Page 103 of Mafia Queen
I swipe her feet off the desk and put my hands on the arms of her chair, leaning into her beautiful face. “Letting people think what they want without consequences… This is an American problem. It rots from the inside. By the time you see the black spots on the skin, it’s too late.”
“So what do you want to do, Re Santino?” She puts her hands on my face.
I could kiss her now. I could fuck her on this chair again and again, but that would do nothing to impress on her how important this is. “Show them the crown.”
“No.” Her hands slip away, and she sits back. “They kneel or they don’t kneel…”
“I’ll cut their knees from under them if they don’t.”
“All that means is my partnership with you is contingent on an artifact. An inheritance from my parents. Their respect will rot just the same.”
I stand straight and cross my arms. I am going to fuck her. I’ve decided. I’m already hard with the thought.
“I have a better idea,” she continues, getting off the chair to reach for my belt.
“Say it first.” I grab her hand. This needs to be solved. “Then I fuck you.”
“Trying to prove you’re notschiavo della fica?”
“Mia Regina, you miss the point. I am a slave to your pussy, and your mind, and your heart. But even a slave can resist long enough to hear his queen’s strategy.”
“Fine.” She falls back into her chair. “We call a meeting at the café.”
She tells me the rest of the plan. It is as brilliant as it is brutal.
* * *
At Mille Lucethe next afternoon, Violetta and Celia serve two dozen leaders of Secondo Vasto and their wives. They treat Violetta with common deference. The wives try to help. She does not let them. Everyone needs to see her serve them.
When everyone has been attended to, she sits to my right.
“You ready?” I ask.
“Yep.”
I rise, tapping the crown ring on my left pinkie finger against a glass. The space where my wedding ring used to be is still red and raw, but it’s healing well. I wear the gold band on the right side now.
“Amici miei.” I call them my friends, then wait until they’re all eyes and ears. “It’s been a week since the bridge that connects us to the rest of the world was cut off. Today, it has been reopened.”
They applaud. I put up a hand to stop it.
“Alvise Galdano and his sons used their boats to move supplies over the river.” I raise my glass. “Grazie.”
They all drink, and those within reach of Alvize and his sons click glasses with him.
“The threat to us is gone… for now. The men who caused this won’t trouble us again.”
By mutual agreement with my wife, I’m eliding the full truth. The men I’m speaking about are either dead—like Damiano—or have switched loyalties from Tabona to Cavallo. Cosimo lives, and as long as he does, complete safety cannot be guaranteed.
“St. Paul’s will be rebuilt,” I continue. “Lasertopia, God willing, will not be.”
The laughter dies down before I go on. Everyone here deserves a good laugh.
“There will be changes.” I take a bit of amaretto and put down the glass.
At this point, I wanted Violetta to take out the crown and wear it, but she convinced me it was a bad idea, then proved it by sending Vito out to gather information about how the story has changed in the past week.
They’ve heard about the crown, how men kneel before it, but the story got twisted in the retellings. Now, they say I am the one who stood through a sunroof wearing it. Sometimes the story says it’s Dario, who hasn’t been seen since he tried to steal the crown. But no one believes it was Violetta. Even the men who were there don’t speak too loudly, or they claim it was too dark to see, or they were too overcome with its power to notice whose head it was on.
