Page 64 of Mafia King
“My sweet little American wife, these symbols have meaning. And actions have repercussions.”
“So the deal is off?”
He sighs the way you might before explaining the function of the circulatory system to someone who should already know how a heart works, then he gets behind a patio chair, shifting it into the shade. “Sit.”
I sit, and he moves a matching seat across from me. Pauses, leans forward with his fingertips tapping between his knees. I feel like a student about to be reprimanded by a very hot teacher.
“Marco lives inside Cosimo Orolio’s territory,” he says. “Dami is in mine. They received a blessing from both of us. This is not just some kind of permission. It’s a promise of protection.”
“I thought Damiano and his father weren’t speaking.” I’m proud of this nugget of knowledge.
“We’re all speaking when it’s business.”
“Of course. Gia’s life is just business.”
“You broke the flowers, and you are mine. So I broke them. I cut off the deal, and now I have to stop Damiano from going back to his father and inciting a war over it.”
“A war? Over this?” That doesn’t make any sense. A single arranged marriage shouldn’t be the difference between peace and war. “Does this have anything to do with what you told me last night? About the crown?”
“It has everything to do with it.”
At this point, I could say none of this is my fault because I didn’t know then what I know now. If he’d been more forthright, maybe I would have behaved differently. Maybe. But what’s the difference?
“What’s going to happen to Gia?” I ask.
“That’s up to her father.” He shrugs and leans back. “The man raised me. I know his way. He’ll punish whoever has the least power.”
“How?” I whisper, as if the most powerless person—who’s in my bed with cucumbers over her eyes—might hear me.
“By sending her home, where he’ll find someone else.”
“Has he considered not gambling?”
Santino ignores me, because to him and every other man in this town, Marco isn’t the problem as long as Gia’s the solution.
“She’ll get used to being home again,” he says. “Don’t expect her to come back.”
He lets those words fall heavy into my lap.
Shit. Shit-shit-shit.
“This is the way it is,” he continues. “You cannot change it. Even if I let you. Youcannot.”
I caused this. I destroyed those flowers because I was pissed off, because I was trying to change a system that nearly ruined me, and in the process, I may have ruined Gia.
“I wasn’t… I didn’t know! I thought I was helping.”
“I need you to promise me something,” he says with a cartoonishly fake layer of patience.
“What?” I won’t agree to anything until I’ve thought about it, but I need to shut up to hear.
“You need to stop trying to fix the world.”
“I can’t—”
“And.” He holds up his hand to stop me, so I clap my mouth shut until he finishes, because once he does, he’s getting a piece of my mind. “And I’m going to trust you. I’m going to trust your nose is out of everyone’s business, and you’re going to leave things alone and prove to me you won’t make another mess like this.”
My arms are crossed so tightly, my forearms hurt. My jaw aches from clenching it shut. I have a twitch in my left eye that squeezes the sunlit corner of my vision, making Santino’s face go from dark to light and back again in a rhythm.
