, please -"

Summer whipped around just long enough to point one shaky finger at her father and say, "I can't believe you would do this to me. I don't want to hear anything you have to say. I don't even want to look at you. Just stay away from me." She glared at him just long and angrily enough for him to realize just how much damage he had done not just to her but to heir relationship. Then she dropped her hand and turned around, nothing in the world able to stop her from storming out.

Summer threw the door open and kept walking. She didn't look back once, not once she got on the elevator nor after she left it, and not even once she was back on the streets of Manhattan, walking as quickly as her feet would take her.

She felt the tears stinging her eyes and a few escaping down her cheeks as she walked, but she didn't care. She was usually one to try to hold back her tears, but what was the point now? She was terrified and confused and mad as hell, and if she had the passing thought in the midst of it all that it would have been better if Michael had died in the car accident that tore her family to pieces before she was old enough to even talk, she refused to feel any shame in it.

In mere minutes, her entire plan for the rest of her life had gone up in smoke. Now she had to mourn that life, in between fearing and dreading the one that she was now being forced into against her will.

Later that night down at the docks, long after darkness had fallen over the city, a shadowed and silent figure sat motionless atop a sleek and unseen motorcycle hidden behind tall, locked crates. He watched and waited, his focus laser-sharp and unbreakable and all the more deadly for how undetectable it was.

It was a routine delivery, one that didn't require his attention according to some of his colleagues. When they didn't think that he could hear them, those colleagues talked about his almost unnatural devotion to his job and how he lived up to his fearsome reputation in ways that made even the most hardened of them shudder. But he always heard them, always heard the whispers and caught the occasional stares, and the truth was... he didn't give a single shit what any one of them thought about him.

He knew who he was. He knew what needed to be done and what didn't. And it was that strength and that resolve that had made him who he was today.

And who he was wasn't pretty.

The shipment arrived without fanfare. His men received it and began loading the boxes filled with top-quality Russian weapons into the truck they'd driven there, and all seemed well. It showed all the signs of a routine delivery and reception, but he knew in his gut that it wasn't going to be simple.

So he continued to watch and wait. And when the last box was loaded, a gunshot rang out and struck one of his men in the chest.

Just as he'd suspected. There were going to be some fireworks tonight, after all.

He had personally trained every man present on that dock to fight and kill with skill and precision, but despite how competent that should have made them, he watched them put up a fight that made him sigh with shame and impatience. They could tear up a training room, but in the face of an ambush from the Bratva's most stubborn and deadly enemy - the Chinese Triad - they fell apart.

And that was why he was there.

Triad fighters clad in their usual all-black descending from seemingly out of nowhere and laying waste to his men, he waited for the right moment to intervene. None of them had died yet, and they deserved the beating they were getting for being so useless under pressure. He waited until it looked as if all was surely lost and the shipment was going to be intercepted, and when he gut told him that the timing was right, he turned on the motorcycle and flipped the lights on at full power.

Half of the men turned and squinted at the light. He hit the gas and drove full speed right towards the small swarm of bodies, and while some fled in time, two Triad members didn't. He angled the bike down to one side and then drove it right over them both, leaping from the seat on impact and hitting the ground in a smooth roll that allowed him back on his feet before his two victims had even finished screaming.

He stood tall and still for a moment, eyeing each of his enemies with startlingly blue and unmistakably dead eyes. He was dressed in all black, down to the leather gloves on his hands, and his long dark hair was knotted at the back of his head to prevent obscuring his vision.

The other men came to a halt as well, each one of them looking at him with recognition in their eyes, as much hatred as there was fear. They knew how this was going to end. They knew that it was over and that their attempted interception of the weapons shipment had already failed. They knew this, but pride and duty prevented them from making the intelligent move and escaping while they could. It defied their senses of logic - how could one man be such a highly skilled team's downfall?

But when it came to the man known as the Winter Soldier, that was exactly what he specialized in. And now it was their turn to find out.

The first man that struck out at him screamed from a broken arm and cracked ribs before he could even land his hit. Then, like a switch had been flipped, they all converged at once and then it was a brief but significant display of brutal elegance.

