Page 37 of Mafia Bride
“A war?” I ask.
“Do you want to talk to your zio?”
Is she saying they’d protect me? That if this man harmed me, they would harm him? Zio Guglielmo from on his knees and Zia Madeline from the kitchen? Impossible.
They have no power over this man.
“Is he there, my zio?”
“Violetta!” He is loud, jolly. Like I remember him. Like I want to remember him always. “How is the house? Is it beautiful?”
“It’s cold.”
“Turn on the heat.”
Tears slide down my cheeks like rain on a windshield. This is not the phone call I hoped for. I was mad before but now I want them to rescue me. “Please save me, Zio. Please. Please come take me home.”
“I...” There’s a long pause. I can hear some sniffling. Is he crying? “Violetta, my sweet girl, you must see by now that is impossible. If we had the power to take you home, we would have had the power to keep you here.”
“But—”
“I love you so much,principessa. Never forget that. Never doubt that. I love you like you are my own and always have.”
“Zio,” I beg. I plead. I cry. There is no answer.
“Please don’t hate us,” Zia begs, back on the phone. “Please. We love you so much, Violetta.”
“Why? Why did you let him take me?” My voice cracks in the dark closet. I can’t keep it together. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“We wanted to. We did, Violetta. But it was the only way to keep you safe.”
“Safe? From what? Safe from him?”
“Violetta. You are Emilio Moretti’s daughter. Never forget that.”
Anger swells in me, and my tears turn hotter. My blood thrums like lava. With a deadly calm, I say, “Emilio Moretti is dead. They shot him in the street before I had a chance to remember.”
All of this talk about my father. A simple grocer who I hardly remember. A man who never raised me. What misgivings he had in life has nothing to do with me. Not now, not ever.
Except I knew, deep down I knew, that this is not how things work in our family. In the old world. In Napoli, and in the places that are not Napoli but still hold our mobsters.
This is exactly how things work and it enrages me.
“They’ll shoot you, too,tesoro. We hoped it would all go away. We wanted everything for you. Freedom. A life of your own. Everything you could dream of. But now, you have to let him give it to you.”
“I’ll get it myself.”
I hang up before Zia can tell me what she always does—that a woman’s life is hard and out of her control. That men rule the world and we are merely visitors in it. It’s the same story I’ve always been told, ever since Napoli and the first time the men didn’t allow the women to eat with them.
Outdated, archaic bullshit.
But why, then, did they let me go to school? Why buy me a ticket abroad, with a train pass and a credit card with a high limit? Why let me live under the dream that my life was mine, that I was going to be the exception to the rule governing the families?
I don’t want to hear that my life is only coming to me through the permission of the man who forced my hand in marriage. I don’t want to hear that my life will be the same as theirs—baking bread in a kitchen while men drink wine in the dining room.
My zia didn’t even adhere to these rules most of the time, only when the mob was involved. Only when old families came barreling down the door. They set me up for a life of freedom my entire life.
I wipe away the tears and set my jaw. A woman’s life may be hard, but I’m going to take control. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but I will own my body and my will again.
