Page 36 of Mafia King
“So.” I hold up the sonogram. “Whose is this?”
“A boy at St. Anselm’s.” He snaps it away from me and puts it on top, closes the folder, and puts it in the box as if he’s too angry to talk without keeping himself occupied. “In the locker room.” He grabs the gun around the outside, away from the trigger. “He took her against her will.” He waves the handle of the pistol at me then drops it in the box. “Then askedme”—he snaps the box closed—“and her uncle for her hand, since she was ruined. The oldest trick to get a wife who doesn’t want you.”
I have to physically clamp my mouth closed to keep the nasty rejoinders from leaving them. He’s too emotional over this to look in the mirror and compare himself to the boy who hurt my sister, and I’m too vulnerable right now to fight with the story half-finished.
“I was insulted by his stupidity. And his parents.” He slaps the box back on the shelf, still angry after all these years. “Wringing their hands that their son had to marry a whore. He was trapped, they said. But I saw them… inside their hearts… they knew theirstronzoson would never do any better. Rosetta wouldn’t stop crying. Even after I promised her she’d never marry this animal, she wept because who would have her? Who?”
I’m frozen in shock and sorrow, nearly crying as he asks who would have my beautiful sister.
“I said ‘me.’ I would have her. And not because her father had already given her to me. I never had to tell her that.” He rubs his eyes, shielding himself from the sight of me. “I would have taken care of her and her baby and never touched her. I swear it.”
“But she died.”
When he takes his fingers away, his eyes are rubbed red. There’s a weight on him I’ve never seen before. It’s regret, but also deeply-buried grief, pushing up through years of false control. For a moment, I’m not the only person who lost Rosetta. He lost her too.
I’m not alone. I’m truly with him, and I can’t help but put my hand over his, because we’re together in this. The same pain. The same loss.
“To this day, I don’t know if the doctor didn’t see what you could, or if someone threatened him. Or paid him to not know. I still don’t know if she could have been treated. But it was a mistake and I am sorry for it.”
My questions can wait. Unable to stand another second of vulnerability, I rush to him, arms open to hold him as he shakes.
11
VIOLETTA
It’s one thing to know he didn’t choose Rosetta first, didn’t take her to bed, didn’t love her more.
It’s another thing to know how much he did love her, did protect her, did choose her.
Now instead of loving him in spite of my better judgment and hating myself for it, I love him and I have to say, my judgment is doing pretty great.
I feel complete and finished. Adult. Polished to a flashing shine. It’s all going to be all right. I let myself relax, thinking the conversation in the basement changed my husband’s mind about Damiano’s offer for Gia and he’ll remove his approval of the wedding.
I live in a dream where my husband’s land is peaceful and all is right with the world. We eat. We swim. He fucks me with fierce tenderness and sweet violence. I cook with Celia, and when she’s not in the kitchen, she creates the garden and cares for the dirt beds, choosing seedlings of cucumbers, peppers, and of course, tomatoes.
I call Gia every day. We talk nonsense five times. I keep my ears open for word of a big dinner or event, but she says nothing. I slide into complacency.
This is the first of many mistakes.
One morning, in reaching for a new toothbrush, I knock over a box of sanitary napkins. As I slide them all back, I wonder how long it’s been since I used one, and in the rush to the calendar, I know damn well already how the numbers are going to add up.
* * *
My periods have always beeninconsistent, which is why I didn’t think to count the days since my last until it was late in the game. Stress, poor diet, the flu—I’ve missed a cycle for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes I’ve missed it for no reason at all, but it never mattered before. It added up to a bunch of saved pads and reduced aggravation.
Now, it’s different. Though it could be my body reacting to travel through international time zones, for the first time, I could actually be pregnant.
It’s too soon to go to the doctor for a test, and I have another couple of days before I can even consider myself so late that I’m an idiot not to get a drugstore test.
Santino’s in his office. Through the closed doors, I hear him talking to his guys.
I won’t interrupt.
Before I can walk away, I hear Damiano’s name in the muddle of lilting Italian murmuring, and I’m slapped out of my complacency. I lean into the door to make sense of the conversation. What I piece together is that Damiano’s made reservations at a restaurant. Two tables.
Could be nothing, but it’s something. It’s the end of Gia. Short of breath, blind with shock, I run to my room and lock myself behind the bathroom door.
Before I freak out, I have to know the facts, and that means maintaining Santino’s complacency. My late period will distract him. If he thinks he might be a father, there’s no telling how he’ll react. He could get even more protective. Good chance he’ll hide any news that might upset me, and he knows Gia getting sold off would put me right over the edge.