Bucky took them all down, one at a time and sometimes two at a time. He never even drew his own weapons, instead taking one man's gun out of his hand and firing it right at his face, and bending one man's arm backwards and catching the knife that tumbled from his hand in mid air, flipping it around and jamming it in his neck.

By that point, most of the men had fled, but there was one who remained. There was always that one who liked to stay and try to prove himself, and Bucky wasn't above toying with his prey before killing it. Not tonight, anyway.

He lured the man into a facade of a fight, letting him falsely think that he was worth the effort and that he just might stand a chance if he fought hard enough. He punched and kicked and jabbed with a pocket knife, and Bucky dodged and ducked and let him frustrate himself before he tired of his own game and decided to bring it to the quickest end possible.

As the man grunted and groaned with effort, Bucky silently danced around him, grabbed the back of his shoulders for leverage and then swung his legs into the air and ultimately around his neck. He clamped his thighs around the man's face and with one smooth, forceful twist, snapped his neck. The man crumpled to the ground and Bucky landed back on his feet, chest heaving with deep breaths and eyes fixed on the limp body on the ground.

They were always the same, men like these. But that didn't stop Bucky from enjoying the calm, almost indulgent sense of satisfaction he felt whenever he ended another one of their worthless lives.

But there was work to do. He lifted his head and turned around, focusing his attention now on his men, who were mostly all back on their feet and staring at him with a mixture of fear and awe.

He scowled at them. A few of them flinched at just that one small twitch of his lips.

"Disgraceful."

With one word, each of their faces paled.

"Each and every one of you is a fucking disgrace and a waste of my fucking time. I take you in, I give you the chance to prove yourself, and for what? So I can babysit you every fucking week, clean up your messes when you can't do the job I fucking trained you for?"

They were all petrified. Good, Bucky thought.

"Clean this up," he said, gesturing to the three bodies that laid on the ground. "Do your fucking jobs. And after tonight, you're all sidelined until you can prove to me that you're worth a damn at anything. If anyone's got a problem with that, I don't have a problem adding another body to the pile. I won't hesitate."

None of them said a word. Bucky fixed them with one more witheringly scornful glare before turning and heading back to his motorcycle. He picked it up off of it side and wiped off the seat, noted a few chips in the paint job following his use of it as a murder weapon, and then he mounted it once more and zoomed off.

He headed home, having no idea of the unpleasant and very much unwelcome surprise that awaited him there.

The sprawling, multimillion-dollar manor was quiet when Bucky returned. He left the motorcycle in the garage and made his way inside, moving through the mostly darkened entrance and up the winding staircase that led to his rooms at the top of the mansion. His leftover adrenaline had mostly waned, but he still wasn't particularly tired despite the late hour as he opened his door and stepped inside.

He stopped short in the doorway, taking in the light of his bedside lamp and the redheaded assassin lounging on his bed as if she owned it.

"Hey there, loverboy," she said cheekily, the familiar slight rasp of her voice hitting his ears and making him wonder if maybe his night wasn't over quite yet.

He closed the door behind him with his foot. "Didn't expect to see you in here, Nat."

"Why not? Am I not here enough?" she asked, raising an amused eyebrow. "Unless I'm mistaken, these sheets still smell like me."

He unzipped and dropped his leather jacket, tossing it on an armchair and then working on his shoes next. "Blame the staff. They should have washed them for me by now."

Natasha rolled her eyes, changing the subject. "Enjoy your night out?"

His expression darkened as he tossed off his boots. "Triad was there to intercept. Would have succeeded if I hadn't been there."

"Your men disappoint you again?"

"They're amateurs," he muttered, peeling off his shirt and tossing it on top of his jacket, leaving an unfairly tight black tank on his body. Natasha didn't miss the opportunity to let her eyes flicker over him, lingering along the tattoos visible on his arm and peeking under the top of his shirt. "Fucking useless amateurs."

Natasha chuckled under her breath as she gracefully slid off the bed, strolling over to the armchair to pick up Bucky's leather jacket and hang it for him. "You know, as much as you complain about their incompetence, I think you secretly love being needed so much. What would you do if you they didn't need you to save the day?"

