Page 87 of Mafia Queen
When I open my eyes, I’m trapped in a room of glass, looking over my world in three hundred sixty degrees. The rain, the burning bridge, and the country beyond it. My home city in the valley. The lawn and the people scurrying around it. The gate that opened to let the limousine inside.
“Violetta.” Loretta’s disembodied head breaches the floor, then the rest of her rises.
Santino left me with her when I was a blood-covered American girl who tried to run, but was nearly captured instead. She fed me and gave me a place to rest. She tried to tell me things I ignored.
“What happened out there?” I demand. “Why did you kneel?”
“I don’t know.” She sits on one of the benches that line the room. “I had to.”
“Santino told me about this. It’s a mass delusion. That’s all it is, and it’s distracting. Now everyone’s dusting off their pants when we should be getting the hell out of here and finding him. We need to take this entire city apart brick by fucking brick. I’m sick of waiting here—eating, sleeping, pretending everything’s okay—while my husband is somewhere getting his fingers cut off. I can’t bear it!”
My fists are white-cap tight, shaking in front of my chest, ready to punch through any stone wall that separates us before they pulverize whoever built it.
“I wish he was here,” I say, dropping my hands.
“I know.”
“I can’t…Whatever this is…with the crown…I can’t do it without him.”
“You have to. You’re the queen now, and everyone knows it.”
Overwhelmed, I sit on a bench on the opposite side of the room from her. “I’m not. I’m just a regular girl, and I’m scared.”
“Sure, you are.” Loretta sighs and leans back on the uncomfortable seat. “When I met you, right…” She gets up and points out the window to a house on the side of our mountain. “Right there.” She taps the glass twice. “You had blood all over you and a little bit of maybe brain in your hair, and I said right away…pfft. ‘She is nothing. Poor Santino, with this…nothing. She doesn’t even have the sense to be frightened.’”
“You didn’t let on you felt that way.”
“I was being a bitch, and I knew it. He was never mine.” She sits on the bench, closer now. “You learned about the gods and goddesses in school here, yes?”
“Zeus and shit? Yeah.”
“Like Athena, goddess of war?” After I nod, she continues. “The Greeks carved Athena’s face to look like a man. They put breasts on a man’s body. But our war goddess, Minerva…she was a woman. She was fierce, and feminine, and mad as vinegar. That was you that day, and when he took you back, I realized that. I said, ‘One day, she will be queen.’ And here you are.”
She’s saying I’m a queen, but queens don’t feel small and incapable without their king.
“I didn’t think I’d let myself love him this much,” I admit, and she nods.
For a second time, light flashes on her face. The sound that follows is not thunder, but a scream.
25
VIOLETTA
I burst into the kitchen, Loretta following close behind. The door out of the kitchen is open, letting in the wind and windswept raindrops.
Nazario Corragio and his driver are in the same position I left them in. Celia’s holding a coffee pot, but not moving to pour it or put it down. Gennaro is stock still and Carmine is the same, but shaking his head slowly. They’re all looking down, and I follow their gaze.
The crown is on the floor.
“What the hell happened?” I ask.
The consigliere shrugs and turns to Celia, making atskto the espresso pot. She shakes the bees from her head and pours.
“Dario,” Gennaro says, coming back to himself. “He tried to get the crown. Steal it.”
I pick up the crown, careful not to touch the nail. The driver watches me, wide-eyed, and makes the sign of the cross.
“What?” I ask, putting it back in the box.
