The house has an old-world elegance that makes sense for Matteo, fits him perfectly. Mischa’s house was cold and engineered and showy. Matteo’s cream-colored house is sprawling and gloriously asymmetrical, like a typical historic villa which was added on to over the generations. It’s dripping with wooden ornamentation – spindles, elaborately carved friezes, decorative brackets that hold up the projecting eaves. There is a tall tower in the middle; Matteo uses it as a guard tower.
I am exhausted the morning after my wedding, and sore all over, but I still want to help cook for the reception. Alonza keeps shooing me out of the kitchen, though.
“Go, go. Not the day after your wedding! You look tired,” she says in Italian.
I’m a little hurt. I thought my cooking skills were excellent. Are they not good enough for Matteo’s extended family?
And for that matter, she looks tired too. She’s been looking more and more tired these days, and I should have noticed. I am going to talk to Matteo about it first thing tomorrow, once the reception is over. Is she one of those old-world types who doesn’t believe in doctors? We’ve got to do something for her.
But I respect her wishes, and instead of spending the morning in the kitchen, Matteo gives me a tour of the house and gardens. He’s made a big show of having a team of maids there. I can’t even carry my plates into the kitchen, which makes me laugh.
“I don’t mind cleaning up after myself,” I tell him. “I just didn’t want to have to clean a ridiculously huge mansion by myself.”
“You will never lift another plate.” His gaze is dead serious, as if he would slay the fool who tried to make me pick up my own dinnerware.
“Can I lift my own fork, or will someone be feeding me?” I say cheekily.
That earns me an evil grin. “You’re sassy. I like that.” Matteo brushes my cheek with his knuckles. “You know why? Because sassy girls get spanked.”
I wink at him. “Oh, but how will you punish me?” And that earns me a hot, lingering kiss, with his tongue probing my mouth with firm insistence. He tastes of sugared coffee, and the kiss goes on and on.
Finally he pulls away with a little groan. “We have to get dressed for the reception, which means I don’t have time to throw you down on the bed and punish you like you deserve, my princess. But don’t worry, I have a very long memory.”
He called me princess. Just like that vague, sensual dream I had the first night I met him, when I imagined myself being claimed by my Italian prince. It’s like my subconscious knew that he was there, and that he was the one for me, long before I did.
I am happy with him. I am actually happy here. One last thing hangs over my head – the truce agreement – but I want to enjoy myself for just a little while with my loving new husband before I force myself to face that tragic reality.
He selects my dress for me, a Versace summer frock splashed with bright color. He’s wearing a dove-gray suit with a silk shirt.
We head over to the reception, which is in a private hall near town. The room is filled with flowers, and musicians on a stage are playing classical music.
There are easily a hundred people there. Nieces, nephews, second-, third- and fourth-cousins. The Russians and Italians mostly keep to their own sides of the room, but they’re treating each other with cautious respect.
Evalina, Feodora and Tania are there, with their husbands. The three women come to greet me when we arrive.
Tania hugs me, and I hug back. She nudges me with her elbow. “We’re all dying to know. How was the wedding night?”
“Tania!” I blush a little. “It was…you know…you saw the sheets. How embarrassing.”
“But really, we want details,” Evalina says with a naughty wink. “Was there butt stuff?” This earns her an affectionate smack on the arm from Feodora.
“Ignore her. She’s shameless.” Evalina shakes her head chidingly. Then she loops her arm through mine. “But was there?”
“You guys are terrible! Maybe, someday, if you pour enough wine down my throat, I will tell you. You bunch of perverts.” But I like them all so much.
As we gossip and I deflect their embarrassing questions, I start to pick up on some underlying tension, though. They’re weirdly strained, and doing a mostly good job of hiding it. Why? Is it because half the people here are their mortal enemies? When I ask them if everything is all right, they just brush it off.
After a few minutes, Matteo fetches me so we can go accept what feels like an endless stream of congratulations in Russian and Italian. When my father strides toward me, I go tense, but Matteo puts his arm around my shoulders.
