by CD Reiss
Copyright © 2021 by Flip City Media Inc.
All rights reserved.
CD Reiss is a trademark of Flip City Media Inc.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. I made up the characters, situations, and sex acts. Brand names, businesses, and places are used to make it all seem like your best real life. Any similarities to places, situations or persons living or dead is the result of coincidence or wish fulfillment.
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Paige Press
Leander, TX 78641
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Ebook:
ISBN: 978-1-953520-69-2
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Print:
ISBN: 978-1-953520-70-8
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Editor: Cassie Robertson at Joy Editing
Cover: CD Reiss
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The crown was hand forged by Leonidas Moustakas of Adam’s Forge. https://adamsforge.org/
Contents
About The Book
Prologue
1. VIOLETTA
2. VIOLETTA
3. VIOLETTA
4. SANTINO
5. VIOLETTA
6. VIOLETTA
7. VIOLETTA
8. VIOLETTA
9. SANTINO
10. VIOLETTA
11. SANTINO
12. VIOLETTA
13. VIOLETTA
14. VIOLETTA
15. VIOLETTA
16. SANTINO
17. VIOLETTA
18. VIOLETTA
19. VIOLETTA
20. SANTINO
21. VIOLETTA
22. SANTINO
23. VIOLETTA
24. VIOLETTA
25. VIOLETTA
26. SANTINO
27. VIOLETTA
28. SANTINO
29. VIOLETTA
30. VIOLETTA
31. SANTINO
32. VIOLETTA
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by CD Reiss
Paige Press
About the Author
Nonna, I didn’t listen to a damn word you said, because I thought I lived in a different world. Mi dispiace.
Love is not just looking at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
About The Book
An epic mafia romance trilogy from NY Times Bestselling author CD Reiss.
What doesn’t kill you makes you a killer.
* * *
Santino DiLustro changed me. You can’t spend time in bed with the devil without getting addicted to the heat.
* * *
Before him, I was a girl. Innocent and weak.
* * *
Now, I’m a woman. A fighter. A killer.
* * *
I’ll burn the world down for him. Shatter the sky. But I will not break.
* * *
No. I will rise up and destroy whoever dares to threaten what my king has built, because I am forever his queen.
Prologue
VIOLETTA
How long does it take to become a woman? How many moons disappear into the darkness? How many suns climb over the sheer face of the horizon only to collapse on the other side?
The journey to womanhood is not measured in suns or moons, but in decisions counted like money that can never be spent. The account is always at zero, because one choice leads to another, on and on—forever, and ever, and ever—until a girl is lost inside them, looking for her own edges.
Are you here, inside this foreverness of broken stars and cold space?
Santino, I told you to set me free, and you turned those words into your language and made it into a promise of forever. I hated you for it, but then I met you where you were, and the words you made me say in that church turned into the truth.
Lo voglio.
Because of you, I am who I was always meant to be.
Without you, I’m not sure I’ll ever be free, or whole, or finished.
It’s dark here, and heavy, and the pain goes on, and on, and on. You’re supposed to be mine, and I am yours, but you are gone. I am unowned and all that I possess. I am my only companion, and I am a stranger to myself.
Lo voglio.
Lo voglio, Santino.
I do, I do, I do.
But I don’t know what to do.
1
VIOLETTA
FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER
* * *
I am five, which—as my sister has pointed out repeatedly—makes me too young to know how Mamma got a baby inside her. I’m also too little to make my own pastina, brush my own hair, or pour my own milk.
I’m not too little for any of those things. I’m just too little for them to let me.
Today, Raggedy Ann sits in my lap, sulking. The pastina is too hot, and Mamma didn’t put in enough milk to cool it off. The blob of white is shaped a little like a cat. It pushes against the puddle of melted butter that has dots of salt indenting it and a streak of opaque fat in the center.
Normally, I’d feed Raggedy Ann half of my pastina, but it’s too hot for even a doll. We live in a big house and have lots of food. Mamma just opened the milk, so there’s plenty. Papà sells it at the store. But she put it away already, so that’s that.
Raggedy Ann will have to go hungry or burn her tongue. Ever since I tried to brush the red yarn that made up her hair, and wound up pulling out half of it, she won’t do anything that hurts even a little. So no pastina for her.
“Eat,” Mamma commands from behind me, dragging a brush through my hair. My head jerks when she hits a tangle.
I swirl my spoon around the porridge. Sometimes I can get the butter and milk to make a perfect spiral, but not with my head being pulled all over the place.
“Where are my suede shoes?” Rosetta asks, coming into the kitchen from her room.
I remember this scene in English, even though I only spoke Italian then.
