Page 30 of Mafia Bride
His anger wakes me up like an animal who heard a sound in the night. Defensive, protective, afraid for its life and ready to flee.
I thought I was afraid of him before. He’s hurt me once, he’s issued threats more than once. But to have him yell is a whole new level of hell. It’s more than thunder. It’s more than lightning. He doesn’t act like a king.
He acts like a god. A vengeful, wrathful god.
I don’t want his sympathy. I don’t want his kindness. I don’t want his niceties. I won’t manipulate him so he throws me a bone and feigns concern.
“These are the rules,” he says. “Uno. You do as I say. You go where I take you. In public, you smile like a good wife.Due. You do not speak to another man without me present.Tre. Your zio and zia? Their lives are forfeit if you run. You understand? If you run, it’s because they didn’t teach you right. They’ll be the ones to pay.”
He is firm. He is godlike—holding out a finger for each rule like a war talisman.
My own voice is clear in my mind, even if my mouth cannot speak through the spit of sorrow.
It says that I have rules, too.
One: Santino will never have my body.
Two: Santino will never have my mind.
Three: Santino will never have my soul.
Four: I will never, ever cry in front of him again. I will never shed another tear so long as I am near this man.
“If I am happy,” Santino says, putting his fingers away. “You go back to school in the fall.”
“Ifyou’rehappy?” I manage to say. “What about me?”
He ignores the question, and adds a stick to the carrot. “If I’m not happy, you will be punished.”
He stresses that last word—punished—with extra vigor.
“How?” I challenge.
“You don’t want to find out.” His presence feels like a massive black cloud. Like a tornado. Like an evil genie. Maybe I can find his lamp and send him back to hell, where he belongs. “God willing, I’ll only have to do it once before you learn.”
“Do you usually bring God into your threats?”
“He is the original threat maker, Violetta.”
“Think you’re God, then?”
He bares his teeth a little. My attitude gets under his skin. I don’t think he has much tolerance for this behavior. I think anyone who talks to him like this gets the chance to do it once and never again.
“They call me Re Santino.”
“I know what they call you.”
“Then maybe you should pay attention.”
Oh, I’ll pay attention. I’ll learn all right.
I’m going to learn everything and get the fuck out of here. Clean. With Zio, and Zia, and even Elettra safe from this monster.
Aren’t I Emilio Moretti’s daughter?
Am I not as decent? As hard-working? He deserved so much more than life handed him, and so do I.
It won’t end for me the way it did for him and my mother.