“I’m here. He can’t touch you,” he says. My father glares and thrusts out his hand to me, with a curt, “Congratulations, Natasha.”
I just look at him, refusing to take it. “I know what you did,” I say coldly. “You tried to have me killed. You are no father of mine.”
His lip curls in scorn. “You’re no better than your mother.”
I meet his gaze with a sarcastic smirk, because I know how much he hates being defied by a woman. “Thank you. That is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
My father lets out a roar of fury and lunges forward, fist raised. The next thing I know, he’s on the ground and Matteo’s hands are on his throat. A crowd gathers around, and the two men are pulled apart. Mischa and Arkady rush forward, bellowing. Mischa jabs a fat finger at me accusingly.
“I knew she wouldn’t work out! She’s been married to you one day and she’s stirring up trouble!”
I feel a chill run through my veins as Mischa glares at me. Matteo promised me that all this would be over as soon as we got married, but I suddenly realize that it will never be over. I can see it in Mischa’s eyes – he won’t be satisfied until I’m dead.
“Any man who lays a hand on my wife is lucky still to be breathing,” Matteo snarls. “And Grigor won’t be lucky twice.”
He apparently broke Grigor’s nose, so Grigor wasn’t that lucky. He staggers off, blood pouring down his face, cursing viciously in Russian. When his dark-haired wife rushes over with a napkin, he shoves her aside violently, and she cringes. All this time, I hated her for helping him to kidnap me, but I see now that she’s terrified of him. What choice does any woman have in this family, if she is unlucky enough to marry the wrong man?
Matteo puts his arm around my waist and hurries me away. I’m shaking with tension, and now the crowd is muttering angrily amongst themselves.
“I’m sorry, Matteo,” I say. And I mean it. “I don’t want to cause trouble for you. It’s just hard for me even to look at that man, knowing what he tried have done to me.”
He rubs his face wearily. “Next time put on your political-daughter face and don’t give him an excuse. But it wasn’t your fault. This goes deeper than you, Natasha. It’s something I’ll have to deal with myself, soon.” A little jolt of terror shoots through me when he says that. He means he’ll have to fight Mischa.
The families were starting to mingle earlier, but now they’ve pulled back apart, two angry groups with a line drawn down the middle.
And all of a sudden, a voice rings out. An older woman with a Russian accent. “Enough!” the woman bellows, and she climbs up onto the musicians’ stage. “You. Go!” she bellows.
The musicians flee as if their lives depend on it, leaving behind their instruments. And Alonza climbs up on the stage. She walks over to stand next to the other older woman.
“Holy hell. That’s Devora, Mischa’s grandmother. Alonza hates her guts.” Matteo stares at them in astonishment.
Devora has the crowd’s rapt attention. “No more fight!” she yells in her heavily accented, broken English. “When the men fight, bad things happen. We lose our children, eh? And things could get even worse. You want the Council here? Is that what you are wanting?”
You could hear a pin drop. Mischa’s face is flushed with embarrassment and anger. It appears as if his own grandmother just very publicly took a dig at the P
eredyshka agreement. I glance over at Evalina, Feodora and Tania, who are standing with their husbands near the stage – and I can’t quite read the looks on their faces. They look…resolute.
And when I sneak glances throughout the crowd, I see the same look on a lot of women’s faces. The men look baffled, the women look grimly determined.
“We can all get along! See, I make friends with Alonza. My former enemy. If we can make friends, you can make friends. And we make a special meal just for the heads of the family. You come eat now. You will talk. Both sides.”
Everyone is just staring at them, stupidly. “Come along now! Eat!” Alonza yells in Italian. And she and Devora climb off the stage, and slowly some of the older men peel away from the crowd and follow them inside.
Matteo looks after them, brow wrinkling. “I should go with them,” he says. “I have no idea what Alonza and Devora are up to, but I need to try to defuse the tension between the groups.”
