Page 52 of Mafia King
That snaps me out of it. “Over what? Gia? She’s just a girl.”
“She’s my cousin.”
“Now you realize this?”
“I don’t want to tell you ugly things. I want to protect you. But you’re hurting yourself, and this, I cannot stand.” He shuts the engine but doesn’t get out. Instead, he seems to settle deeper into his seat. “Do you remember when we were on the other side? And I broke the littlestronzo’s hand that touched you?”
By the orange stand, a guy on a moped had grabbed my ass. Santino brought him down like a cat pulling a bird from the sky.
“I do.”
“What else do you remember?” he asks.
I’m pretty sure he’s not asking me to enumerate all the ways I was turned on. “You smashed his hand under your heel. Then you let him go.”
He nods to me to continue, so I rummage through the loose emotional trash I’ve accumulated in the last half an hour to find the scene in the smell of fruit and engine exhaust, the light of the Mediterranean, and the sound of a moped gunning away.
“There was a guy you gave money. For holding him down. And you said some blah blah blah—when you speak Italian that fast, I lose stuff. Something about a job. And a guy everyone knows.”
He nods, satisfied. “Cosimo Orolio.”
“Right!” I snap my fingers when the name rings a bell.
“I committed an act of vengeance on his territory. This is a crime.”
“You’re not in trouble for that, are you?”
“No.” Hetsks. “I would have been if I hadn’t sent word back with a tribute. The man I gave the money to? He understood that.”
“How do you know he delivered it?”
“We left Napoli with our lives.”
At first, I can’t tell why he’s smiling, then I realize I have a questioning, shocked expression.
“I’m Re Santino,” he says. “Right? You think that means I have all the power in the world. All I have to do is say the word and whatever I want, it happens like that.” He snaps his fingers and shakes his head. “But my territory doesn’t go beyond Secondo Vasto. It’s a tiny speck, surrounded by a land with people who don’t obey me. They don’t respect my authority. And why should they? I give these people—our people—a way of life. What good do I bring those outside this town? They don’t believe I can give them the way of life they want, so I have no power over them.”
“And if you can’t give the people here their traditions, they’ll take your power?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you won’t stop these debt marriages?”
“Let me ask you.” He turns in his seat to face me as much as is possible. “If I do that, what do you think will happen when a man like, say Angelo, gets in over his head?”
“Don’t try to convince me you’re a man of the people.”
“If I do not allow fathers to pay debts with daughters, someone will see a weakness. They’ll come here and take this territory by force. That man? It’s Damiano’s father. Cosimo Orolio. I do not have enough men…” He throws up his hand. “There are not enough men in all of Secondo Vasto to fight him.”
I cross my arms and face forward. “I don’t want to hear about blood in the streets. These are excuses to do nothing.”
“This town is between the mountains and a river. Cut off that bridge, and in a day, there will be no one left here but women and children.”
“This is America.”
My protest is whispered to no one, because that’s who cares about the United States and its laws around here. If they did, I wouldn’t have been forced to marry Santino. Gia would be going on a harmless date. Rosetta wouldn’t have been sent to Italy to marry the man she was promised to because she was pregnant with her rapist’s baby. If Santino says this Cosimo guy can cut us off and take over, then he’s probably right.
“Damiano wants his father to respect him,” Santino says. “He thinks if he can get close to me, he’ll be able to take something from me.”
