Page 55 of Mafia King
She taps her thumbs together, gazing at my hand. The crown ring. My own inheritance from her father.
“That’s why you protected Rosetta?” she asks. “And why you married me?”
“It’s why your father put you and your sister under my protection. Someone strong needs to handle the crown.”
“Fuck.” She faces front and looks out the window. “I can’t believe this crap.”
“Believe in it.”
“All this trouble, for a thing in an old box that you didn’t really see?”
“It’s the lost pieces ofCorona Ferrea. The Iron Crown of Lombardy. Napoleon put it on his head to declare himself emperor, but even then, the pieces were missing.”
“He was an asshole. And short.”
“And he ruled all of Europe!”
“He died young!”
“It is made with nails from Christ’s Cross.” I repeat the facts as if using different words will get the seriousness through to her. “How can it not be powerful enough to bend our knees?”
“This is ridiculous.” She shakes her head and stares into the darkness, unable or unwilling to define what part of this is ridiculous. Then she gives up and looks at me. “You’re saying my father stole it.”
“Found what Altieri lost, then he ruled with it.”
“It didn’t keep him from getting assassinated.”
“Killing him took a few tries, but no, it does not cure death.”
“Maybe it caused him to die. Ever think of that? Maybe it gives you power, then kills you?”
Does she believe?
“If that were the case, he wouldn’t have passed it to you and your sister.”
“No,” she scoffs. “He passed it toyou. Rosetta and I were just a delivery method. And it doesn’t matter. The talisman of power and death is an idea in books.Fantasybooks I stopped reading when I was thirteen.”
She pulls the door handle. It’s locked.
“Let me go.” Her voice is drained of emotion. She’s making a statement, not a command or request.
I unlock it, and she’s out.
15
VIOLETTA
The story exhausts me. Hearing it and believing the parts of it grounded in reality, newly aware that it’s affected every part of my life. Not because of its supernatural powers, but because so many people made choices about my life becausetheybelieved.
Now the pain of having my choices stripped from me is that much sharper. That much more exquisite for knowing the forces behind it. The anesthesia’s worn off. Now I get to feel it all, and unless I get my period in the next couple of days, I’ll be bringing a baby into it, and she’ll inherit more than a culture of servitude.
Out of the car, I make my way to the front door, but Santino grabs me and presses me against the rough stucco of the house, between two trellises tangled with rose vines.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he says.
“Jesus Christ on the One True fucking Cross. How can you miss the entire point?” I push him away, lose my footing, and grab onto a trellis of thorns. “Fuck!”
I’m bleeding, but as much as I’ve wanted to see blood in the last few days, it’s just my hand. Not deep enough. I want to bleed myself clean from the inside.
