Page 107 of Mafia King
“Can you stop with the drama? I’ll be fine.”
“You’re everything to me.”
“I love you too,” she says. “I have to go.”
“Bene.”
“Beneyourself.” She makes a kissing sound into the phone, and I think this is over, but she continues. “Hang on. Armando wants you.”
The phone gets handed over.
“Boss.” His volume drops and I can hear the floor creak as he walks to the other side of the room. “It’s just Marco.”
Violetta’s safe enough in the car with my uncle. He’s not a soldier or a killer. He doesn’t know how to hurt her. But I expected something different, and I don’t like surprises.
“He says Tavie came along, so with Gia and Paola, Violetta makes six. There’s no room in one car on the way back.”
“She stays home,” I say. “Go get her.”
I hear him doing as I say, saying, “Santino says she can’t go” as a car door opens. My wife grabs the phone and the gravel crunches under her feet as she walks away.
“What the fuck?” she hisses.
“Do not get in that car.”
“Why not?”
The locksmith comes back in, smiling. “Boom!” He holds up the box.
I give him a thumbs-up and leave the room.
“Because I don’t like it and I don’t trust it,” I whisper to Violetta.
“That’s it?”
“What else do you need?”
“Common sense? Reality? Or is this intuition from the same part of your brain that believes some ancient artifact has, like, real power?”
“Do not mock me.”
“Okay, okay… look, I have an idea.”
“No ideas.” I don’t know how to be more clear. She needs to stay home with Armando. Vito will have to do without him. If she leaves with Marco, something bad will happen, and I can’t explain how I know because yes, the knowledge doesn’t come from my mind, but from knees that bent unwillingly and a heart frozen with dread. “I don’t want to hear them.”
“I’ll be alone with him,” she pitches the idea anyway. “I can talk to him. Apologize for last night. Try some diplomacy.”
“No.”
“He’s going to leave without me,” she says in a panic.
“You stay. Put Armando on.”
“This is you being controlling and bossy.”
“This is me protecting the only thing I love in this world,” I snarl, holding back a hurricane of rage.
She takes a deep breath, and I wait for her to argue again. This constant resistance is going to get her killed, and if that happens, starting the war I’m trying to avoid won’t fill a fraction of the hole in my heart.
