Page 108 of Mafia Queen
“I asked Zia Madeline and Nazario—who’s, like, never leaving. They told me everything. I don’t look like my father.” I pause. He can’t see it, but Nazario says he will. “I look like Cosimo Orolio.”
Santino’s eyes scan me as if for the first time. He doesn’t have to tell me he sees a man I’ve never met. It’s all over his face.
“He never forgave Mamma for hanging him out to dry after Papà was almost assassinated the first time. I was little, and I was his, but she wasn’t ready to fully betray her husband. So the second time, he did the hit, but he shot the both of them.”
“My God.”
I can practically hear things clicking in Santino’s head, observed moments I’m confident he’ll tell me about during calmer days. But he knows I’m right.
“Damiano was going to marry his half sister.” His face contorts in disgust. “An animal.”
“It was because of this.” I point at the box. “It made him an animal”
Santino is still shaken by the revelation, but my brother’s fate isn’t my point. “And it made my mother wonder what she would have been without her husband. It made her feel like he was keeping her down…and he was, but she was part of a world where she wouldn’t have even had a choice without the crown, and her choices were taken away because of the crown too. But what locked her into a life wasn’t a piece of metal. It was expectations. Assumptions. And they had no reason to change any of that because of this thing…” I tilt my chin toward the box. “It fucked with all their heads. I don’t want that. Ever. I don’t want to wonder what I’d be without you. My life with you is the only one I want.”
He nods, knees to elbows, tenting nine fingertips. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.” I open the lid.
“It’s what brought us together.”
“But it’s not what keeps us together.”
Last night, Santino argued to have the crown sent to a museum, but there’s no provenance, no chain of ownership since it was stolen during Mussolini’s regime, then stolen again by thepartigianiand left to rot in a warehouse of artifacts thecamorrawas selling to finance a mob war.
“Do you not want to?” I ask.
“No, no.” Hetsks. “You’re right. It causes too much trouble. It’s already broken too much.”
I take the crown out of the box. “Do you feel the compulsion to kneel?”
“Put it on your head. Let’s see.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Maybe I do.”
“No.”
Before I can change my mind, I toss the crown into the white-hot furnace. It sits on the bottom of the coal box, implacable at first, as if nothing can touch it. The tips and edges blacken, then turn bright hot.
Santino and I grab for each other’s hands, holding on for dear life as the object that brought us together in marriage loses its shape and melts into bubbling lava.
“It is done.” He closes the door and latches it. “Do you still love me?”
“I will always love you.”
He puts his hands on my thighs and gets down on his knees, resting his head in my lap. I bend over him and put my cheek on his back. We remain like this for a minute before Loretta’s voice comes down from upstairs.
“They’re here!”
* * *
“Patatina!”My zia rushes out of the car, and we meet in the middle of the yard. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her round cheeks sag. When she throws her arms around me, I feel her grief against my chest. It awakens mine with the hum of a shared language.
“I’m so sorry,” I say into her collar. “I hoped to bring you up here days ago.”
Telling her what was sacrificed in my failure to get her—what lies were told and consequences felt—won’t help anyone. I leave that for Sunday dinners in the undefined future.
