Page 58 of Mafia King
“Lucky for you I enjoy being in the kitchen,” I tease. Santino is an attentive husband in ways that give him power and pleasure, so it’s rare for him to cater to me on my terms. I know it’s all a game, but playing means pretending it’s real.
“I ordered your zia to train you to enjoy it from a young age.”
“You did not.” I roll my eyes at him. “Stronzo.”
He laughs, full and rich. Parts of my heart sell themselves to him, and he buys in bulk. I think back to that afternoon when I was twelve and captivated by him. What would I tell that girl if I could? “One day, he’ll be yours, but only in title”? Or something more frightening? “He will take possession of you like a piece of real estate and you will hate him before you love him”?
That young Violetta in my head turns into a young Gia, and I freeze with guilt. If I avoid tough conversations because Santino drew me a bath and fed me grapes, I’ll be complicit in whatever happens to her.
Someone—a visitor or a neighbor who didn’t know any better—once said to Zia, “Kids are different when they’re your own flesh and blood.” She almost lost her mind over it. Rosetta and I were not hers, maybe, she said, but she would do anything and everything for us.
I believed her, and she was complicit too.
“Open,” Santino says, grape between two fingers. His hair is mussed slightly, but he still looks impeccable.
It’s okay to feel loved and cared for. I don’t have to be angry every second. I don’t have to ignore my own life. I can have this.
It’s almost like we’re back in Amalfi, where everything was beautiful and feltright. Being his wife wasn’t a curse, it was a joy. I haven’t felt this way since before we were ambushed by Siena Orolio and her bad news. I close my eyes and convince myself it’s okay to be happy for five seconds.
Swallowing, I close my eyes and hum a tune I remember from my childhood, then I feel the cool velvet of a grape skin on my lips and take the fruit. Santino picks up the tune, soft and low, wordlessly singing the quiet, classic melody in a series of vowels until the chorus when I belt it out with him, our voices booming off the white marble. He continues the verse, and I’m captivated. He has a voice—deep, rich, and soulful. Exactly how I imagined it would be.
When he’s done, I open my eyes and can’t help but clap. “That was beautiful.”
“My aunt sang to me when she bathed me.” Santino’s smile fills his voice. “It was an old favorite. Her mother sang it to her and her mother before her sang to her and the one before her.” He rolls his hand at the wrist, meaningon and on.
“A century of DiLustros singing?”
“And Morettis,” he says. “We sang it with your father in the car whenever we were going someplace…” He pauses to choose his words. “Someplace bad.”
“You knew my father better than I did,” I say, and he looks a little guilty about it. “Tell me more.”
“This ring?” He holds up the hand with the diamond crown ring. “He left it to me when he died. He always said I was like a son he never had.”
Looking down over me, Santino’s expression is pure yearning for something he fears he’ll never have, because he’s powerless to grab it for himself.
“I’m not ready for children.” It’s one of the most honest things I’ve said to him, even when it papers over the secret truth that ready or not, a child may be coming.
“Are you unhappy, my violet?” He snaps off another grape. “Should I feed you?”
I open my mouth for it, chew. He thinks feeding me will make me happy, or maybe he thinks it’ll shut me up. There’s no discontent in silence.
I want this man to love me. Despite everything, I want this relationship to mean something. I want it to be the thing that drives him to be a better man, and me to be a stronger woman, but it’s clear we are very different people and view the world through vastly different lenses. He protects a status quo where everyone smiles because their lives depend on it.
That is not the happiness I want, and I can’t help but think that if he could see the desperation and fear of the people living with the traditions he so cherishes, he’d destroy what he’s worked so hard to protect.
“What you told me,” I say after I swallow. “It doesn’t change anything. Gia’s still going to be sold, and she doesn’t even know it.”
“What if she’s happy?”
“With Damiano? The guy trying to get close to you so he can steal an antique?”
Santino pushes the bowl aside and bends at the waist, hands folded in front of him. “Gia wants to be married. But even more, she wants to be American. Damiano will stay here. Their marriage gives her what she wants twice over.”
This level of cold calculation never left Gia’s lips. This is one hundred percent Santino.
“He can try to,” Santino says. “But he’ll never get what he wants out of it.”
“He’ll never love her either.”
