Page 53 of Mafia Queen
“Go,” he says, turning back to the matter at hand.
I back out of the little house. The man with the brutal gaze closes the door, and I’m left standing alone in the half light of dawn with an emptiness in the place where I kept the violence I just released.
With a shaking hand, I open the pack of cigarettes and eventually still myself enough to get one out. I put it in my mouth and—with massive effort and the grind of metal on metal—I open the lighter and touch the flame to the tobacco.
I’ve never smoked a day in my life, so I cough. The world swims a little. It’s not a high that makes me feel ecstatic or even content, but I am physically buoyant. When I take a second drag, I don’t cough, and the high disappears. The cigarette does not fill me or bring me any real satisfaction, but I understand why Santino smokes after he breaks into violence.
This will not become a habit, but it’s not my last cigarette either.
15
VIOLETTA
Santino doesn’t come out of the building. I stamp out the butt, pick it up, and roll it between my fingers as I reenter the house through the kitchen.
“You’re up early,” Celia chirps, breaking an egg into a huge metal bowl. This side of the house smells like bacon.
“You’re awfully chipper this morning.” I throw the butt in the trash.
“I’m making eggs.”
“Where’s the bacon?” I ask.
“The oven.”
The sizzle is as loud as a rainstorm when I crack open the door, but Celia slaps my hand away before I can even see if it’s done.
“There you are,” Loretta says as she enters. She takes the top off of a huge coffee urn. “You weren’t in your room. I got worried.”
“I took a walk around.”
“See anything interesting?”
I saw Santino and a stranger torture Marco Polito, but not hard enough.
I saw my king weighed down with a guilt he didn’t understand.
I looked at what a war will mean for my soul and accepted it. Embraced it. I saw it all, and it wasn’t interesting. It was horrifying, and I couldn’t look away.
“You can see more stars up here,” I reply. Only when Celia pours coffee into the urn do I notice the three pots of coffee waiting on warmers.
“Do you want some?” she asks as if I’m a kid eyeing the juice boxes.
“I’ll get it.” I get a cup for my own coffee. “How did you get all this together so quickly?”
“It was all in the basement.” She checks the bacon and slides out the first of three trays. “This won’t be the first war this house has seen.”
“I never considered you had to feed the guys.”
“The women don’t sit around wringing their hands,” Loretta says.
“And we’re ready,” Celia says. “But how are you? Do you need something for…?” She indicates my black eye by drawing a circle in its general direction.
“I’m fine.” I guess I should help in the kitchen, being a woman and all. I like cooking and working in a team, but I can’t help but glance at the buildings outside, where I used a crowbar to break a man’s knee. “Aren’t you guys scared?”
“Of course.” Celia shrugs, removing the bacon with tongs. Her sleeves are rolled up, revealing forearms dotted with whorled skin the size of burning cigarettes.
When I look at the building I went into—the one with the Shadowy Man inside—the door is wide open.