He was in the bathroom now, washing his hands and making low scoffing noise in response to Natasha's theory. "I'm tired of wasting my time training them when they're gonna fall apart the minute someone aims a gun at them. Waste of time and effort."

"So you'd rather take their place? Be a one man army?" Natasha asked, closing his closet door.

He dried his hands and walked out of the bathroom, eyeing her as he muttered, "Might as well cut out the middle man." Then he approached her from behind, looming over her small and deceptively petite frame as his hands went to her waist. He leaned down and nuzzled his nose against her neck, murmuring, "You're wearing too many clothes, little spider."

"Am I?" she smirked, looking down and watching his hand as it drifted up and started to unbutton her shirt.

"I don't know why you bothered wearing anything at all," he replied, only to pause with mild confusion when she placed her hand over his and stilled his efforts.

"Well, because I don't sleep with married or engaged men, no matter how attractive they are."

His brows furrowed and he stared at Natasha as she turned around and looked up at him in a way that had him as confused as her nonsensical words did. "What?"

"I have news," she told him, fixing the buttons of her shirt. "News I'm not exactly supposed to know. But we both know I have my ways of getting the information that I want."

"What?" he repeated, starting to lose his patience.

"You're aware of the mess that Michael McAdams made with some of our accounts, yes?"

"Yes," Bucky replied. "I set the terms of the merger myself."

"Well... it turns out that Pierce wanted a little extra assurance that McAdams would stay loyal during the transition, and after. His redemption required a bit of collateral, so to speak."

"Meaning what, Natalia?" Bucky snapped.

"You're marrying his daughter," Natasha replied bluntly. "Pierce arranged it himself."

The word shock didn't quite cover what Bucky felt in that moment. In just a handful of seconds, his mind ran the gamut of everything from denial to disbelief to angry denial and finally just sheer anger. "Pierce... arranged a marriage for me?"

She nodded. "I looked her up. She's pretty. Degree in business management from NYU, and -"

"He can't do this," Bucky interrupted, his eyes getting a faraway and increasingly irate look about them. "I won't do it. I'm not marrying anyone."

"I'm not sure either of you are getting much of a choice," Natasha replied gently.

Bucky stared at her long and hard for a moment, as if she was the one to blame for all of this, and then he turned and trudged off to his bed. Then he sat down on the edge of it, staring blankly at the floor and wondering how the hell this could be happening.

Natasha sat next to him, putting a comforting hand on his knee. "It might not be so bad. Worst case scenario, she lives here for a few years and once everything settles down, you get a quiet divorce and go your separate ways."

Bucky shook his head, eyes still unfocused as he stared and let his mind race a mile a minute. But his thoughts kept going back to the same thing, the part of this that made it all the more cruel and unbelievable that Pierce would do this to him.

"He was there when... when I... when everything happened," Bucky muttered. "He knows. He..."

"He doesn't make decisions based on our personal well-being," Natasha replied. "Neither does Strucker. He already approved it, by the way."

Bucky looked at her sharply. "They both approved this without even talking to me first?"

"From what I understand," Natasha replied, "they plan on Skyping you from Moscow tomorrow."

Bucky drew in a hard breath and turned away from her. Alexander Pierce, the man who had once held Bucky's title of Captain and had taken Bucky in as a newly orphaned child and molded him into the man he was today, knew better than almost anyone else alive why Bucky would find an arranged marriage to be a fate worse than death. He had been there. He had seen all that Bucky had endured, all that he had faced and all that he had lost, and how it had changed him.

He realized he would have to wear a damn tux one day soon and marry this stranger in a sham of a wedding. They would have to pose for pictures and appear to all the world a happy, devoted couple. She would have to live there at the manor, and this girl, whoever she was, would probably hate it just as much as Bucky did.

And the worst part of it all was that Bucky, in what little of his heart remained in him after all the years and all that things that he'd done, would be dishonoring the memory that he held most precious.

"I won't do it," Bucky muttered again, almost as if he wanted to convince himself rather than Natasha.

