Page 95 of Mafia King
Then today, I became the danger, and I swear two things.
One, I tell her. No one will be told who to marry.
The second thing, I swear to myself. I will not lose control with her body again. Not like I just did. She can shoot me first.
I’ll be as rough as she wants, but I will not hurt her in anger. I am not a child. I am not a baby crying for milk or a frustrated toddler. I am a man, and I decide what I do and what I do not do. No matter what she does, I will keep my head about me. I cannot stop her from setting my life on fire, because I struck a match and burned hers to the ground.
I don’t know why it took me until this moment to see it so clearly, or why the threat of a daughter was the only thing that could remove the scales from my eyes.
My wife’s life was destroyed in a single day. She was dragged to the church. She was forced to live in my house, under my rules. I have every power over her, and though she’ll be fine tomorrow or the next day, in my heart, I know that I was so angry she put a gun to my head, I could have killed her just now. I also know now that from the moment I saw her, I never chose to let her live. I’ve been a car speeding ahead, steering around the curves with a broken brake. Today, I would have finished what I started. I would have crashed and broken her body, but I came inside her, and once that happened, the car ran out of gas.
Violetta and I got lucky. She wasn’t forced to marry a heartless man, and I didn’t marry a mindless woman. But fortune is not a friend to everyone.
I have to be a man and break the world so Violetta, Gia, my daughter—none of them have to depend on luck just to live.
She kneels with me, then we lie on the floor together. Her sobbing slows to calm breaths. I rub streaks from her face. I want to give her a bath to wash my filth off her, but if I do that, I’ll lose my nerve. She can bathe herself.
“We’re not going to end this from the floor.” I get my feet under me and hold my hand out to her. “Let’s put the gun away.”
I help her up. She hands me the gun, but I don’t take it. When she starts for the basement, I redirect her down the hall, past the double doors to the room reserved for business.
She was never meant to come in here, but that’s all changed. I can’t put closed doors between us any longer. I will have her by my side as I expand. Her counsel. Her voice. Her castle joined with mine.
With her, I will rewrite traditions into laws.
I turn on a lamp and sit behind my desk. I open the sideboard drawer.
“Put the gun here, where we can get to it.”
I let her place it there, and slide it closed.
She takes a chair by the window and crosses her legs, tapping on the wooden parts of the arms with impatience and expectation. How can I still want to fuck her, now that she has a life inside her?
“I have a plan,” she says.
“Okay.” The engine of the gold-faced clock grinds and ticks.
“You offer any father who wants to sell his daughter a low-interest loan.”
Biting back a laugh takes more strength than anything I’ve ever done. “I’m not the state government or a bank.”
“Which means you don’t have to get a committee to sign off. You just do it.”
“And what if they sell their daughters anyway?”
“Why would they if you can refinance the loan?”
“And every loan shark and bookie from here to Naples would just nod?”
She shrugs. “Fuck them.”
Now, I laugh, because she thinks too much of my influence, and too little of my power.
“What you’re missing, my sweetForzetta, is that‘mbasciateis usually the groom’s prerogative, and the father is eager to get her gone without paying a bride price.”
“Jesus Christ, are you serious?”
“And the debts?” I put my elbows on my knees. There’s so much to explain. “Not always the case. Sometimes the marriage is to join territories or avoid a war.”