A sudden icy dread claws at me. “Stay with me. Please,” I say. I see that my three friends’ husbands are still with them. “Their husbands are still with them, see?” I point at them.
He flicks a glance at them, then goes back to scanning the crowd, looking for signs of trouble. “I outrank them. I’m second from the top in this region. My uncle Luigi – you met him earlier – he’s the head capo. The boss of all the other capos. He just went in. I should be in there.” But he squeezes my hand in his, reassuring me.
I see Arkady pacing around outside, looking sullen. His pretty dark-haired wife hovers back nervously, looking at him with trepidation. Poor girl.
The dread is swelling up inside me, pressing against my lungs and making it hard for me to breathe. I don’t know why, but I can’t let him join them. I move in front of him.
“Matteo, I’m not safe without you. Mischa will try something. Right here, today. I feel it. Please, I’m begging you, stay with me.”
He looks down at me, his brow furrowed. “We’ll be all right, Natasha.” He glances at the door where all the men went inside. “I don’t understand what’s happening here, but something just feels off. It doesn’t make sense that Devora and Alonza hated each other a week ago and now they’re best friends. That should be a good thing, but...” He takes a step toward the door.
“How long have Devora and Alonza been fighting?” I say to stall him.
He pauses and looks at me, startled. “What? Oh, decades.”
“What started it?”
“I don’t know if there was any specific thing.” He shakes his head ruefully. “The last time I remember them being friendly is at the funeral of Alonza’s daughter.”
“She lost her child?” I never knew that. “What did her daughter die of?”
“Yes, her first and only child. Her daughter developed an infection after giving birth and never recovered.” He sighs heavily. “It was a time of great tragedy, from what I’ve heard. Alonza’s husband died of heart failure a few months after that.”
Before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “Was Alonza’s grand-daughter a Peredyshka?”
He frowns at me. “Why? What does that have to do with anything?”
I look away. Alonza lost a daughter and a granddaughter all at once. Suddenly, painfully, I understand why Alonza never smiles. Anger flashes through me and makes me reckless.
“Are you not even human?” I demand. “Can you not understand the pain that a mother would feel when her daughter was snatched away from her?”
His eyes go cold and he steps back away from me, and I am sorry to have to confront him like this, but I’m not sorry for standing up for myself and my beliefs.
“I understand sacrifice,” he says harshly. “We all do. I don’t keep my family safe by being ‘human’, as you put it. By being soft. I keep us safe by being willing to do whatever needs to be done, no matter how difficult and painful. It’s not easy for the fathers either, you know, but they do it for the greater good.”
I look away, and the warm happiness I felt earlier fizzles and goes flat.
“Listen, I really need to go inside and sit down with the bosses,” he says impatiently. “It looks bad if I’m not there.” He gestures at one of his men. “Roberto. You will stay with my wife at all times.”
Roberto, a craggy-faced man with a knife slash down his left cheek, nods solemnly.
“I’d like to go inside too,” I say. “I’m worried about Alonza. She’s looking really pale under all her makeup. I was going to talk to you about it tomorrow. We need to find a way to get her to go in for a checkup.”
He barks a laugh at that. “Good luck with that! But yes, I’ll try. Let’s just make it through today first.”
The reception guests all look uneasy, their faces mirroring my feelings. They’re gathered together in little knots, talking in low voices. Matteo and Roberto and I walk into the building together – and I am afraid for my husband, but I don’t know why. Couples are walking by the tables of food, picking at the hors d’oeuvres and sipping glasses of wine or champagne, keeping a wary eye out. Conversation is at a low, quiet buzz and the air has that crackling feeling that happens just before a storm sweeps through.
Inside the reception hall, I see Alonza and Devora standing across the room from us. They’re outside a closed door to the left of the entrance, outside a room where I assume all the bosses are eating their special meal.