"I wish you didn't have to," Natasha replied. "It's not right. But it's not really about right and wrong, is it?"

Though he hated it, he knew that she was right. Right and wrong were concepts for children, little more than fairy tales at this point in his life. Life was really about duty, vengeance and staying alive. He knew that better than anyone, and his work in the pursuit of those things is what had earned him the codename of the Winter Soldier. He did the work that others couldn't and wouldn't, and he never backed down or failed.

He wouldn't fail this time, either. He could protest and object and fight it until he was blue in the face, but in the end, he would always get the job done. He would always do what needed to be done, even if it tore him apart.

"What's her name?" Bucky asked through an emotionless scowl.

"Summer," Natasha replied.

He almost laughed. How ironic.

A knock to Summer's apartment door that night jarred her out of her intense late-evening Googling session. Throwing off the blanket draped over her lap and brushing off the cookie crumbs on her shirt - she liked to eat when she was stressed - she got to her feet and hurried to the door.

She opened it to find her mother standing on the other side, looking exasperated. "What the hell, Summer? I know you're freaked out, but you don't answer any of my calls or texts? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"No, I'm sorry," Summer groaned, standing aside to let Lizzie in. "I've just been constantly panicking and freaking out since I left Dad's office. And you know how I get when I'm freaked out."

"Yeah, you hide in your apartment and eat cookies," Lizzie sighed, looking her over after she closed the door.

"I made the cookies myself, at least," Summer shrugged. "You want some? They're jumbo M&M cookies."

Lizzie paused. "Fine. One cookie. And don't tell my trainer."

Summer rolled her eyes and then gestured to Lizzie's short, pale pink dress and white heels. "And this was what you threw on to come over to my apartment?"

"Well, I have an image to maintain, you know," Lizzie replied. "Besides, this is one of my more conservative dresses."

"I don't think I even own one that short," Summer remarked as she headed into her small, somewhat messy kitchen to retrieve a cookie.

"Oh yes you do," Lizzie told her. "That black one I bought you for your last birthday, which you haven't even worn once."

"I felt like my butt was gonna fall out when I tried it on!" Summer chuckled, returning to her mother with the cookie in hand.

"Honey, you'd have to have a butt for that to happen," Lizzie pointed out, taking the cookie from her. Then they both started laughing.

Once the blessedly lighthearted moment had passed, Lizzie took Summer's hand and asked her quietly, "Are you okay, sweetie?"

"No, not really," Summer laughed humorlessly. "I don't think I've ever been this scared in my life. I'm more scared than I was when I almost killed myself totaling my car freshman year of college, or... when I found out Tom Hiddleston was dating Taylor Swift."

Lizzie cringed. "That was a difficult time for all of us. Come on, sit down," she said, pulling Summer to the couch. "All jokes aside, I know this is absolutely horrible and I'm this close to killing your father and making it look like an accident."

Summer sighed and sat on the couch next to Lizzie, sinking into the cushions and laying her head on her shoulder. "I just... it's so weird. Like yesterday everything was normal, I was working for Dad and doing my job, and then today I find out he's involved with the mob - the Russian mob - and then that oh, surprise, now I'm gonna marry some big scary mob boss?! How does that even happen?"

"I know," Lizzie sighed, hugging her close. "I can hardly process it either."

"I mean, what if this guy's like 70? Or a psycho who's gonna kill me in my sleep, or... worse? And I don't even know his name!"

"I do," Lizzie told her. "That's actually one of the reasons why I came over. I got the guy's name out of your father, and I figured we could Google the hell out of him."

Summer's eyes widened and she suddenly jerked upright, reaching over Lizzie's lap for her laptop and exclaiming, "Holy crap! What is it?"

"Pretty generic, unfortunately for us," Lizzie replied once Summer's computer was settled in her lap. Lizzie noticed three open tabs containing the words "Russian mob" and "Bratva" in one combination or another on the screen, and it didn't surprise her that her daughter had been researching the hell out of that all night.

Summer pulled up a new Google tab and then looked at Lizzie expectantly. She then divulged, "James Barnes."

