Page 77 of Mafia King
Santino opens the car door and leans down to see us. “Senora and senorita. It is time.”
We pile out of the back seat. Gia runs to her parents. Santino puts his hand on my shoulder at the base of my neck to slow me down.
“What did you do?” he asks in my ear.
“There’s nothing I can do. She’s brainwashed.”
Armando stands at the base of the airstairs with his hands folded in front of him. Paola goes up, then Gia, who stops to throw her arms around him, pulling him close, on tiptoes. He pats her back, but won’t show any more warmth. She belongs to another man, after all.
They separate, and she bounds up the stairs. At the top, she grasps the railing and does a perfect royal wave with a shining in her smile before disappearing into the plane.
As soon as I lose sight of her, my stomach twists like a dishcloth. It stays that tight as we get back in the car, as her plane taxis to the runway, as the quaint airport full of play toys bought with blood money disappears in the rearview mirror.
“She seems happy, no?” Santino interrupts the spiral of my thoughts.
The morning commute traffic has gotten denser, suffocating the intersections. It looks like my heart feels. “Sure. Like she got an email from a Nigerian prince.”
“I don’t understand.” Santino changes lanes and someone behind us honks. “Which Nigerian prince?”
I stare at him, debate explaining it, but sigh instead. “Never mind.”
“You’re angry with me.”
I shut down. I cross my arms and stare out the window, stewing. If he can’t see why selling an innocent girl, or any girl, into marriage, whether she thinks she’s happy about it or not, is barbaric, there’s no point bringing up the obvious again.
“Violetta.” He snaps his fingers in my face. “Speak.”
I swat his hand away. He can’t tell me to speak or what to do. I’m his wife, not his dog.
Santino jerks the steering wheel and throws the car across two lanes of traffic. I’m flung against the door, then into the dashboard as he slams on the brakes. The traffic erupts in angry horns. He grabs my face in his hands.
“You will talk to me. You are mywife.” I try to pull away, but he holds firm. “Tell me, Violetta. Tell me the problem. She’s happy. Why can’t you be?”
I smack his hand until he lets go. I throw open the door, narrowly missing the concrete barrier on the side of the road, and get out.
“Violetta!”
Santino’s shout is lost in the wind and the cars zipping by. Any one of them will flatten us because he didn’t get what he wants.
Well, maybe because I’m not getting what I want. It’s not even just about Gia. It’s aboutme. I barely remember what it feels like tonotbe his wife, tonotfeel this close to danger.
“Don’t you understand?” Santino grabs for me and I roll out of the way. The cars driving past ruffle and flare up the bottom of my dress and I can’t muster the energy to care who sees what’s underneath. “There’s no problem!”
I spin around on my heel, but catch on some loose gravel and nearly slip. Santino reaches for me, but I push him away.
“Talk to me!” he shouts.
“About what? About you? Or Gia? When I first saw her, she was everything I left behind. She was everything that made me who I was. All those things about myself I had to let go of when you forced me to marry you. But now? Now I see her and I don’t even know if any of who I was had value and I don’t know if who I am now has value. All I want is to know someone else in the world can decide for themselves if they’re worth a damn. Not a price tag. Not how big a debt they cover. But if they’re worthy humans. But she’ll never know and I’ll never know, because you suck, and I suck, and it all sucks. I don’t know where I belong and it doesn’t even matter.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Santino yells over the traffic. He extends his palms. “I can’t unmarry you.”
“Yes, you can,” I yell back. The words come out so violently, they break past generations of marital tenacity. “You know it’s not right. Prove it. Prove you could have me without forcing me.”
I know this is asking more from him than I’ve ever asked before—more than asking him to pay the debt.
“Are you kidding me?” He looks at me as if I’m stark-raving insane.
“I’m not crazy!” I yell again.
