Page 80 of Mafia Bride
“If I behave.” This is the archaic mindset of my family that I never thought applied to me. Maybe I’m too American for all of them. “What if I don’t?”
“You behave for your zio and zia.” He shrugs. “For the law. For your school. Why not me?”
My turn to shrug, because he didn’t threaten a punishment, nor did he intimate that I won’t be safe. Instead he turned it back around to a question of why I can’t see him as having the same authority as the written law of the land. I have no good answer for that—at least, none he’ll accept. Because Santino is old world and I am new. Because he is classic and I’m modern.
He sits on the lounger next to me, only feet apart so I can almost feel the dampness still resting on his skin. He leans in to give me his complete attention.
“Why not?” he repeats. “You know I won’t ask you to do anything that will cause harm.”
Nothing else in this world matters. Just our conversation. Just me. Not his doll in a box. Not the guns he carries. Not the men a finger-snap away. Only me.
I don’t think there is anything sexier in this moment.
“I’ll try.”
He switches back to English.
“Good.” He smiles at me and it breaks my heart how beautiful it is when he does. “What do you want for breakfast?”
“Everything.” I can’t stop the groan from escaping my lips. “I’m starving.”
“Answer me inItaliano.”
I know I once spoke Italian as fluently as any five-year-old growing up in Naples. I know I used to think, count, and dream in Italian. But moving to America, where my zia and zio lived for most of their lives, squashed that part of my life. School didn’t teach Italian. After years of disuse, I retained enough to understand most of it, as long as it isn’t spoken too quickly.
Being around Santino has helped, but speaking it is still something completely different. Speaking rusty Italian around fluent speakers is horrifying. Like taking a verbal test in front of the whole class over a subject I never studied for.
He looks to me, expecting obedience. If I do what he asks, I gain more freedom. It’s not an arrangement I like, but it’s one I understand.
“Um.” I concentrate on the pool and not the beautiful face of a traditional Italian boy. Man. Whatever. “Patate. Pancetta. Espresso.” I pause, reaching back for the word I can’t seem to locate. “Uova?”
“No.” His disappointment floods me. “Use a whole sentence. Say ‘I want’ first. Lists are for children.”
But I’d have to conjugate the verb and I just can’t…
“You know I don’t speak Italian.”
“You did speak Italian.”
“More than a decade ago. I’m just an American girl now, remember?” I flop back in the lounger, frustrated. With whom, I’m not entirely sure. “Were those words wrong?”
“They were correct.” He almost sounds amused. “Now, try again. I’d like...”
“Voglio pancetta—”
“Try again.”
I frown at him. “But I—”
“You were close. Try again.”
He sounds unendingly patient. This man is an enigma of infinite possibilities. Dresses me in the finest, seduces me with violence, threatens my family, encourages me to attend school and speak my mother tongue.
But if he’s going to make me conjugate verbs every time I need to eat, I’m going to starve.
“Vuole della pancetta?”
“Bene.” He nods approvingly and it suddenly feels like maybe, just maybe, I can do this. “Put it together.”
