Page 44 of Mafia Queen
Abruptly, he gets out of the car and walks to the trash can. Halfway there, he turns backward to keep his eye on me. On the way back, I notice his attention scanning the corners and curves, the lines of the rooftops, the vulnerabilities of our position. He leans against the car door on my side and talks to me through the open window.
“What do we do?” I ask.
“There will be a war, and I need you someplace safe while I fight it.”
“Such as?”
“The house I bought you, here on this side.”
“In River Heights?” The house he tried to bribe me into complacency with, that we then tried to trap Damiano inside—I haven’t even lived in it a day, and it already has so much history I don’t even want to see it from the outside.
“It’s safe. I’ll visit—”
“No!” I interrupt him, because there won’t be any visiting or living separately. “We’re in this together, you and me.” I lower my voice in case someone appears from the emptiness. “You can’t just go into Secondo Vasto and fight while I sit in some house and wait.”
“You don’t fight.” He leans down and puts his elbow on top of the door. “You live in Torre Cavallo, and if you go up there, you stay. That is my final offer.”
“You want to lock me up so you can do what I should be doing myself.”
“You? You kill one man swinging your arm around like a sleepwalker, and now you’re fighting a war with me?”
“We were going to have a baby, and now we’re not. I’m not going to let that go.”
“You want a family, Violetta? Or are you going to die for what you can’t get back? Before this is over, Secondo Vasto is going to burn, and my wife will not be in the fire.”
I am not an object. I am not a prized possession. He cannot protect what we have by putting me in a locked box and keeping the key handy. No.
“When Gia shot you…” I speak slowly so he understands every fucking word. “I watched you die. My mind replayed it a hundred times, and a hundred times I was helpless to pull you out of that pool and save you. They took away my faith in myself, then they took away our child. If they kill you while I’m not there to do everything I can to stop it… What you’re not getting is that it’s over. I’m over.” My hands are up now, fingers curved, pleading with him to just hear me. “If we’re not side by side, I’m going to go insane.”
“But you’ll be alive.” He takes my wrists. “This is not negotiable as long as you’re a target.”
He’s too definite. This is the man who shoved me into a car and forced me to marry him. The same guy who threw me over a table and told me he’d wait to fuck me until he decided I wanted it badly enough; who shot a man for me; who dies protecting me.
I have reached the limit of my influence over him.
“What if we get the crown?” I say. “Now. Today. Then it stops being my inheritance.”
“And what will you expect then?”
“Damiano tries to get it from you.” I shrug. “You win the war easily because everyone follows the crown, and we decide whether to stay and make babies or run away and make babies.”
“We will get the crown.” He lets his fingers slip along my wrists so they can weave in mine. “I’ll take care of Damiano.” He squeezes my hands and holds them to his chest. “Not you,Forzetta. Say it for me.”
“You will take care of Damiano.” I can say it. I can even believe it. He lays his palms on my jaw, and I put my hands over them before reciting the names he’s skipped. “And Dr. Farina. And Gia. Right? All of them?”
“All of them,” he whispers as his thumb brushes my lower lip. “I will bring you their heads.”
His bloody promise enters my system like a drug. I gasp from the power of it. My cheeks get prickly hot, my heart thwacks against my ribs like a playing card clipped to a bicycle spoke, and my lips are drawn to him as if they’re solely responsible for sealing this deal.
He meets me halfway, leaning into the car and folding me into a kiss that defies gravity and reason. It’s a kiss of agreement, that when our tongues meet, so shall our minds. We share an idea of vengeance and justice. We sign a contract to trade our souls for satisfaction, for each other, for a thousand more kisses just like this one.
Connected at the mouth, we agree that murder is the way forward.
* * *
Santino drivesthe Alfa Romeo east. Our shadow precedes us like dark sentinel, scouting the highway at sixty-five miles an hour.
“When we get it,” Santino says, “we go back. You stay at Torre Cavallo, and I will gather everyone at the church.”
