Page 15 of Mafia Queen
I look down. There’s a wet, twisted rope of fabric on the floor. A tide of blood from the man I killed soaks it pink. I touch the flame to the end, and it blossoms into heat and light. The church will burn, and I have no will to do anything else.
Santino leads me down the aisle, away from the fiery altar, and out into Secondo Vasto.
The clarity of the afternoon sun is merciless, taming the slightest breeze into submission.
The fire crackles, looking for fuel. I blink away the burn.
Santino can’t take his attention from my black eye. “He’ll die for doing this to you.”
Damiano’s failure to kill my husband doesn’t change the fact that he tried, and who knows what he would have done to me if he’d succeeded in marrying me. Santino’s rage is justified.
There will be more death. The murder I committed, that I haven’t even digested, won’t be the last. Was that one also defensible? I was blank with anger and raw intention. Not a single neuron was firing when I cut into him. How can murder be justified when the killer didn’t have a thought in her head?
“The blood,” is all I can say.
My husband takes my chin and makes me face him. He inspects my expression and makes a sharptsk.
“No,” he says. “You did what you had to do.”
“I’m still a murderer.”
“Yes.”
He leads me to the curb where a black Mercedes is pulling up. He opens the back door for me. I assume he’s disturbed about the same thing that’s weighing on me. HisForzettacommitted murder and should feel guilty and traumatized. I should pray for my eternal soul and make reparations to God and Arturo Tabona Meatball Eyes’s family. I should spend the rest of my life mortifying the flesh in penance.
But all that seems pointless. It’s impossible because nothing after this moment will ever happen. My senses are frozen in horror, and my heart barely feels as though it’s beating. I don’t want to feel bad. I don’t want to be sorry. I’ve never prayed much, and I’m not starting as I run from a burning church, but an unwelcome awareness tugs at me. I don’t know what to think or what feelings to put in place of the ones I refuse.
Santino joins me in the back of the car. I take his hand and hold it so tightly my knuckles pale. He puts his remaining hand over the doubled fist, and I lean into him, comforted. In all the thick, unthinking guilt—in all the gray dullness protecting me from what I’ve done—he is the only reality. He is my anchor.
“She’s not in the trunk,” says the driver, an older guy with a receding hairline. He slaps the back of the passenger’s head. “Tell him why,stunad!”
“Fuck you, Gennaro.” The passenger is a younger guy, but probably older than me. Tightly waved dark hair. He turns around to face us, but averts his eyes.
“What happened?” Santino asks. I feel as if I’m seeing all this and reacting through him, because I’m wrapped in a hundred layers of gauze.
“She was crying.”
“Oh, boo-fucking-hoo,” Gennaro mocks.
“Is this true, Carmine?” Santino’s tone is soft. Almost inviting. “You let her go because shecried?”
“She’s Gia! Our little waitress!” Carmine defends himself with the obvious notion that a woman you know is a woman who’s harmless. “She was scared, so she started kicking and twisting all around. What was I supposed to do? Hit her?”
“Dami and Gia.” Santino rubs his eyes. “We lost both of them.”
I don’t know enough about his business to know what resources he has to find her, but there’s one thing I do know for sure. If Gia was ever a powerless victim of cruel traditions, it was before I met her. She’s neither helpless nor powerless now, and she will not hesitate to kill anyone between her and what she wants.
“Next time,” I interject, but it’s someone else talking. Some other Violetta with a strong, definitive voice. “You show her a little respect.”
Gennaro—stopped at a light—twists around to look at me as if I’ve argued Carmine wasn’t gentle enough, but that’s not what I’m saying at all, and my husband knows it.
“You underestimated her,” Santino says. “That was your second mistake. Your first mistake was losing sight of what she did to my wife. Gia’s going to cry again. I promise you that.”
* * *
Santino’s housealways seemed impregnable with its front gate and men walking the ramparts, but the castle was breached, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see it again.
“Gia has my ring,” I say softly as the car twists up the road. “She can find the lawyer.”
