Page 8 of Mafia King
The answer sits before me, wrapped in a custom suit and brooding eyes.
Santino.
This is all his fault. All of this. Anger scorches a trail through me, hot and sharp, leaving blackened, smoking dust from heart to mind to toes. He could have saved her. Siena said he wasn’t there when Rosetta died, leaving her with strangers, instead of safe with me and the Zs.
Of all his sins, this last one should be the one he burns in hell for.
I may not have the power to escape this nightmare, but I have the power to live it on my own terms. He can no longer just take what he wants.
“You will talk to me,” he states like a cold fact.
Is that all he wants?Meto talk tohim?
Well, I had a speech class where I did nothing but talk, and his demand that I talk to him opens up new opportunities to confuse and hurt him.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” I say, slowly at first as I dig deep into my eleventh-grade curriculum. “That all men are created equal, that they are—”
“Wait,” he says. “Slow down.”
“Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable—”
“Violetta.” He leans forward. “What are you saying?”
Of course he doesn’t recognize the Declaration of Independence. In context, it’s outside his experience. The real problem however, is that thecontentexists outside the context of his will.
“Unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that to secure these rights—”
“I speak four languages,” he hisses. “Not this gibberish.”
“Bummer.”
“What does itmean?” He growls, thrusting himself in my direction, as if he wants to insert himself down my throat.
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means you must return the first thing by giving me the second, or the third will never happen for either of us.”
He doesn’t get it, and he wants to. I can see it in his face. He’s trying to break it down and find some clear course of action in my words that doesn’t involve him letting me go.
“It means,” I continue, “go fuck yourself.” I enunciate each word in English. Fuck him and his Italian. That world already chewed me up and spat me out. It’s not getting back in through my mouth.
“There are things you don’t understand,” he says.
“Because no one tells me anything.”
“That’s the way it is.”
“What part of ‘go fuck yourself’ do you need translated?”
“I am protecting you.”
“You. Are. Killing. Me!” My shout scrapes the walls of my throat, louder than I intend, weaker than I want. The wall around me doesn’t even shake, and neither does Santino DiLustro.
When I clench my fingers into a fist, the diamond indents the tender skin of my palm. It belonged to Rosetta first.
Is it bad luck to wear someone else’s ring? Did I miss that particular superstition? It wasn’t passed down through a family as an expression of eternal love. This ring claimed a woman—one woman—as his bride. For the other, it is a locked metal cuff.
Jumping up, I pull off the engagement ring and nesting wedding band and throw them onto the table in front of him. They skid and slide over the edge. He catches them.
“Did you force her? Did she know she had no choice?” I croak with a voice unused to new words. “Because Zio and Zia sent her to Italy. They took her shopping before she left. I went with them. They never mentioned dressing up to meet her husband. They never mentioned you at all.”
