Page 28 of Mafia King
I get back in my chair.
“And make arrangements for Santino to collect if I die. No one must know. Until the day comes, let them think it was lost. You are each sworn to silence.”
“Capo—” Damiano starts.
“He has spoken.” Corragio gives Damiano a withering look, daring him to make a case for himself and suffer the consequences. “Accept or don’t.”
Damiano looks like a man torn between murder and death.
“Go,” I murmur with a kick to Damiano’s leg.
He doesn’t react. His mouth doesn’t move from the tight line he’s made to keep from saying one way or the other. His eyes go from side to side, reading an invisible text.
Corragio clears his throat.
“Kiss the ring,stronzo,” I hiss.
“No.” Without a word of respect or regret, Damiano walks out.
I may have killed before he did.
I may have always been quicker and more callous.
But that day, his courage put me to shame.
* * *
The rules are simple.
If you want to arrange a marriage for any reason, even love, you come for my blessing. If there are any conflicts, I refuse. Same as the last man who sat where I sit now. You asked him—except, no one did.
Vittorio Saponara was the capo of Secondo Vasto when I got here. He was a weakling with a team of soldiers stealing from right under his nose. He couldn’t keep his son from running books out of the back of his bar or even keep a Jamba Juice off his own block. It took me three weeks to figure out how to get rid of him, then ask Cosimo for his blessing to do it—which he didn’t give, because Saponara was his nephew—and another week to take care of business anyway.
I didn’t set the Jamba Juice on fire with Vittorio Saponara in the toilet so my uncle Marco could fly all this way to arrange my cousin’s marriage without my blessing.
I didn’t apologize to Cosimo for taking over Saponara’s business before he was even cold in the ground, then manage to not get killed by the seven guys Cosimo sent over that first year, so that his son—who he’s not even speaking to—could set up this deal right under my nose, a few weeks after I refused the first one.
Over dinner, when I take my attention away from Damiano’s flirting with Gia, I think about how this deal was set up without me knowing. Where’s the hole, and how will I plug it?
“Vino?” A carafe appears in my sight right after Violetta’s voice asks if I want wine.
I follow the arm up to my wife, who’s leaning over me with a sour puss.
The rules are simple.
Wives do the job of being wives. Her frown is what happens when they’re busy doing things that will get them into trouble.
“No.” I cover my glass and catch Damiano watching us.
He was telling a joke about a construction worker and a thirteen-cent prostitute a minute ago. Now he’s staring at my wife as though she’s the punchline. He should act like a guy caught ogling his sister and move his eyes somewhere else, hoping I didn’t notice, but he tips his glass at me.
You know who wouldn’t have let any of it get this far? The secret deals and unblessed matches?
Emilio Moretti. He could see through bricks in a church wall. Some said he had ancient magic powers, and he didn’t say otherwise, because if they knew it was as simple as not letting your guard down, they would have shot him sooner.
I had had plenty of reasons to decline to bless Damiano’s union with Gia. His refusal to tell her. The offer he made on Loretta’s patio and the consequences when I refused. But that threat to expose the truth about my wife to people who would destroy me to get to her had hung over the meeting.
She’d be used and killed, and I’d be too dead to protect her.
