Page 72 of Mafia Queen
If she’s brave, she’ll tell them to fuck off and they’ll torture her mad before they believe she isn’t hiding what slipped through their fingers.
My queen is smart and wise and brave.
Is there a more dangerous combination in a woman?
There is not.
* * *
Before they brickedin the entrance, it was as wide as two doors. They have me in a chair on one side. Damiano stands on the other side. Behind him, Gia’s on a green velvet chair. Its plastic covering has cigarette holes through it. I’ve had too long to digest these details. Between the hours of boredom and the split seconds between getting hit, I see everything.
Where is it?one of the Tabonas asks.
My head’s spinning. Past the stars I keep seeing when I’m hit, the faces are no more distinctive than puddles of spilled coffee.
One of them might be Carlo. He killed Elio, my second cousin and a gifted mechanic, when he wouldn’t work for them. Elio built from parts that looked like they came off the factory floor, and he loved Loretta.
Where is it?
They keep asking, and I keep answering.
Non lo so. I’m too disoriented to speak English. The entire language has packed up and left.
It bothers me that I don’t know how much time has passed. We’re in a windowless basement, and I haven’t been fully conscious the whole time. When did I tell Violetta I’d be back? Yesterday? Tomorrow? Is she all right up there on the mountain?
Thank God she didn’t come.
The whole thing was a setup. The people Violetta calls her Z’s tried to warn me when we approached, but I was thick in the head, rushing to get this easy job done so I could move on to finding Damiano at the quarry. I was looking forward to breaking him, taking the crown, then moving on to a life with Violetta.
But my men were dead, replaced by Damiano’s, waving me through the blockade without making eye contact, and closing ranks behind. We were locked into that street before we knew what was happening. Armando was shot, and I had a gun to my head.
I could fight, but I’d lose. That was a deal I was ready to accept.
“I want you to know,” Damiano said, “I don’t need you. I’m happy to kill you. And this time, I’m not going to marry Violetta before I fuck her.”
That was how I got here. Surrender. Hands up. Let me live for the chance to protect my wife. They taped my ankles and wrists together. Threw me down a flight of stairs. But I had hope I could protect her.
This time, by turning my back on her, I’ve done the right thing. She is safe behind a gate for a little longer.
“You’ve done so much for me,” Gia’s voice says on the opposite side of consciousness. “So can you wake up, please? So I can do something for you?”
She’s shaking me and spraying my face with water from an old Windex bottle. I cough, snorting soap.
“Okay, good. Hi!” She sits cross-legged on the concrete. “You okay? Your face looks kind of messed up. I mean, maybe it’s not so bad under the blood?”
“I’m fine.”
“Cool, okay, so listen. You need to tell Dami where the crown is before he goes up there to get it. Because if he has to—”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
“Well, it wasn’t at the lawyer’s. Not in the vault or any of the safes they had. And let me tell you, we looked.”
“Did anyone sign it out?”
She clears her throat, inspecting her fingernails, then shrugs like a teen. “That book got burned up.”
“Cristo Santo. Gia. Listen to me. You can’t be this stupid.”
