Page 34 of Mafia King
My body runs cold. “Who said?”
“Don’t you know?” He cocks his head to the side.
I think back to Zio sobbing at Santino’s feet. Either pleading for my freedom or weeping in gratitude. It doesn’t matter. The couple who raised me to have a normal life because my sister was the one who was sold thought I couldn’t handle it. Too young and independent. Not built for this.
“You should have listened.” When I dump another load of gnocchi into the water, I’m careless because I’m angry, and it splashes. “I was almost kidnapped and murdered the first fucking week you had me.”
“She’ll learn.” He takes my face in his palms. “You learned.”
“Because you’re only half an asshole.”
“Thank you?”
“This is not funny.”
“Inside that steel chest, you have a soft heart.”
“It’swrong, Santino. Marriage is supposed to be a sacrament, not a ‘get out of debt free’ card.”
“Isn’t our marriage a sacrament pledged before God?”
He cannot think that anything about our marriage is valid before God, the law, or any kind of moral authority, and yet, he and everyone else I can swing a stick at thinks so.
“No, Santino. Actually it’s not.” I pull his hands off me, set out the plates, and fill them with pasta and sauce as if each gesture is a fine fuck you. “Youwere married.Youhad a ceremony. But I wasn’t there for it. It’s was a transaction on our wedding day, and it’s a transaction now. You made a vow to my dead father. I’m just the one who got fucked.”
“Be that as it may, it’s the way these things go. Gia knows this.”
“She’s a kid.” I slide his plate over to him. I’m in no mood for the dining room. “We already lost Rosetta to this tradition, andyoukilled her.” Everything builds to a crystal-clear point in my head. “It wasn’t pneumonia. It wasyou.”
Man, that feels good when I say it, but it doesn’t feel good having been said. I think I’ve been fair until the cruelest of words can’t be unspoken.
I’m not going to apologize. I’m high on righteous anger, and if he comes at me, I’ll need the adrenaline.
But he doesn’t come at me.
“I was going to eat first.” He rubs a spot of sauce from the edge of his bowl and kisses it off. When his lips pucker over his thumb, I can’t decide which I want between my legs more, his hand or his mouth. “But you’re going to give yourselfagita.Vai.” He indicates I should follow and walks out of the room without looking back.
My judgment is totally damaged, because I trail him through the house and down the basement stairs. In my bored hours, I explored down here, checking the locks on the doors and the boxes on the shelves. Santino opens a door with a code and opens it to a room with walls of gray sheetrock. The nails have been smoothed over with joint compound and the seams have been taped, but the rows and rows of shelves shoved full with boxes went in before a painter could even start.
Santino brings down a shoebox to a white plastic table and flips open the top, reaches in, and pulls out a gun. He lays it on the table without a second thought.
I pick it up and inspect it. It’s the kind with a carousel of bullets, like you see in westerns.
“Whoa!” He snatches it away and puts it back where it was, still within my reach. “This is loaded.”
“Sorry, but… if you don’t want me to get it, don’t leave it in a random box.”
“Take it. Just don’t point it at me.” He flips through the box. It seems to be full of documents and photos. On paper. He’s too old school for a digital camera.
I pick up the gun. “It’s heavy.”
“My grandfather shot at a few fascists with it.” He takes out a folder and drops it on the table. “Supposedly.”
Opening the folder reveals more pictures, and when I see them, I lay the gun down, disinterested.
Rosetta was seventeen the last time I saw her, and that is the Rosetta I see in the 4x6 glossy rectangle, sitting on our Zs’ stoop in wide-leg jeans and a tank top. No makeup. Hair coming out of her ponytail as if every strand was intentionally set free.
The chronology in the box must be random, because the next picture is my father, Rosetta, and me outside the market that I thought was his primary place of business. He’s in a suit no grocer would wear to the shop. She’s on the cusp of puberty, and I’m as tall as her elbow.
