Page 52 of Mafia Queen
“It’s dark, but I don’t need light.” He traces the curve below my eyebrow, narrating what he sees as if it’s new to him. “You have a black arch here, and under your eye, it’s thicker and more blue. The yellow spread out around. And the eyelid.” He touches it. “Red. Bright red. Like it’s about to start bleeding if I look at it too hard.” He lets my face go and snaps the cigarette out of his mouth. “It looks like Damiano hit you. He broke what’s mine—the only thing I have that’s worth treating with respect—and he treated you like garbage. He hurt you, and he’s going to die for it. But I have to find him. So you need to go inside.”
He’s yelling by the end, and I’m stunned because I’ve never seen him like this. Sure, he’s been angry, but he’s also shaking.
“What if he doesn’t know?” I ask. “You’re wasting time.”
“He knows. And I know my business.” He flicks the butt against the wall, and it explodes into orange sparks before settling on the ground to smolder.
“Marco is the only father you ever had.”
“Get. Inside.”
“You won’t ever really hurt him enough.”
I’m right. His rage is the tell. He wants to protect me from seeing that he’s hurting someone, but he didn’t expect me to see his failure to hurt. Now he’s juggling what he has to do against who he’s doing it to. A man he despises and loves. A man who took him into his house, then betrayed him.
“Violetta, do not—”
“And you’re not going to let that guy in there really do it.”
As my realization calms me, it increases his intensity. The path before me and the road behind become clear.
“For the last time,” he starts, coming closer.
I duck and run to the little door, swing it open, and enter hell. It’s boiling hot. The stench of sweat, shit, and piss has a mass all its own, but I don’t have time to ask where it’s coming from. Before Mr. Shadows knows what’s happening, I reach for the five-gallon bucket, grabbing the first thing I touch. A crowbar. Fine.
I face Marco. His nose is smashed, and his eyes are swollen mostly shut…the way mine was not long ago.
“Violetta.” He breaks into a bloody smile.
He’s relieved. He thinks I’m going to save him because I’m a woman. That’s incorrect.
I’m going to break him because I’m a woman.
“This is for betraying your king.” I bring the crowbar down on his knee with all my might, and the scream cuts through the thickness of the smell. “And this is for my baby—”
I bring the crowbar down on his head, but it doesn’t land. The man of shadows catches my arm mid-swing while Santino’s halfway between the door and me. Marco’s screaming and writhing as much as the rope lets him. The chair legs tap on the concrete floor from his effort.
“Let me go,” I growl at the man.
He smirks, and inside that half smile are a thousand ways to murder me and not a single feeling about it one way or the other. I realize I’m panting as though I’ve just run as far as I can. I’ve hit my limit.
Santino takes the crowbar and flings it aside. He starts to say something to me, but thinks better of it and decides to face his sobbing uncle. With his foot on the seat of the chair, Santino pushes it over. The tied man’s leg bends in an unnatural angle. I broke it. Compound fracture. Gotta hurt. Don’t care. Not after what he did.
“Talk,” Santino says, then points at me. “Or my wife will be the one to break Gia.”
Mr. Shadows gets between the man on the floor and me.
“You can lead, follow, or get out of the way,” he says in a deep, resonant voice with an accent from somewhere in America. “And we already have a leader.”
Santino’s crouching by his failed father, tapping his cheek in a cross between tenderness and violence.
“Santi,” I say.
He turns to me with his hand on the bloody face. “Forzetta.”
“I’ll wait for you outside.”
He nods, then takes out his cigarettes and lighter with his free hand and gives them to me. I take them.