“How should I know?” Mamma quickly brushes knots out of the ends.
“Patricia Scotto’s mother always lays out her clothes in the mornings.” Rosetta slides into her chair. Lately, she likes saying things that make Mamma mad. I don’t understand it.
“Because she’s a bored stronza.”
Rosetta gasps. I giggle. Mamma taps the side of my head with the back of the brush.
“Stop catching butterflies.” Mamma yanks the brush down.
“Ow!” I exclaim.
“Cazzo,” she growls at my uncooperative hair. My head’s jerked around again, but in a different way.
“Mamma!” Rosetta exclaims.
With a final snap, my hair is in a ponytail.
“Don’t scold me,” Mamma says, dropping into the chair at the head of the table. “I’m in no mood for that, or Joanna Scotto, or you losing your shoes.” She turns to me and points at the bowl. “And I’m not in the mood to hear you complain you’re hungry later.”
I eat a spoonful of pastina before Mamma starts feeding me like a baby.
She’s been tired since her belly started getting rounder. She told Papà that carrying this baby’s been more exhausting than Rosetta, but not as exhausting as when I was inside her. They laughed. Papino kissed the top of my head.
Mamma’s been short-tempered since Papà got out of the hospital at the end of summer. Rosetta goes to school now, so she hasn’t been able to play with me in forever. It’s been lonely.
“Will Fiore come today?” I ask.
&nbs
p; My best friend plays with me in the alley behind the grocery, and though Sal and Tomas are always watching us, they are more like ghosts, or furniture. They don’t boss and get mad like Mamma does, and they don’t kiss away my hurts either.
“Am I his keeper?” With the flick of a wrist, Mamma answers herself. No. She is not.
Just then, a movement by the stairs catches my eye.
“Papino!” I cry, jumping out of my chair. “Buongiorno!”
By the time I get to the kitchen doorway, he’s already there, crouched down with his arms ready to fold me inside his warm embrace. His shirt smells like spicy things, and his moustache tickles my cheek.
“Il mio soldatino,” he coos, calling me by my nickname: little soldier. He reaches out another arm and pulls Rosetta into his embrace. She’s stiff next to me as if she doesn’t love him anymore… which is fine with me. I have enough love to take her place as favorite.
After kissing both our heads, he stands. Mamma waits with a smile. He takes her jaw in one of his big hands and pulls her into a kiss.
“I can’t find my suede shoes,” Rosetta interrupts, and is ignored.
“How is my son this morning?” Papà puts his hand on Mamma’s belly. Usually, you can’t really tell it’s changed unless you know, but when he does that, it’s as if she’s huge.
“Don’t try to distract me,” she says.
“How would I do that?” He goes in for another kiss, but she holds him back.
“Girls,” Mamma says, “get ready. Violetta, put a jacket on. Rosetta, I don’t care which shoes you wear, but both of you, be at the door in ten minutes.”
We rush, leaving the half-finished pastina for Mamma’s helper, Carlotta, to clean up when she comes in the afternoon. Rosetta yelps when she finds one suede shoe and gets lost in her deep closet to find the other.
“Come on!” I say to Rosetta, my doll and favorite hooded sweatshirt dragging on the floor.
“I’ll be right there!”
I can’t tell time, but it feels as though it’s been too long. The sounds of shoes being flung around comes from deep inside the darkness of her closet.
“Ah!” Rosetta cries, as if she’s found her second shoe.
There’s yelling from downstairs. I panic. I don’t like getting yelled at, so I run down, jacket dragging behind me.
Mamma and Papà are not by the front door. They’re in the kitchen, where bowls of pastina are now too cold to eat, talking in that way that’s like yelling but also whispering at the same time. They’re standing close and touching. So that’s confusing, because they look like they love each other, but they’re also very mad at the same time.
“Santi’s taking care of other business tonight,” Papino says. “We can go out tomorrow.”
“He’s not even twenty, and you act like he’s the only man you have.”
“DiLustro fights like a dog. That’s why I chose him for the ‘mbasciata. Dinner can wait.”
“You chose him to protect power.” She points at him. “And you didn’t consult me.”
“This argument again? Over a dinner out? Come on.”
“If you find yourself dead, I’m in charge and that deal is off.”
Papà’s voice gets smoother and softer. “I will take you to an anniversary dinner for the ages…tomorrow night.” Tenderly, my father brushes my mother’s hair off her face. “I swear on the crown.”
Mamma scoffs, and a smile teases the corners of her mouth. Her anger seems thinner. “You can only swear on what’s yours.”
“I swear on you then.” He brushes his lips on her cheek. “I swear on our children.”
