Page 11 of Mafia Bride
I try to keep my body as far away from his as possible, but our skin is practically magnetized. I can’t breathe.
“Grazie.” The word rolls from his lips like thunder from a cloud.
My nipples harden and press against my blouse, tingles explode across my skin. It’s the volcano choosing another day to erupt yet promising to explode for him and only him—when and only when he chooses.
I hurry back to the kitchen—my skin burning in shame and lust.
“Well?” Elettra grabs my arm after clearing another round of dishes. “What are they saying?”
“Boring things.” I shrug, secretly thrilled to be playing informant, but also disappointed there was nothing more exciting to relay. “Family chatter that doesn’t matter. Someone almost lost their daughter’s wedding savings playing cards. That sort of thing.”
Elettra pouts. “I like it when they talk about exciting things. We never get to be involved. But one day I want to be like my brother, in the thick of it all…”
“You do not,” Zia Donna snaps. She’s more tempered than earlier, but there is still venom in that stare. “Get the espresso cups. Go.”
“Can’t I just go out there once?” Elettra pleads. “I’ve been doing all the work, too. Let me see them, just once, Ma?”
“Here.” Zia thrusts a second bottle of sambuca into her hands and passes me the coffee pot. “Go get those brazen men their coffee.”
The way she says “men” forces her entire face to curl up, like a soured lemon.
Conversations in the dining room prove to Elettra that there’s no excitement here. No danger. Just boring people talking about boring things. An Italian circus, just for them to joke about minutiae. I try to catch Elettra’s gaze to tell her, “I told you so,” but then a single word from the man at the head of the table stops me dead.
“Violetta.”
Everything stops. Zia and Elettra stop pouring as if his voice turned them into statues. I’m at the opposite end of the table from Santino, pot of coffee frozen mid-air, but the way he stares at me, across so many other men, makes me feel naked, exposed. Vulnerable as a gazelle too young to run with the herd when the lion begins his chase.
The way they all look tells me my name wasn’t simply mentioned in passing. It was a command to pay attention. A command to answer. A command that came straight from the king.
“Yes?” The word barely unsticks from my throat.
“You will take a walk with me.”
“Capo,” Zio interjects, tilting his head as if he’s starting an argument he can’t afford to lose. “I was thinking—”
“Hush, Guglielmo.” Santino stands, silencing the entire room with a single movement. How tall is this king? Six-two? Three? A thousand feet, scraping the night sky as he comes to me?
“I could sell the business.” Zio presses on. “Maybe some property I’ve kept. This house.”
If I wasn’t confused before, I am now.
As far as I know, Zio’s business runs in the black. He’s not rich, but I never thought he’d be in so much debt he’d have to trade his property.
My Z’s don’t have children of their own, so all the earlier talk of daughters paying debts was irrelevant, but now Zio’s trying to throw real estate at Re Santino and this all makes no sense.
Santino opens his gilded fist and holds his hand out to me.
My muscles collapse, and this man my body cannot ignore pins me upright with nothing more than his gaze. My body is torn between fight and flight, pleasure and pain, fear and thrill. A heavy veil of danger floats above, covering some greater truth, and I’m not sure if I want to see behind it.
One thing is for sure.
There’s a debt owed him, and I have no idea how it’s going to be repaid.
“Come, Violetta,” he says. “Walk with me.”
As if in a trance, I let the lion lure me from my aunt and uncle’s house.
4