Summer wrinkled her nose. "That is generic. There's gonna be a million of those in this city." She paused. "And it sounds like an old man's name."

"It could be young or old," Lizzie nodded. "But look on the bright side. He could have a terrible last name, like... Wiener, or Higginbotham. Can you imagine? Summer Wiener. Summer Higginbotham. I don't know which is worse."

Summer's eyes widened as something rather obvious dawned on her. "I'll have to take his last name."

Lizzie gave a sympathetic smile and nodded again. "But at least it's a decent name. Summer Barnes doesn't sound too bad."

"It sounds wrong," Summer frowned, staring sightlessly at her computer screen. "Everything about this is wrong."

"I know. And if there was anything I could do to change this, you know I would."

Summer turned her eyes to Lizzie and forced herself to smile. "I know."

"Go on," Lizzie then prompted her, gesturing to the laptop. "Let's see what we can find."

It turned out that they could find exactly nothing about Summer's new "fiancé". They did find what they assumed to be the right one when they cross referenced his name with the public employee listings of Pierce Consolidated, and while it showed that there was indeed a James Barnes working there as the Director of Mergers and Acquisitions, zero information was listed about him. Not an age, a level of education, nothing. He was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost story.

Summer sighed and shut the computer. "Guess I get to just be unpleasantly surprised."

"You never know," Lizzie mused, waving a hand vaguely. "He might be under 50. He might even be hot."

Summer eyed her skeptically. "A mob boss? Young and hot? Highly doubtful. And even if he was, he's probably still a psycho. Because mob."

"... He might still treat you well, though."

Summer squinted so hard she could hardly see. "Seriously? Mob boss!"

"But they're supposed to be protective, right? The whole family thing? I don't know, honey. I'm grasping at straws here."

"I don't think there's a silver lining here, Mom," Summer shrugged, leaning her head back against the couch and suddenly feeling tired enough to sleep for a week. "I don't think there's a single bright side to any of this."

Lizzie sighed. "Probably not." Then she finally took a bite of the cookie that she still hadn't eaten yet, and as she chewed, her eyebrows shot up. "Wow, this is amazing. I taught you well."

"Yeah you did," Summer grinned. "Hey, maybe I can just make cookies every day and stuff my mystery mob husband's face full of them until he gets so fat his arteries explode."

"That would take too long," Lizzie shook her head. "And it's far more likely that your cookies would just make him fall in love with you. Which, if he's young and hot and not a complete psycho, that might not be the worst thing ever."

"That's not gonna happen," Summer insisted. "He's gonna end up being older than Dad."

Lizzie made a face. "Well... if he is, let's pray that all the Viagra in the world won't let him get it up."

Summer groaned and dropped her face into her hands, laughing but also wanting to start crying again for the millionth time that day. Lizzie threw an arm around her and hugged her to her side, and when Summer finally dropped her hands from her face, she said, "I can't believe this is my life now."

"Well, whatever happens next, we'll get through it together, okay?" Lizzie said, meaning her words with everything she had. "I'm gonna be with you every step of the way."

Summer gave Lizzie a watery smile and nodded, taking a deep breath. "Okay."

"Okay," Lizzie said, planting a kiss on the top of her head. "We'll just take it one day at a time." Summer nodded, and then Lizzie paused and added, "And if he ends up being as bad as you think, then we'll just fake our deaths and fly to the Bahamas and spend the rest of our lives drinking margaritas on the beach."

That made Summer laugh. "I can live with that. But no margaritas. I hate margaritas."

"More for me, then," Lizzie smiled. "I mean it though. Your life's not over. I won't let it be over."

Summer nodded again, letting those words comfort her even though she knew things were hardly that simple. She hoped that her life wasn't over and that she might get lucky enough to find a way out of this, as unlikely as that seemed. She couldn't see any possible positive outcome to all of this, every scenario her brain concocted being more horrifying than the last, but she refused to let herself give up hope. She was too young to give up, and she had too much life to live to let it slip through her fingers.

She'd find her way through this, one way or another. She was good at surviving. This, she told herself until she almost believed it, would be no different.