Page 99 of Mafia Bride
Paola literally slaps him in the back of the head, and they laugh.
27
VIOLETTA
An hour later, we’re back on the street. The sun has crept closer to the center of the sky, the shadows have backed off, and the crowd’s gotten thicker.
“You didn’t tell me I was meeting your family!” I scold Santino after Paola’s done kissing us goodbye and has closed the door.
“You would have fretted over it.” He shrugs. “It was better this way.”
“I do notfret.”
He gives me a look that wonders if I’m lying to myself or just him, but his attention is distracted by a fruit cart that pulls into the street. He transforms into an entirely too tall boy.
“Oranges?”
Nice for him to ask, but he’s already walking toward the cart.
“I’d love some.” I answer honestly, knowing I’d say yes even if I didn’t want any. His behavior in his zia’s home clearly has my insides twisted.
He asks the pretty lady selling the fruit a few questions, then looks to me.
“You like tarocco?”
I remember blood oranges from my earliest years. When I went to my father’s grocery store, I used to steal them and eat them under the counter. I always forgot to pick up the peels, so I always got caught eating the inventory.
Daddy never got mad, and now I know why. He was never really in the grocery store business.
“I love them.”
Santino buys a bag and hands them to me. As he turns to get change from the vendor, a guy on a moped zips close, holds out his arm, and slaps my ass. Santino must have seen them coming, because a split second before he could continue driving away, he yanks the guy off the moped, throws him onto the cobblestone, and pulls him up by the collar like a doll.
“Did you just slap my ass?”
“No!” Moped Guy struggles to get up, but Santino’s hold is firm. “No!”
“Are you sure?”
Santino slaps him in the face, and I’m frozen with the ease of the violence.
“I’m not gay!” Even in this position, the guy is so offended at the implication he makes a damning admission, pointing at me. “I grabbed hers!”
“Her ass?”
“Yeah. Hers.”
Crowds clear out around us, like this is business as usual and they have no desire to get involved.
“With which hand?”
Incredulous, Moped Guy holds up his right hand. Santino throws him to the ground and drops hard, putting his knee on the guy’s chest and his hand on his throat.
“That’smyass,” Santino says. “Mine.”
Moped Guy flails but it’s useless.
“This hand has to go.” He points to a big man who’s been leaning on the wall. “You. One hundred euro to hold him down.”
