Page 5 of Mafia Queen
When I scratch my face this time, it’s easier to identify the roughness of my fingertips.
I’m wearing a veil.
Throwing it back, I see clearly and hold my left hand in front of me. My ring. Rosetta’s ring. A meaningless assembly of rock and metal that my husband etched with a secret and gave to me.
It’s gone.
* * *
My consciousness returnedmoments after I ripped off the veil, and in the five minutes since, the pain in my face has grown with the itchiness I’ve been rubbing from my face and neck.
The door is locked from the outside.
…vasodilation…
I open the cabinet doors, trying not to think about why I’m having a histamine release.
The cabinet is full of church shit. Moving it out of the way, I peer into the back, find nothing, then sit back down on the floor. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Santino isn’t in the cabinet, and what do I need besides him?
Has he even been fished from the pool yet?
My face itches where it hurts and hurts where it itches.
…a reversal of systemic dilation of cutaneous blood vessels…
Damiano hit me. The blunt trauma to the head wouldn’t keep me unconscious more than a few minutes unless I was in a coma, which I wasn’t.
I’ve been drugged with an opioid. It’s wearing off, and the pain is just about hitting me.
The baby.
I rock back and forth, scratching my face like an addict denied relief.
Shit.
What kind of drug? How much of it? How long? I need the packaging and a Davis Guide, stat. Because I get to keep one, single remnant of Santino, and it’s growing inside me.
Before him, a pregnancy would have been invasive and unwelcome. Catholicism aside, I would have considered the pros and cons of continuing. But I love my king, and this thing we started—this potential life that’s the sum of the best and worst of us—is a product of that love, made real by the dreams we wove for it together.
“I’ll take care of your child,” I whisper to my dead husband. “I won’t let you die twice.”
He neither approves nor disapproves, because he’s dead.
A shaft of light appears against the far wall with the sound of metal squeaking against metal.
My eyes adjust. The effect of the candles dims as the light from the outer hallway enters.
A woman comes in. She holds a tray, and her dark hair is a curly mane pushed back by a gold banana clip.
Her name is Gia, and she shot Santino.
I launch myself at her like a bullet, hands out, tingling face contorted into a growl.
She doesn’t back away, scream, or protect herself, because the drug in my system is a knife driven between my will and my body. I can’t move that fast, so I don’t move at all. Chemicals have dislocated my spirit from my actions, proving that I am now and have always been just a piece of sentient meat.
“I’m listening,” the man who opened the door says. “If I hear anything—”
“Shush, Dami,” Gia scolds.
