Page 94 of Mafia Bride
With a resigned sigh, I slap it open. The red underpants are spread into a smile. I pluck out the sexy underthings and stuff them in my bag. When I close the drawer, I finally feel finished.
By the time I clatter down the stairs with my suitcase smacking behind, Santino is coming down the opposite staircase.
“Where are we going?” I’m like a kid who’s finally getting a pony for her birthday.
“You’re going to ruin the surprise.” He puts his phone in his pocket. “Come.”
He seems so satisfied with my change in behavior, my delight, that I will play along to get to do something even slightly fun. So I don’t ruin the surprise. I let Armando take my suitcase and follow Santino to his limo, so excited I’ll come, sit, heel, and beg like he tells me to.
Traveling with a mafia boss, I quickly learn, is a different set of travel. Forget pushing through the crowds at an airport, being patted down by TSA, cramming into a seat away from the window. We pull up to a gate at a tiny, private terminal, show ID, and drive right onto the tarmac, next to a private jet with lights already blinking against the dark night.
Seriously.
I’m in such a state of awe when I see it, when I climb the stairs, and especially when I get inside, that I can barely speak. Soft leather seats. Warm lighting. Wood paneling. Crystal and brass. It’s less a plane and more a tube-shaped luxury hotel room.
A flight attendant with curly hair that’s half gray, half black shows us our seats. Her name’s Mellie and I love her already. Santino lets me have the window as if he knows that’s my preference.
Once we’re off the ground and steady, Santino asks Mellie for something to eat. She brings cheese on a silver tray and prosecco in sleek crystal flutes.
From across the table, Santino holds up his glass.
“To leaving worry behind us.”
I hold mine up, but snap it back before the clink.
“Where are we going?”
He leans back and tips his glass to his lips, telling me that’s the only thing he’s opening them for without even a word.
Mirroring, I lean back and pour the entire glass down my throat, then put it down.
He laughs, the charming fucker.
Mellie pours me more and I take the next glass more slowly, but I do take it all.
Between the prosecco and the emotional roller coaster of a day, I fall asleep as we break the clouds, curled up under an impossibly soft blanket in a chair that converts into an even more impossibly comfortable bed.
My last waking thought is, “Well, they do call him the king.”
One minute I’m awake, the next is darkness of hard sleep, then suddenly there’s a fog of orange light under my eyelids as my body jolts then rocks.
“Violetta,” Santino murmurs in my ear. “We have arrived. Welcome to Roma.”
Rome? I bolt upright and bump my head into his. He laughs and takes my hand.
“Come. We have much more to travel.”
In the private terminal, Santino greets the men waiting for us on the tarmac and collects a set of keys to a waiting convertible. I have no idea who the men are or how he managed to arrange all this, and I don’t care.
I haven’t been back to Italy in the years since I was taken away, and my life’s blood begins to thrumhome home home home.
The men load our bags in the convertible while Santino talks to them. I stay a healthy distance away because, honestly, I don’t trust any of them. The last time I was surrounded by strange men in black suits things went very poorly.
“Come.” Santino only knows this command tonight, it seems, but he looks like an excited puppy as he says it. “We have to drive two more hours.”
I stare at him, feeling jet-lagged under the sun’s glare. Two more hours sitting? Two hours in a car with just Santino?
I hope he’s a good road trip buddy, but can’t picture him playing the license plate game, like I used to with Rosetta and Zia while Zio drove us to the lake.
