Page 25 of Mafia Queen
What will be the effect of having a murderer for a mother?
Is it my fault?
Is this why I want to run away so badly?
“Violetta?” Santino calls me from the other side of guilt.
“I don’t know anything.” Opening my eyes, I clutch his arm as if I’m in danger of falling. “We might not know until it’s born, and what if it’s bad, Santi? What if it’s hurt forever?”
“They didn’t teach you in school?”
“I was second year. It’s not like I finished.”
Reaching over me to the counter, he blocks the light above to pick up his phone. “You know where to look it up?”
“Yes.” I look around for a towel to dry my hands so I can search for the possibility of congenital defects caused by maternal opioid use. Then I’ll drill down to non-addictive, single mass dose. Then check to see if the mother murdering a man in a church becomes the burden of the child.
The colorful boxes of Santino’s home screen stare back at me.
All I have to do is tap it and all the knowledge of the universe will be available to me in stark, impersonal language. I will interpret it as it relates to my own situation and adjust my life and expectations from there, adding in the fact that I have killed the second man who kidnapped me and may spend the rest of my days running away from consequences of that.
“I feel like I failed you,” I say, still trying to get the courage to tap the web browser. “There was no blood in the pool, but I let myself believe you were dead. They put drugs in me that might hurt our baby. I thought I’d lost everything, then I killed someone.” I scrunch my face to keep the tears inside. “I didn’t think about it enough…what it would mean…because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to talk myself out of it. I chose it. I know where the arteries are, and he didn’t protect them because he thought I was harmless.”
“You are not harmless.”
“I’m not, and I’m scared.”
And all I have to do is look up the effects of maternal opioid intake on fetal development, yet I can’t. I have to know, but I don’t want to be told by a study or a data set. My heart is too brittle, and I’m too frozen over, too distant, too blank, to hear the truth shouted over the cold expanse of space.
Santino takes the phone from me and puts it to the side, then looks right through me from two inches away. “You had no choice.”
His excuse is too easy. It’s the reasoning of madmen and thieves. There were a hundred options that didn’t involve murder, yet that’s what I chose.
“I didn’t do what Ihad todo,” I admit not just to him, but myself—reigniting that rage with every word. “I did what Iwantedto do.”
Santino leans back onto his knees, and the water swooshes, displacing into my belly. He’s not trying to get farther away. I know this much. He’s listening. Taking in the whole of what I’m saying.
“I wanted to kill Damiano, and it wasn’t over the crown or being forced to marry again. His life offended me. His breath. His heart beating on this earth while yours wasn’t.”
There’s more, and I shouldn’t say it out loud, much less to a man I need to love me—a man who prizes gentle femininity. Speaking the rest is a mistake, but I can’t stop. I can’t live with him not knowing I have this inside me. The burden would break me.
“I’d do it again, Santi,” I continue, despite my better judgment. “I killed the wrong man, but if Damiano was in front of me…for real this time…I’d make it last longer. I’d watch him suffer. You’re right, I’ve changed, but I’ve always been terrible and broken. You should leave me. You should send me away. Far away.”
Santino’s eyes drop, looking down, chin to bruised chest, and I fear he’s disappointed, or worse. It’s possible I’ve killed more than one man. I may have left our love for dead.
“If it’s hard for you to love me now,” I add, “you need to be honest with yourself. Nothing’s going to fix that. And I won’t act like it didn’t happen.”
He picks up his head and touches the tops of my hands, gradually tightening around them as his gaze locks onto mine. “Neither will I. When I say you’re mine, I mean all of you. The violet that heals, and myForzetta, who kills when she has to. And when she wants to.”
“How are you not disgusted by me?”
“You want me to be honest?”
“Sure.”
I don’t really want to hear it. I want him to forget it entirely. Pretend it doesn’t exist so that I can avoid any honesty that comes with the word disgust attached. He makes it ten times worse by sliding to the other side of the tub.
“I don’t know,” he says with amazement in his voice. “I should be…something. Disappointed. Maybe disgusted, like you say. You’re not what I see in the wives of other men. You’re who I want, but also, you’re who I was given. And you’re more. More…” He looks around the room as if the right word will appear on the walls. “I am more in love with you now than before.L’amore governasenza regole.” I understand the words, but he translates anyway.“Love rules without rules. You are outside expectations. Bigger than the law or tradition. A filthy sinner like me can never reign over a woman like you.”
