Page 60 of Mafia Bride
“What the fuck just happened?” I manage to ask without throwing up—a feat I’m immensely proud of.
“Watch your mouth,Forzetta.”
Forzetta?Forzameans power. I know that much. But Forzetta sounds like a cute nonsense word paired with an infantilizing order.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I made it up to say strength in a small package.”
“No, I mean watch my mouth?” I spit out a bitter, angry laugh. “Two men just forced me into a car and tried to drive away with me. And you want me to watch my mouth?”
He doesn’t say anything as I fume and laugh and mutter, “Un-fucking-believable” fifteen times, like a crazy person…andDio, do I ever feel like a crazy person.
“Who were those guys?” I ask, no, demand to know. “What did they want? How can you just drive off without calling the police?” Never mind that I absolutely did not want to call the police. Half of them are probably on his payroll. That’s not the point.
Actually, it is.
If he has guys on the inside, he could call and have them clean up his mess. Instead, he just left it bleeding onto the streets. He didn’t care about who saw. He didn’t care what happened. He didn’t even seem to mind that he was shot at.
Santino exhales a plume of smoke. “That’s a lot of questions,” he says as I cough and swat away the smoke. “Which first?”
This man, this animal, literally turns on his blinker. Like Citizen of the Year.
I sneer at him but mull over his question. He seldom offers information and I need every answer I can get. I should probably ask him to take me to a hospital first, but I already know how that would go.
“The one I asked first. What thefuckjust happened?”
We slow to a stop at a red light. He turns around to look me up and down, and I can see the dislike curling in his scraped lips. Oh, yes, King Santino, I fucking saidfuckagain.
He mulls something over, more visibly than I recall seeing before, and whatever it is, he decides to let it go.
“You’re my wife.” He turns around.
What, no bait for all my fucks? That was what he decided to let go?
“That makes you a target,” he continues, smoking his cigarette low in his seat like a man waiting for the light to change. “Makes you valuable to people who want what’s mine.”
Everything, literally everything, he just said makes me angry. Everything it implies, but won’t state. All the things that are over my head, but I know exist. All of his business is apparently now in my lap and I never, not ever, asked for this shit.
Me, the girl whose parents were gunned down in the street. Me, the girl whose older sister couldn’t survive to see me into adulthood.
This is the absolutely antithesis of the life I wanted to live.
“What people?” I ask more softly because rage is exhausting. “Who were they?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
Enraged, I scrape the brain matter from my leg and throw it at him. It sticks to his jacket. He just plucks it off and tosses it out the window as though it’s a snot he flicked in the wrong direction. As though brain matter on his expensive Italian suit was another day in the office.
“I’m covered in blood and brain. You think I don’t need to know what the fuck is going on?”
His jaw sets, annoyance twitching through the taut muscle. He’s so fucking beautiful in conflict I almost forget I want him to hate me enough to set me free because I’m not worth the risk.
“No. You do not need to know.” He takes a long pause and stares me down in the mirror again. “For your protection.”
“Because I’m so safe now?” I had enough breath to say the rest in one long sentence. “I have blood and bruises and cuts and scrapes and probably a nice concussion because this is the safest I’ve ever been—thank God KingFuckingSantino is here!”
“Your mouth is going to get you in trouble.”
