Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance

by Watson, Meg

  Roman makes a low sound in his throat like a pouty growl but stands next to me anyway. The line of people files in front of us slowly and I clasp everyone's hands over and over again, accepting hug after hug. After a little while, it sort of becomes amusing to watch my tiny, wrinkled aunties and grandmas grabbing giant Roman around the middle and giving him a big, Italian squeezes.

  At first, his hands went up in alarm when Auntie Adina pinched his cheeks like he was four years old or something. He shot me a disgruntled look but I just shrugged. He wanted an Italian bride, he gets the whole family treatment. But by the 67th time he seems to have gotten used to it.

  For my part, I find his beet-scented relatives to be alarming in their own right. Some have strange accents that mix Russian and southern US into an interesting combination. Some sound southern, and some sound Russian. None sound exactly like Roman though. I cut my eyes toward him sideways during a gap in the line.

  “Why don’t you sound like that?” I ask him.

  “Why don’t I sound like what?” he answers gruffly, releasing a chubby 12-year-old toward the dessert table.

  “You don't sound Russian. You don't have an accent or anything.”

  He shrugs. “What am I supposed to sound like, some cartoon character?”

  “You’re supposed to sound like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, I think.”

  Roman scowls and purses his lips in disgust. “He's Austrian.”

  Uncle John T takes me and kisses me full on the mouth, releasing me with a large smacking sound and exclaiming, “Excellent! Excellent!” while I try not to cringe in revulsion.

  He throws his arms open wide to embrace Roman but Roman snatches one hand out of the air and shakes it firmly instead.

  “Austrian? You’re sure?” I continue, amazed.

  “You must think I was raised in a cave or something,” he grumbles. I flinch, wondering how he picked up on that. “I sound like this because I went to school Pennsylvania.”

  “So, your supposed language barrier… That’s just when it’s convenient, right? Did you learn that at Penn State too?”

  “Philadelphia, actually.”

  “You don't sound like a Philly boy either.”

  He sighs for a long time. Here he is, only about a hundred-fifty hugs in and he's already exhausted. Poor guy.

  “I've been a lot of places. Nowhere long enough to pick up an accent, I guess.”

  “Well it’s just sort of weird, okay? You look like a gangster but you sound like a newscaster.”

  He makes a sound. I look up at him in alarm, but that I see his lips are stretched wide over his teeth. That's laughter? He's laughing? That is probably the weirdest sound I've ever heard.

  “Newscaster,” he repeats, nodding. “That's a good one, Marie. I like that.”

  His arm is up around my shoulder and before I know what's happening, he's pulled me toward him and dropped a kiss onto my forehead. I flinch in surprise.

  His eyes narrow suspiciously. “Don't pull away from me,” he says in a warning tone.

  “You just… You are full of surprises, is all.”

  I want to explain further, but a half-dozen cousins from my mother's side are here, all squealing at once like a bunch of schoolgirls. They want to know when the bachelorette party was and how they missed it. They want to know who Roman is and how I met him. They want to know all sorts of things, and I can't say a damn word.

  But just to be a jerk, I gesture toward my new husband and send them his way. He glares at me in dismay as six gibbering Italian girls descend on him all at once. I laugh quietly to myself at the look of horror on his face.

  “You’re such a beautiful bride,” comes a soft, oily sound in my ear. I wince and take a half step back as Stosh strokes the sides of his mouth thoughtfully.

  “Um, thank you, Stosh. Er, Mr. Menkov,” I correct myself.

  “You can call me Stosh now, my dear! We’re family, after all.”

  He smiles, but there's something about that expression that doesn't travel all the way to those dead wolf eyes. They remain as icy as buttons. Marbles.

  “Well, thank you, Stosh,” I respond politely.

  He nods and slides closer to me again. Too close. So close that I can see the lines on his stained teeth as his tongue traces the ridge of his bottom lip.

