Page 88 of Mafia Queen
“It’s not hot?” he asks.
“Of course not, youtesta di cavolo.” He calls him a dickhead, scoffing and sipping from his coffee cup. “It’shers.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I close the box and latch it. “It’s the same temperature for everyone. It’s a piece of dumb metal. You all need to stop treating it like it’s got magic.”
“Tell that to Dario,” Gennaro says.
“Where is he?” I ask, suddenly panicked that he’s gathering enough men to put me in the basement.
“Ran off,” Gennaro says.
“Like a kitten when the vacuum’s turned on,” Celia adds.
“The rest of the guys chased him but—”
“Why?” I interrupt Gennaro. “Why did he run out like that?”
“When he touched it”—he waves at the box—“he was struck by lightning.”
God save us all from stories about God.
“It’s fuckingthunder and lightning out,” I growl. “And if—by some miracle—a lightning bolt came through the roof without breaking it, then through the second story of this house without making a hole in the ceiling, the floor right here would be black. So stop it. Everybody, cut it out. This crown is magic, but not the way you’re saying. We have the thing Damiano’s coming for, and we can trade it for Santino.”
The consigliere laughs into his espresso, clicking down his cup. “More of this, please.”
“What’s funny?” I ask.
“Do we have a place to talk privately? Or is it all”—he waves at the room with distaste—“gossiping?”
He meanswomen’s space, but I let it slide because he’s old and he brought me the crown.
“If you can get up a flight of stairs.” Maybe I’m not letting it slide as much as I think.
The driver cuts in. “He can.”
* * *
The consigliere holdshis cane against his chest and between his knees as his driver—whose name is Sam—carries him up the stairs and places him in a chair facing Santino’s desk. Sam and Gennaro take opposite corners of the room.
I place the box on a side table and sit where my husband usually sits. The chair is still too big for me, but I don’t feel as small. On the desk to my right, an ivory-faced teak clock with Roman numerals and brass feet ticks away my luxury.
With his cane planted in the carpet between his feet and both hands resting on the brass head, Nazario looks at the old box on the side table and sighs. “I am done.”
“I accept your resignation. Anything else? Because I have to find Damiano Orolio and give him that crown.”
“No,” he says, facing me. “You will not do that.”
“If it gets me my husband back, I will.”
“It will reject Damiano.”
“I don’t care,” I say with dead seriousness, letting him anthropomorphize the crown just for the sake of argument.
He sighs again. “You’re the first one who can truly use it to rule without being subject to a man, and of course…you want to trade it for your husband.Cheironia.”
My Italian isn’t great, but I know irony when I hear it. Outside, lightning flashes and—three seconds later—thunder rolls. Santino is under the same rain, suffering in ways I can’t imagine. I don’t have time to pick apart the paradox between my desires and his superstitions.
“You wanted a place to talk,” I say. “Not gossip. We’re doing neither.”
