Page 3 of Mafia Bride
But he’s standing over my zio, the strongest man I know, who’s sobbing on the floor underneath the heat of this man who’s put his hand up to block me. I’m too terrified to walk into the room, and too angry to keep my mouth shut.
“What are you—?”
Santino closes the door with the flick of his powerful wrist. The lock snaps shut from the inside.
This is not okay. Zia Madeline has to know this is going on. Where the hell is she?
Not in the kitchen. Not in the bedroom. A dark cloud hovers over my heart and fear pricks at my skin.
This doesn’t feel right.
I find her in the basement, sorting piles of laundry. She hums an old song, one that she says her mother used to sing to her back home.
“You said you were going to be late,” Zia snaps like an accusation, crow’s feet tugging on her eyes that somehow make her more beautiful than the old photos of her around the living room. Or the one of her sunbathing in Zio’s office. “How was your test?”
“Fine.” I join her at the big farm table, the one Zio made for her years ago, with his own hands. “What’s going on with Zio and that man?”
I don’t utter his name aloud for fear of invoking the devil.
“Nothing you need to worry about.” She cups my face gently, smelling of basil and bleach.
Her gentle words warm the iciest places inside me and temporarily extinguish all the other budding questions. She obviously doesn’t want to talk about it. Prying would be the worst thing to do. Even if I wanted to.
The dryer sounds and I grab a basket to unload it. We fall into our usual routine of laundry, dancing around the basement.
“What did Scarlett say about going to Malta with you?”
“She said, ‘next year,’ but I’m not going next year, and she was just being nice anyway.”
“If I were younger, I’d grab my passport and tour with you,patatina. But your uncle needs me.” Zia sighs at the incapacities of men and piles the clothes in a wicker basket.
My life often feels like it’s split into two pieces: one in the modern world, at school with my friends and cell phones and technology everything, and one in the old world, where we wear full skirts and dance in circles until we’re dizzy to songs from hundreds of years ago. Where the women do the laundry and the men smoke pipes and everyone is offended if you eat out at a restaurant because…don’t you know Zia’s osso buco is better than anything you can find in some half-rate commercial kitchen?
So I do chores with her, getting lost in the routines that define our lives into the orderly and disorderly. I don’t forget about Santino upstairs. I feel his presence when the floor above creaks and the office door opens and shuts, but I fold as if I’m hell-bent on controlling what’s in my grasp, and no more.
Upstairs, the front door closes.
We can pretend we have control, but something far outside our power is about to shatter the illusion. Every thought in my brain turns away from distraction and toward the inevitable unknown.
“Was that…” I find I can’t say the name. “Who was in the office with Zio? Was it the one they call the king.”
She frowns slightly. “How would you know that,patatina?”
“I’ve seen him before.”
“You’ve seen lots of people, Violetta.” Zia waves me off and picks up an empty basket. “Would you mind getting the clothes from the dryer?”
I swallow the lump of relentless questions and snap open the dryer. That’s twice she’s changed the subject. Third time’s a charm, but I have to be careful about when I ask. The Moretti family thrives on secrecy and respecting boundaries.
We sort through colors and towels. Zia hums a tune from the old country. She does it when she wants to get her mind off things. I join in with the parts I remember. It’s funny the things the brain remembers. Songs I haven’t heard since I was a child come rushing back in earnest, notes and melodies rolling off my tongue like my own name.
But there’s a dark spot filling me up, one fueled by terror and anxiety. Here we are, folding laundry and singing old songs, when Zio—a man so allergic to showing weakness he didn’t shed a single tear when he almost cut off his thumb—was just sobbing on the floor upstairs with a terrifyingly powerful man towering over him.
I clear my throat carefully. “Zia. I’m worried about Zio.”
Zia stops humming and lets out a slow, heavy sigh. She folds another towel into a neat rectangle with sharp corners before finally speaking. “He’s taking care of men’s business.”
“What does that mean?”