  “Yes, family,” he breathes. “I want you to think of me as family, Marie. As close to you as your own husband…”

  My mouth drops open in surprise and I step backward, coming up against a brick wall and stopping short. Roman’s arm circles my shoulder and he holds me steady. Stosh’s eyes leave mine and snap up toward Roman. Maybe it's my imagination, but Stosh seems to shrink a little bit where he stands.

  “I was just congratulating your new wife here, Roman,” Stosh says evenly.

  I see Roman nodding slowly out of the corner of my eye. Despite myself, I'm glad for his strong arms around me, glad for someone else to stand against Stosh’s creepy advances.

  “Well… I wish you every happiness,” Stosh mumbles as he edges away. Roman holds me until Stosh is overcome by that group of my cousins who giggle and roll their eyes at the big blond Russian among them.

  “Thank you,” I mutter, staring up at Roman. I want to be happy, to be satisfied. I want so much for this day to be a joyous one. Can I stare at his scarred and strange face for the rest of my life? Can I really?

  I don’t know. It seems like… I really don’t know.

  He looks down on me thoughtfully, his expression quickly changing to a scowl. I get the distinct feeling he is thinking almost exactly the same thing. “You're going to take a lot of work, Marie. I hope you're worth it.”

  My mouth opens to say something else but someone grabs my hand, pulling it away, shaking it enthusiastically and smiling through bleary eyes. Another relative, somebody older than dirt. I can't even remember her name, but she does seem pretty pleased about the entire operation.

  “Thank you, thank you,” I say for the hundredth time. The well-wishers keep coming, one after another. I shake hands until my arms are numb, and when the first waiter passes me with a tray of champagne flutes, I make sure to grab two.

  It's a new life, I guess. Time to start drinking.

  CHAPTER 11

  ROMAN

  Crowds are unpleasant. In particular, this crowd is like a nest of vipers. Not so much the grandmas and grandpas, more the people in the middle. The young guys with their eyes shifting from side to side, checking each other out. The old guys with not as many ties anymore, whose families have been whittled down to just a few remaining. Those guys can harbor a grudge.

  There's too many people here to keep track of, and I don't like it one bit.

  Not that Marie would notice. There she is again, giggling with her friend Gianna like a couple of high schoolers. She has absolutely no idea what's going on. No idea how much danger she's in. Put her in a pretty white dress and her brains turn to smoke.

  You would think that this week had never happened. She's just standing there in the middle of the room where everyone can see her. Look at that dress, that flowing hair. That rosy blush in her cheeks. Everyone is staring at her, and she seems to love it.

  Stupid.

  If she was smart, she would lay low. Yes, we had to do the ceremony, but we certainly could have snuck out before dinner. Now we’re stuck here in the middle of a few hundred people of which at least a few have decent enough reasons to want to see her or her father dead. At least twice that many would like to see my head on a plate.

  Stupid. Stupid.

  Alek comes up to me with his arms crossed and jerks his chin to pull me away from the two babbling grandmas who are standing in front of me, just gushing some kind of grandma nonsense. I fake a language barrier and walk over to Alek near the caterers’ entrance.

  “Many happy returns!” Alek says, his smile big and stupid.

  “Hilarious.”

  He shrugs and looks around. “Aw, come on, give up the Shrek act for
just one day, would you? It's a wedding. It's our wedding. Try to look a little happy.”

  I shake my head. I'm not in the mood for his jokes.

  Alek takes a deep breath and sighs out his nose. He squints at my… our... Bride? Yeah, I guess that's what she is. He checks her out for a minute and then nods.

  “Well, we could've done a lot worse. I think you should be thanking your lucky stars they didn’t marry you off to one of those bull-looking ladies over there.” He jerks his chin toward the big round table of cousins who all look like they must be part oxen.

  “She’s small.”

  He frowns and then raises his eyebrows. “Small could be good. Small can be fun.”

  “Small could be a fucking liability, Alek,” I remind him. “I'm not a babysitter. And I'm not good at handling, you know…”

  “Delicate things, I know,” he interrupts me. “Or maybe you underestimate her. Maybe she’s tougher than you think.”

  “I doubt that,” I growl, watching her take another glass of champagne off a passing tray. That's five glasses if I'm counting right, and she hasn't even touched her dinner yet. She's going be passed out in short order. Which, come to think of it, is probably a good thing. Less talking.

  “We're going to have beautiful children,” Alek chuckles.

  “Did you have something you wanted to tell me?” I ask sharply. Enough of this time wasting.

  “Yeah, yeah… Keep your pants on, Roman. You physical guys are all so itchy with the trigger finger, you know?”

  I just glare at him. Alek and I may be twins, but he took a different path, studying finance back in Philadelphia and never getting his hands dirty. Alek manages books for at least seven lines of business and somehow manages to always still have a suspicious amount of free time. I swear that he graduated college with a calculator installed up his ass.

  But frankly, he seems to be loving this and for the thousandth time today, I want to punch him right in the mouth. The way he’s looking at her… It’s like there’s not a doubt in his mind. He’s sold.

  “Hey!” I bark at him, jolting him out of his girlie daydream. “Focus, okay?”

  “Okay, okay, keep your shirt on. I didn’t find out much of anything, anyway,” he says finally. “I'm looking at a bunch of people and nobody seems to know anything.”

  “That's impossible.”

  "Not impossible,” he counters, “it's just weird. Everybody’s here, right? All the players from both families… somebody should know something. And yet… nichego. I mean, you are right… It's really fucking weird. Usually somebody would know something about somebody somewhere… But nothing. Like a ghost. Maybe a third party?”

  I cut my eyes toward him. “You really think that?”

  He shakes his head. “No, I really don't. But there's no reason Don Lauro would send guys like that after her. Not when he’s got Nuncio and Paulie and Jimmy just hanging around with nothing better to do than babysit her anyway. Geez. These guys.”

  We stand there for a minute, sucking our teeth and feasting our eyes on these guys. What a bunch of pansies. It amazes me that they’re even still around. What is it, tradition? Nostalgia? They’re a bunch of dinosaurs. They should be extinct.

  “Is there any reason there would be a third-party?” I say, feeling a little bit lost. My understanding of this Chicago landscape is that the Italians and our family keep dancing around the same neighborhood. They take a little land back, and then we take a little land back. They take a little action back, then we take the same action back.

  It's just thumb wrestling, but sometimes it gets a little bloody. But there's no room for the Puerto Ricans or anybody else as far as I know.

  “What about the casino?” I muse. Some of our guys on the west side have been pushing into the loan sharking around the casino by the airport. That can introduce a new element, if the borders were outside this neighborhood, but something about that doesn't feel right either.

  Alek shrugs one shoulder. His eyes won’t leave the far end of the room, and I watch him stare into the crowd with a small smile on his face. He hasn’t stopped watching her, not even for a second.

  “I gotta think it's not that complicated, Roman,” he admits. “I gotta think that maybe we’re missing something…”

  Missing something? That's an understatement. “Okay, like what?”

  He chews his lower lip as his eyes scan the room. Even though he's not muscle, Alek's still pretty savvy about relationships. He can read a room as well as anybody. “Like, maybe you brought something back with you? From Atlanta?”

  I want to object, but my breath freezes in the back of my mouth. Maybe he's got a point. I guess in my line of business sometimes blood gets on you and it doesn't wash off.

  “I highly doubt it,” I inform him, but I know it is possible.

  He sighs for a long time, rocking back and forth on his feet. Automatically, his eyes find Marie again in the crowd. It’s almost like I can see a tiny mirror image of her, reflected in his pupils.

  He scrubs his palm across his face. He's a good-looking guy, still as pretty as the day Mama made us. Unscarred, clean-shaven and he does something to his eyebrows too. Something feminine. Don Lauro probably should have given Marie to him. Pretty people belong together.

  “Well, what can I say. I'll keep my ear to the ground on this, Roman,” he assures me. “Something will shake loose, it always does.”

  I nod slowly, watching Marie make her way across the empty dance floor toward the elevated bride’s table. She's walking slow, holding up the front of her dress slightly with one hand. Already drunk. That figures.

  “I think this will be okay,” Alek says in a low voice, and I know he is talking about Marie. When did he get to be such a romantic? I can’t imagine.

  “It’s not going to be okay, Alek, not at all.”

  “Aw, don’t be like that, brother,” he complains. “Just try it. Try to like it. Try to like her. You do already, I can tell.”

  “I do not.”

  “Yeah, you do,” he needles, elbowing me in the ribs, hard. I forget that he’s as strong as me sometimes, until he does something like that. “You really do.”

  CHAPTER 12

  ALEK

  Marie opens up the door just as I'm coming up the steps. Her hands drop to her sides and those big brown eyes open as wide as saucers.

  “Honey, I'm home!”

  “What… What are you doing here?” she hisses, her eyes shifting left and right, looking for Nuncio or one of those guys.

  I hold the box out in front of me. “We’re moving in,” I explain and gently nudge my way into the foyer. Looking around, I give a low whistle. “Wow, nice place! Roman loves wood floors and lots of windows. He's going to be so excited. Now just stand back for a sec...”

  Pulling the RF detector from my pocket, I start a sweep of the room. Marie follows me with just her eyes, her arms folded across her chest.

  “I really love this wallpaper,” I say as I’m scanning the pictures and the bowl of flowers on the small six-legged table. The small led lights show barely a flicker but I’m not convinced and keep sweeping the edge of the room, around the mouldings and the tops of the doors.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here—”

  “ — Sh.”

  I hear her mouth snap shut and the air puff out her nostrils. Adorable.

  The RF detector flashes once as I walk back to the small closet under the stairs, then flickers back off. Interesting.

  “Alek, I don’t know what you—”

  “Sh!”

  “Fine!” She stomps out of the room, clearly fuming. I can’t even help but smile. She’s really pretty cute.

  Following every wall, I sweep every corner and decorative object, every light fixture and all the heating vents. Something is here, I know it. When I enter the kitchen, Marie growls her disgust and tries to push past me, but I stop her with a hand.

  “Shhhh,” I start.

  “Yeah I know
!” she snarls back. “You want me to—”

  “No wait, I mean it,” I say, holding up a hand. “Listen… do you hear that?”

  Adorably, she squints as though that’s going to improve her hearing. “What am I listening to?” she says in a low murmur.

  “It’s like a hum, like you can barely hear it,” I whisper.

  She listens for a few more seconds and then looks up at me with a startled expression. “Oh!”

  “Yeah,” I nod. I sweep the antenna in the direction of the almost imperceptible sound. It’s coming from one arm of the chandelier. Reaching behind the bulb, I pluck a tiny black node from the fixture and hold it out to her, then drop it on the floor and stomp it into shards under my heel.

  “What the fuck was that?” she stage whispers.

  “That was a camera, Princess,” I tell her, and walk quickly out of the room. She follows right behind me, squeaking her objections.

  “Hey stop! What the… Hey, what are you doing?”

  I twist around, holding up a hand to hopefully get her to stop her chattering. She flinches back, her brow knitting together.

  “Just pipe down,” I growl at her, hoping she gets the clue. Just as she’s about to bleat out another objection, I pull a small disk from behind the ornate picture frame over the fireplace.

  “Oh my God,” she breathes, her eyes wide.

  “Yeah, I don’t think He had anything to do with it. Any other guesses who did?”

  She shakes her head fervently.

  “Guess again, Princess…”

  “No.”

  I shrug. “Fine. Suit yourself,” I tell her and resume sweeping every surface I can find. Before I’m done, I have a small pile of cameras and listening devices in splinters in a baggie and I’m shaking it in front of her scowling face.

  “Still no guesses?” I tease her.

  Setting her jaw stubbornly, she shakes her head but I see the doubt in her eyes.

  “So you have more surveillance equipment than a narc’s minivan and you have no clue as to why?”

  “None,” she pouts.

  “Yeah. Okay,” I sigh. If she’s just playing dumb, she’s really good at it. “So, where do you keep your purse?”