Alonza’s overdressed for the heat, wearing a bulky cardigan. She and Devora are talking intensely. How are they talking to each other? Does Devora speak Italian? I know she speaks some English, but Alonza doesn’t, and I didn’t think Alonza spoke Russian. They’re plotting something together.
Something is nagging at me. Today, as we walked around Matteo’s new property, he told me a little bit about the problems they’ve been facing – the raids on warehouses and trucks, and how Mischa found out that his own son-in-law was betraying them, but then after Mischa “took care” of his son-in-law, there were still more raids and arrests in their organization.
Mischa’s son-in-law.
Alonza’s daughter. There’s a puzzle-piece missing from this picture. Everything ties together somehow.
Matteo starts to head into the room where all the men are eating together. Alonza watches him pull open the door, and there’s a look in her eyes that freezes my blood. Hate. She hates her own nephew.
“Matteo!” I call after him.
He turns around, leaving the door open. There’s an edge of impatience to his voice. “What? Roberto will keep you safe. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
One of the men inside the room is having a coughing fit, and someone passes him a glass of water.
“No! Don’t go in there!” I cry out. “Just don’t!” I don’t know why I’m panicking, but something’s wrong.
Roberto looks mildly surprised, and several people glance over at us.
Matteo stalks over and pulls me away from the door by the arm. He leans down, his eyes blazing with fury. “Don’t ever tell me what to do!” He grinds out the words. “Ever.”
Shocked and hurt, I fall back a step and blink away tears, even though I know that I just undermined him in public and I shouldn’t have done that.
And Alonza slaps him across the face so hard that his eyes water. “Don’t you speak to your wife like that!” she shouts in English. “You men. I’m sick to death of you men.”
Matteo lets go of my arm and looks at her in astonishment. “You speak English.”
“I always have. Fool.” Her lip curls in utter contempt.
The man who was coughing turns red and clutches at his throat, and other men in there are coughing too. There’s shouting and crashing and overturned chairs.
Alonza and Devora exchange glances of triumph.
Alonza wouldn’t let me in the kitchen with her earlier – because she was poisoning the food.
Now people are rushing into the room where all the bosses are, but I know they’ll be too late. The men are dying. Because Alonza
and Devora poisoned them.
“What else have you lied about?” Matteo glances around the room and then at his great-aunt. His voice is dull and heavy now as he looks at Alonza with great despair.
“Everything,” she says scornfully.
“You would have let me go in there and eat poison. Your own nephew,” he says.
“Every man here. I would like to kill all of you!” Her voice rises to a shout. “My daughter is dead because of you bastards! There was no fever – she killed herself after her child was taken. And this girl’s mother?” She pats my arm. “Another woman, dead, because you men could not stop fighting like children in a schoolyard! And all we women have had to pay the price, to suffer for generation after generation!” Her voice bounces off the rafters, and I look around and see that all the women have come inside now and are nodding in sympathy.
My father comes crashing through the doorway, clawing at his throat, and I gasp in shock. Men are rushing to help him, but foam is coming out of his mouth. The room where all the bosses were eating is chaos.
My father’s wife is standing with the other women, watching, making no move to help.
There’s a crowd of men in front of the room now, and we can’t see what’s happening.
“Did your husband die of a heart attack?” Matteo demands, and Alonza laughs bitterly.
“What do you think? Jackass. I made sure he died in a lot of pain. And why do you think I never remarried? So I would never lose another child.”
“But why now?” he says despairingly. “After all this time?”
She glances over at Devora, whose eyes have gone cloudy with murderous rage. “It is the year of the Peredyshka, and Devora came to me for help so her granddaughter would not be forced to bear a child that would be taken from her. Devora had a daughter taken from her, you know, because of you stupid men and your war!”
“You’re the ones who have been betraying us,” Matteo says slowly. “You were always there hovering around when Nico and I were making our plans – and you understood every word we said. You and Devora were tearing your families apart from the inside. Devora set up her son-in-law so he would be killed – to protect her great-granddaughter.”
Matteo: A Dark Mafia Hate Story Page 17
