Page 29 of Mafia King
I had no choice but to approve the wedding.
“Violetta,” I murmur to her before she pours for Lorenzo.
She looks back at me. I take her carafe and put it in the center of the table, then I bring her outside, to the front of the house. On the front steps, I tap out a cigarette. I don’t crave one as much as I want to keep my hands from doing something more impulsive.
“What?” She stays at the top step as I go through the motions of putting the pack away and lighting up.
“You stayed after I told you to go.”
“I thought you were swatting a fly. Was I not supposed to hear you sell Gia?”
“I sold nothing.”
“I’m sorry.Mi dispiace. Pope Santino the First had toblessthe sale.”
I laugh. She’s going to put me in my grave, but I will die with a smile on my lips.
“It’s not funny.” She crosses her arms. “It’s wrong. Deeply fucking wrong.”
“This is how it’s always been.”
“You can take your traditions,” she says with one disrespectful finger raised at me, “and you can shove them right up your ass.”
“You trying to get me in the mood?” I grab her hand and move it away from my face. “You don’t have to work this hard,Forzetta.”
“Why?” She wrestles herself free because I let her. “Why are you letting this happen to Gia?”
“Why do I let it rain?”
“Because the clouds kiss your fucking ring?”
“No. It’s going to rain whether I allow it or not. I keep everyone from getting wet.”
Her arms are crossed. Her ring is turned around with the stone against her arm. She taps it. “You’re full of shit.”
“Am I?” I flick the cigarette into the street. It lands in a spray of orange sparks and rolls away. “Maybe. Let’s see how wet I let you get.”
She’s not amused or aroused. Yet.
“But let’s say you knew Damiano wanted to steal something from you?” she says. “Would you let him marry Gia then?”
My mind flips like a coin. In a heartbeat, a conversation with my wife where I try to teach her the ways she never learned turns into a matter of life or death.
“What?” I say, climbing a step to get closer to her.
“I overheard…” She stops. Breathes. “Damiano talking about my rings to someone else, because everyone in the fucking world knows I’m not your first choice.”
I barely hear a word after “my rings.” The rings are irrelevant to anyone but my wife and me, unless they want what I have. Then they’re everything.
“What did he say?”
“He mentioned them to someone else. A man. I don’t know who. It was through a door.”
“Whatwords?” My neck is getting hot as the fire consuming the rest of my body rises through my collar.
Her brows knit. She’s trying to remember. I want to shake her, but any memory loosened that way will be lost.
“I don’t…” She stops, tilts her head. Listens to a sound on the street or in her mind. “They said you paraded someone in like a race horse, and I guess that had to be me?”
