Page 100 of Mafia Bride
“No! Please!” Moped Guy starts screaming.
Big Man looks up and down the street, then to the pretty lady selling fruit before he strides over.
I’m horrified, haunted with flashbacks of the day I was chased down, but also very weirdly turned on. His whole body throbs in the sunlight as he exerts his power and I am apparently a very broken woman.
“Santino,” I say. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“Stay there,Forzetta.”
Santino slides away, but Moped Guy doesn’t have a chance to get away. Big Man’s done this before. When he has room, he replaces Santino’s knee to the chest with his own and—per my husband’s instruction, puts the other knee on the wrist that grabbed my ass. The whole thing would look sexual if it wasn’t for the look of terror on Moped Guy’s face.
Without taking too long to think about it, Santino brings his bootheel down on the offending hand, smashing it with a crunch followed by high-pitched screams.
“Grazie,” Santino says to Big Man, holding out his hand to help him up, then takes out his wallet. “What’s your name?”
“Salvatore.”
Moped Guy scurries away, crying. He picks up his moped with his good hand.
“You know Cosimo?” Santino asks Big Man as the moped zips away as if its driver is terrified.
“Cosimo Orolio?”
“Si.”
“Everybody knows Cosimo.”
Santino slips a few Euro notes out of his wallet and hands them to the guy who helped him.
“If you need some work instead of standing in the street, watching your woman”—he flicks his hand over to the fruit lady, who’s rearranging pears as if nothing happened—“you tell him Santino sent you. I vouch.”
I’m clutching a paper bag of oranges for dear life as they shake hands, and finally, Santino comes back to me.
“Come.” Santino gently taps my shoulder to turn me away from the mess. The fruit lady’s already making another sale. He pinches a cigarette from a tight pack, then gets a metal lighter from the same pocket.
“How’s your ass?” he asks, lighting up.
“Your ass is fine.”
Lightning fast, he pushes me against a wall and kisses me. He kisses me so hard my breath flees and my head spins. He kisses me like I am a treasure he’s spent weeks digging for. He tastes like burning tobacco and power, and when he pulls away I am not weaker, but softer, still holding a paper bag of oranges.
My breasts heave for breath as he looks down at me with approval, taking a pull on his smoke as if he’s happy with the way he’s brought the blood to my lips.
He hasn’t smoked in days. He always smokes at such weird times. Day. Night. Not at all.
But now he’s so relaxed. Like a man rolling off a woman after great sex, and the cigarette was punctuation. But of what? If not sex, what had happened right before?
“Don’t you think you were a little harsh on that guy?”
“Was I?” With a smirk, he wedges the lit cigarette between his lips and takes the oranges, jerking his head to let me know he is walking now, and I am to follow.
My body obeys without thinking, and we walk into the tiny piazza. His hands are big enough to peel one orange while still holding the other.
“I think you broke his hand.”
“He’s lucky I didn’t chop it off.”
Santino drags on the cigarette, exhaling without removing it from his lips, and sits on the edge of the stone fountain.
