Page 15 of Mafia Bride
Zio and Zia look at each other with a few decades of shared fears and hopes.
“We’d better start cleaning up,” I say. “It was nice meeting you, Santino.”
I hold my hand up in a wave, but no one moves. The king does not cast his gaze upon me, because it’s fixed on my sweaty-templed uncle.
“Do not withhold your blessing,” Santino commands without a threat, just a routine authority.
“Of course,” Zio says. He looks at me with tears ready to fall from glassy eyes. “I know Violetta will be treated like a queen.”
“As she is,” Santino says. “So will she be known.”
Zia hugs me, crying with apologies, as I watch my uncle blink away tears.
“It is done.” Santino claps. He’s no longer just a shitty conversationalist who wants to take a walk, but a king laying down the law of the land. “The debt is paid.”
What. The. Fuck?
“Wait…what?”
“Violetta Moretti, daughter of Emilio Moretti, is now mine.”
“Stop!” I shout, shaking my aunt off me. “Hold the epic fuck up, and do not…” I point my finger at Santino. “…do not interrupt me again when I ask you. What. The. Holy. Fuck?”
He has the smirk of a devil who knows the exact position of my soul, how to extract it, and how tender it will be when he eats it.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll go to St. Paul’s, and we will be married.”
Now I know I’m in a terrible nightmare. Who says this? Who does this? Who talks so coldly about marrying someone they literally spent ten minutes talking to?
Am I still sleeping? Surely, surely, I’m passed out in the bread bowl in the kitchen, and dreaming/nightmaring this horrible mess…because of stress. That’s what Scarlett would tell me. She would tell me, per her dream book, this means I’m overstressed and need a vacation and if I can only wake up, then I can leave for Malta in a few days and let this whole thing become a figment of my imagination.
Except I can’t force myself awake.
Santino grasps my arm and leans down to me, hissing like a snake who doesn’t want anyone else to know when he’ll strike me. “You will be a queen, or your aunt and uncle will be removed as obstacles, and you’ll be replaced with your cousin, Elettra.”
My mouth opens, but I have no words.
I have fear for my family. I have the knowledge of what he can do. I have faith that he will do what he promised.
But I don’t have words until I hear Zia weeping loudly on the porch. She’d walked away from where we were on the sidewalk and up the steps. To her, I was already gone.
My shock and anger push past my fear, my knowledge, and my faith.
“Are you drunk?” I snap. “Zia gave you too much sambuca and this isn’tfunny.”
But all the women have come out now to witness this fiasco that I cannot wake up from. Elettra’s eyes are shellshock-wide, Zia Donna looks like she’d rather murder someone than let this man touch a hair on her daughter’s head, Nana Angelina looks weirdly satisfied, and my Zia Madeline, the mother with an asterisk, can’t contain herself.
Zio says something to her, but I can’t hear it because the entire world has dissolved into that sound you get when you get water in your ears at the beach. It’s loud but I can’t hear anything.
“She’s never been ours, my love.” Zio’s voice cuts through the ringing and tears.
My heart feels heavy enough to stop and frantic enough to break my rib cage.
“Okay, again,” I growl at Santino. “What the fuck? This isn’t a thing.”
“Thisisa thing, Violetta.Vera assai.” Santino motions to the open car door next to us.
What, like I’m being sold? Slavery is illegal in this country, I want to tell him. You can’t take me anywhere against my will, I want to scream. You can’t force me into a car, away from my family, without at least letting me pack my things and say goodbye, you fucking fucker.