“You can swear on all the inventory I have to do today. That’s yours. Then you can swear on dinner at La Lavagna. Tonight. Or you’re going to have to find love with your right hand for a long time.”
I don’t know what that means, but it seems to break his resistance.
“Fine. Tonight. Happy anniversary, my love.” He gets close again. I love when they’re like this. I don’t understand what they’re saying half the time, but it doesn’t matter. Their body language tells a story of love. “Sal can take the girls. Let’s you and I spend the hour alone before…”
I don’t hear the rest, because Rosetta’s feet clop-clop down the stairs in suede platforms. Mamma turns and sees me standing there, then my sister approaching from behind me.
“Girls,” Mamma says, shifting away from our father. She stands in front of the hall mirror and pins on a purple hat with a black ribbon. “Your father and I are going out tonight. Grab what you need to spend the night at Nonna’s.”
Rosetta stomps upstairs, personally offended at being pawned off. That’s dumb. Spending the night with Nonna means hot chocolate and all the biscotti I can eat, even if it ruins dinner.
As I’m turning to follow Rosetta, I catch sight of my mother looking at herself in the mirror, and I have to stop, because she doesn’t look like herself. She’s different. Everything about her. I don’t recognize her stone-faced expression, the matte sheen of her white skin, the chiseled nose. She’s not a dead version of herself—she is a version that was never alive.
Her eyes shoot to me, and she’s back to her flush, living self.
“Sciò!” She shoos me away, and I run.
By the time I get to the top of the stairs, I’m mentally deciding which pajamas to bring, and the strange mother looking in the mirror isn’t even a memory.
2
VIOLETTA
NOW
* * *
“Is your husband dead?”
My mind is cluttered with the dead, but I’m an American woman, and in my culture, we learn about life and death from movies. There, the dead come back to the living and offer advice, comfort, or permission to seek vengeance. Sometimes you can see through them, and maybe they glow a little or their color is washed out. Sometimes they’re just the actor in an unusual place, and their loved one wakes up inspired to do a new thing.
My education in the habits and power of the dead is a lie.
The Santino in my mind is just a product of my effort. It’s not him, or his soul, or his will. The spell I cast is no more powerful than the imaginings of a desperate woman.
In my half-consciousness, I try to conjure my king with a prayer to the only god whose presence I feel.
Hail Pain
Holy Agony
Smile upon my sacrifice
And fire, fire, fire
I can’t think in clear sentences, and pictures flip through my mind as if Zio Guglielmo is doing his best to make me crazy with the TV’s remote control at the end of a long day. It’s after dinner, and he’s in the recliner, too tired to make a decision. Too wired to go to sleep and let me watch Supernatural in peace. It’s a ball game, the news, paper towels disappearing a red splatter, one of the Law and Orders, Santino’s smile, reciting every step of our plan, Gia looking up at me from poolside, my husband thrown back from an impact to the chest, swallowed by cool, clean water one final time.
“Mrs. DiLustro?” The same urgent voice from the other side of a long, dark tunnel. “I need to know, is your husband dead? Santino DiLustro? Does he still walk the earth or no?”
Walking. Falling back. Splash. Swallow.
“He swims,” I say, but I’m not sure if the words make it past my lips.
A part of me wakes up and separates itself from the sleeper, the groggy, the mind moving as if it’s underwater, and that part has questions.
Who’s asking?
Why do they not know?
Why do they care so much?
Why do I smell incense?
The left side of my face is bursting. The nerves on the surface stretch from the fluid gathering underneath the skin, screaming for release. The pressure is too much.
I’m going to throw up, and that’s when I become more conscious than unconscious, because a person can choke on their own vomit, and I’m not ready to die.
Knowing that is new.
Was I even con
scious of a will to live a moment ago?
When I open my eyes, the dim light only enters one. The other is swollen shut, but through the fog, I can make out a blurry, dark blob in the center of flickering yellow light. A head. A man. The voice.
I am sitting. My wrists lay on the arms of a chair. I can’t move them.
“Mrs. DiLustro.” He has the voice of an old man, and his breath stinks of fermented plaque. “I need to know—”
“Who are you?”
“Father Alfonso.” His reply is slow and drunken. “I officiated your wedding to Santino DiLustro.”
“Asshole.” I blink hard. Breathe in the incense. Scratch a sudden itch on my nose and cheek with an overly rough right hand, then lift my left off the arm of the chair.
Okay. So my arms are weak. Not tied down.
Itches attack my face. When I try to scratch my left eye, it tingles then explodes in pain like an afterthought.
“I cannot commit a sin,” Father Alfonso says. “Please. Tell me if your husband has died.”
