Page 31 of Mafia Bride
I will live and I will be free.
“Your door is unlocked.” Santino sounds like he’s teetering on an edge. To what, I don’t know, but I can only assume what isn’t good for him will work for me. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he says before leaving a plate full of leftovers behind.
Celia doesn’t like leftovers.
I might need Celia, and I definitely need my strength.
I breathe. I eat. I drink.
I can’t leave yet. I haven’t figured out what to do about my family, how to keep them safe. The Embassy isn’t safe but aren’t we still on American soil? There are laws in this country. I’ve lived here almost my whole life so that has to count for something.
After draining the last of the water, I stand and make my way upstairs, taking a circuitous route through the kitchen. The glass walls show the quickly dimming sky of my wedding day. The day I lost everything.
I can see where his guards dot the exterior of the house, but they can also see me.
Is escape possible?
I can use one of the windows in the kitchen, one of the few rooms with a window that opens on the first floor, which has to be some sort of fire hazard. There are thick bushes beneath the windows to cushion and quiet my exit, provide some cover.
I’m slight enough to get through the shadows, run past the men from the wedding with their guns and big shoes. Run past the cars lined out front like Santino is hosting his own car show.
But then...what? I still don’t know where I am and there’s no cover in the streets. I don’t have my phone, I don’t have any money, and I can’t go back home because that’s where this all started.
It’s not a sweet, impossible daydream. Escape is more than a six-letter word. It’s a plan, one I can’t put together until I put some cash together. Until I know exactly where the men are, where each fugly piece of furniture is down to the precise inch.
And I’ll need some sort of gun, and ammo, to protect my family. Something that gives me power all my own. Something to assassinate a king.
It’s not hopeless. I can figure it out. I just need patience and discipline.
The two things my zio says I was never born with.
No time to learn like the present.
9
VIOLETTA
Sun filters through the windows and blasts hot, bright light across the carpet. I fell asleep in my corner, but at some point in the night I must have crawled onto the bed. At least I had the presence of mind to stay on top of the covers.
King Assface said if I obey him, I’ll get things. Like school and a job. Those might be the first steps to getting out of this.
Zia always told me men handled the cruel things of the world, but she also always told me a home is built by a woman. Men work with men but create homes with women because they can’t do it themselves.
All I have to do is open my eyes to where it makes him weak.
If I lull him a little as a subservient, obedient woman who accepts forced marriage as part of the deal, maybe I can work him over.
Zia Donna did say Elettra would turn into a whore for being with him, but a wife is different than a whore.
Why did he want a wife so badly? And why me?
If I can just figure out what makes the man tick...
What makes him desire.
What makes him come.
My freshman semester at St. John’s, Tommy Canova felt me up in the back of his Camaro, and that was as close as I ever got. Sometimes I get a rush thinking about it, but he ditched me for Nancy Roleto from Bio 103. He shrugged when I found out. Said she was more agreeable. But Santino is the king, and no one disagrees.
