Page 101 of Mafia King
I follow her into the kitchen as the women clear the tables. Children weave between us, sneaking pastries and chasing Armando, who shoots me a few cryptic glances. I grab Violetta’s arm and pull her by the pantry.
She tries to play coy and runs a finger down my chest. “I know you’re feeling frisky right now, but there’s an entire house full of people who want to play cards.”
I grab her hand and pin it above her on the wall. “You are so fucking sexy.”
“Make him an offer, Santino.” The smirk leaves her face and is replaced by something fierce and earnest. “Go be a kinganda saint.”
“And I’ll bring the devil to bed tonight.”
Before I can kiss her, she slips past me, back out into the kitchen. Tavie runs in, breathless.
“Is it true?” he asks, pushing through the women to get to me.
Violetta returns to the dirty dishes as if nothing has happened. She’s ruthless.
“Say it’s true!” Tavie shakes me from my brief stupor.
“Tavie,” I warn, pulling him into a quieter corner.
“It has to be true, because I’ll kill him if he touches my sister. I swear it on my mother’s life.”
“Ma smettila!” I shush him. “Never, ever swear like that unless you intend to kill your mother.”
“I swear it.” The boy points his chin up and scowls. The quiet cousin, who long kept to himself and never made waves, grows before my eyes into the man we joked he wasn’t. “On my mother’s life, I swear it.”
“Go sit down, Tavie.” I lay a heavy hand on his shoulder. This is not his fight. “Go.”
“Zio?” My niece, Lucia, stands behind me with her cousin’s baby on her hip, too young to know when she should be silent. “Is it true, Santi? Are you going to do it?”
All the women stare at me expectantly. No one hushes the girl or scolds her for asking such questions. They want to know. This affects them, and it’s their business.
“These are matters for the men,” I say, then leave out the back before I can see their reaction. As I slide the glass closed behind me, muffled sounds of kitchen life resume.
Outside, the men gather for a quick smoke before the cards are dealt. Time to act as though I’m putting out a fire my wife started without me.
As soon as I arrive, every man nods in respect before he puts out his smoke and silently goes back inside in a great exodus.
Every man, that is, except Marco.
He squares off and stares at me, blowing a line of cigar-reek from the side of his mouth, away from my face. I pull a single cigarette from the pack in my pocket and pack it along the box. Nothing is said as I reach for the steel Zippo in my breast pocket, or when it clacks as I open it and we breathe the smack of fresh kerosene. Not a word is said until it’s all back home inside my jacket and I exhale.
“You may speak,” I say the second time I inhale.
“You understand,” he says with just enough respect to counter his own insult at being bailed out like a child, “I cannot go home with this hanging over my head.” He rolls his cigar between wet lips, then puffs. “The contracts are signed. The business is done. Cosimo’s blessed it. Damiano wants the marriage and he is paying the debts. There’s no need for you to stick your nose in it. All due respect, of course.”
“Stick my nose in it?” I shrug as if that’s an interesting way to put it that doesn’t deserve a more violent response.
“With all due respect.”
“When you sent Gia—your daughter—to America, you asked me to watch over her. You put her well-being in my care. And I took that seriously. I’ve kept her away from dishonorable men and risky activities. I gave her a job to keep an eye on her for you. Here, in America, she is my responsibility because you asked for her to be. So don’t you come here now and tell me it’s not my business.”
“After all I’ve done for you,” he sneers. “This is how you treat me?”
I snap his fucking cigar out of his mouth and point the hot side at his face. “All you did was ignore me. You treated me like shit on your shoe because I didn’t come out of your balls. You called me the little bastard of the house and wouldn’t give me three euro for a fucking train to visit my mother. And I still would have paid your debt from the beginning.”
“I don’t want your money,” he says from the bottom of his guts. “I’m just going to pay the way I want. It’s my prerogative.”
Marco’s got a little laugh to his tone that makes me want to break every bone in his body. It’s a chuckle ofwe’re all men here, and a wink of,così stanno lecose—it is what it is. What are you going to do?
