Page 33 of Mafia King
I swim, shower, dress, and leave without waking the woman in my bed.
10
VIOLETTA
Last night, I let Santino’s intensity run my reactions. I let him break me down over my sister and my father when what I should have done was demand he guarantee he’d remove his blessing from the arranged marriage.
At dinner, Gia had sat next to Damiano and giggled like a little girl. She’d played with her hair and batted her lashes. She wants to be American, but it’s not about handbags and shopping and saluting the red, white, and blue. She was never cursed with the freedoms of America. The high-stakes choices. The hard-won victories.
But the freedom to try is close enough to touch, and I can do at least that.
After Santino confirms he’s stopped Gia from being sold for her father’s debts, I have to work on ending every‘mbasciatabefore it happens.
I wipe the dried spit off the photo of Santino, Damiano, and my father and place it on the mantel with others. A woman with her gaze fixed in the middle distance, holding a bundle of joy that may be my husband. Santino young, holding baby Gia. Him with Paola and Marco. I place them in a kind of order—like a family tree. I will learn it. Memorize it. Internalize his relationships as if they are a new inheritance.
Celia and I cook dinner and talk about the garden she’s put in the back. The grocery shopping. The expected arrival of the man of the house.
The water works itself back up to a rolling boil, and the bloated white gnocchi pop to the turbulent surface like bodies scarred with little slits. Their names are known to me. My mother, my father, Rosetta.
Santino appears as if called by them, coming behind me to plant a kiss on my cheek. “The sauce smells good.”
“It’s Celia’s.” I don’t turn to him. I just watch the scarred blobs roll in the heat.
“The gnocchi are hers,” Celia says. “Hundred percent. And perfect.”
“Bene,” he says and starts to leave.
I’ll see him at dinner. I can say something then. But I am impatient. I need to be soothed immediately.
“You freed Gia, right?” The words exit my mouth before I think about them, cut through the air and stop him in his tracks. “From the marriage?”
“You can go,” he says to the space in front of him, but we know he’s talking to Celia.
She swipes the countertop with her palm to pick up nonexistent crumbs and says good-bye. Thirty seconds later, Santino and I are alone, staring at each other over the kitchen island with the water boiling between us.
I scoop the softened balls out of the pot and lay them on a paper-towel-covered plate.
“She doesn’t need to be ‘freed,’ as you call it,” he says finally.
“Why? Her father stopped it? Or Damiano walked? Or did you unbless it or whatever?”
He turns toward me and rests his hands far apart on the island’s counter. “There are things you don’t understand.”
My arms lose their strength, and I drop the spoon. My face is too weak to stay on my skull. I’m going to turn into an empty, gelatinous mound if he means what I think he means.
“Tell me something,” I whisper. “Anything.”
“I can’t accuse him of wanting to steal from me.”
“But Iheardhim.”
“You did. But the wedding has to happen anyway.”
Quickly now, I scoop the gnocchi from the water, trying to jump-start my brain with repetitive action.
“Gia isn’t built for this,” I say.
“They said the same about you.”
