Page 1 of Mafia King
Prologue
SANTINO
When I lay eyes on Violetta in her uncle’s hallway, it’s not a woman I see. She is a child clawing her way up the far side of the cliff to adulthood, like the sun just cresting the horizon line, casting a new glow on the world.
She is an unfinished transformation. I’m aware of the pressure of her adolescence pushing against the child hard enough to break it, but in that moment, the change setting upon her is not what moves me.
On that day, in the hallway, she is not a human with a body rushing through the stages of life, rising sun after rising sun, changing with the persistence of a ticking clock. She is something more.
I’m at that house to bind myself to a treasure I promised to secure and protect. Every black-veilednonnaand hot-barreled soldier will murder and die for it. It is our power, and it’s been left to me. I’ve come for what’s mine.
But when I see Violetta, the womanchild with more power and darkness in her eyes than I’ve seen in assassin or priest, I know she is eternal darkness and everlasting light.
Fate has sent me there to protect a treasure, and it is not hard stones or cold metal.
It is Violetta Moretti.
1
SANTINO
Under the cluster of three pines, right after the hard left, the tree’s roots have broken free of the cliff and reach for passing cars. Even if you get around them without getting the driver’s side door ripped off, you still have to be alert, especially at sunset, because that’s where the hill turns into a mountain. You have to change gears, get the fuck out of the way of the roots, and avoid oncoming cars silently hurtling down an extreme grade, in neutral, with their headlights still off.
I’ve driven this road unscathed many times at every time of day, but for no good reason at all, its treachery has never felt more dangerous than this evening. Bringing the car to a full stop—at the risk of getting rear-ended—to peer around the corner like a student driver seems like the only way to reach the top.
As the bumps under the tiresthp-thp-thpand my mind molds three words into them, I realize why I took such care. I don’t want to die with the wordsla tua bellain my thoughts, sounding like Violetta’s acid-laced voice.
They’re the only words she’s spoken to me in five days.
We eat dinner at the same table. I compliment her dress or hair, and she replies withla tua bella. When I say good night, she saysla tua bella. When I tell her to look at me, she whispersla tua bella. The only time she’s said anything different was when I asked her if she wanted me to tell her about Rosetta.
She said yes.
But I couldn’t give up my position. I demanded she speak to me in full sentences first. She cast her eyes down and repeated the same three words, and I walked away rather than give more than I was taking.
Even then, I knew it wasn’t a good decision, but I was unable to change it. I’m a car with broken brakes, speeding ahead in the half hour between day and night when you can get away without headlights, whipping around curves on blind faith.
La tua bella la tua bella la tua bella.
My job is to protect her. All she has to do is obey me.
But what’s driving me to madness is wanting what I was never entitled to and never expected.
Her love.
I need her to love me but, because of how I took her and what I’ve hidden, she’s incapable of opening her heart.
I slow down and drop into a familiar driveway on the side of the hill, pulling up to the house I signed over the day after I bought it. All the lights are on and Loretta’s already waiting for me in a jacket, slacks, and bare feet.
“Ciao.” I kiss her cheeks. “Your shoes.”
“I just got home from work.” She goes inside. Once I close the door, we fall into speaking Italian. “You still have perfect timing.”
“I won’t keep you long.”
“Too bad. Will you take an espresso?”
“Si, grazie.”
