Mafia King

by CD Reiss

  I think this is a warning that he’s going to penetrate me. My body heeds the words and rushes liquid between my legs.

  “Prendilo e basta,” he says the same thing in Italian.

  Mostly awake now, I can tell his flat affect means he’s sleeping, not getting ready to fuck me. With a deep breath, I’m aware enough to see the blur of him lying on his back next to me. I put my hand on his arm.

  “Santi,” I say gruffly. I half hope he’s dreaming about sex. I wouldn’t mind a little right now.

  “Prendilo e basta.”

  Just take it is not the same as take it. I’m not rousing a horny man, which becomes even more clear when I move my hand to his chest and I can feel his heart pounding. His arm twitches.

  “Hey.” I get an elbow under me. “You’re having a dream.”

  “Mi fa schifo. I hate it. Non lo voglio.” He’s getting more distressed.

  I hate seeing him like this. Powerless. Afraid. It makes me feel alone without him, and I’m exposed and defenseless, but there’s also a voice in me that hasn’t spoken since nursing school. Right now, it’s given expression through that vulnerability.

  It says I am useful. I am strong. I have power over him that I can use to heal.

  “Santino.” I shake his chest, but his agitation only grows. Fully awake now, I straddle him and cup his face, saying his name again. “You’re having a dream.”

  His eyes open wide as saucers, and his hands grab my wrists hard enough to hurt. I don’t have a moment to struggle or gasp before he’s flipped me onto my back, holding my hands over my head and pinning me to the bed with his pelvis.

  “I will destroy you,” he growls in my face.

  “Santi,” I squeak, then breathe as much as I can under his weight. “Santino.” My pitch drops a little.

  “I will erase you from this earth.”

  “Santino.” I’m more steady now. “Santino.”

  He exhales and blinks. Then shuts his eyes tight and holds them before opening up, conscious enough to finally see me.

  “Cristo.” He lets my hands go. “Violetta.”

  “I’m right here.” I lay my palms on his cheeks.

  He says my name again, but with less shock. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I am so sorry.” He turns his head to kiss my hand, then my wrist. “You’re not hurt?”

  Before I can reassure him, he gets on his knees and whips back the covers so he can see me in the moonlight.

  “I told you,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  When his shoulders relax, I know he believes me, and when he kisses my face, apologizing over and over in two languages, I know he’s awake.

  “What were you dreaming about?” I ask.

  He doesn’t tell me. Instead, he says, “It starts today.”

  We’ve been planning all week, and because I’m part of his thinking, I haven’t made any sudden moves. Haven’t stolen the car, broken a vase, or made a single phone call that would signal an end to the status quo.

  Even in Italy, when I felt happy and unencumbered, I was anxious, and I don’t realize this until I can ask him anything and get a full and complete answer.

  He tells me the deal with the rings, and what the numbers engraved on the inside mean. In the event of his death, he arranged for me to find out what they are.

  I memorize the numbers. I memorize the address and the time of our appointment on my birthday. All this happens in between a plan built around a promise.

  We can go to the lawyer any time, but we’re going first thing Monday morning—the day I turn twenty. My party will be on Sunday night—the last chance to break Gia’s wedding and fix her life, before all eyes are on us.

  At the party, I’ll force Santino’s hand in front of everyone, and he’ll react to keep the peace.

  He doesn’t think it’ll work, but I have to believe we won’t have to resort to the brute force of plan B.

  Celia and I are wrapping braciole when Gia calls from the other side of the world.

  “Happy birthday!” she says.

  “That’s tomorrow.”

  “Oh, these time zones always confuse me.” I hear the bustle of a café and the honking of car horns behind her.

  “The party is today,” I add. “So it feels like my birthday.”

  “I wish I was there.”

  Personally, I don’t. I’m glad she’s thousands of miles away. While she’s away, I don’t have to worry that she’ll try to stop us, or scuttle the plan by trying to help, or blow the secret.

  Somehow, planning ways to buy out her arranged marriage right in front of her seems more offensive than doing it behind her back, but it relieves me of having to treat her like a full human with agency over her decisions—because she isn’t, and I hate the practical, real world truth of that.

  “When are you coming home?” I ask.

  “Tomorrow night.” She pauses. “Dami told me it’s going to happen right off the plane.”

  It means the wedding. At least he told her himself. He’s braver than I expected.

  “Why so quick?”

  “I don’t know, Violetta,” she snaps. The mood swings I observed in the back of the Lincoln are still happening, and I don’t blame her.

  “Are you okay?” I say.

  “I guess.” She doesn’t sound convinced, but she’s definitely trying. “He seems all right when we talk on the phone, and I remember why I liked him in the first place.”

  So they’ve been talking. That’s actually good. It shows an investment on Damiano’s part that’ll soften the blow if I fail to stop this atrocity.

  “He understands me,” she adds.

  “Does he?” This is not what I expected to hear at all. The women of Secondo Vasto do not strive to be understood. They bend to their husbands’ needs. “Like how?”

  “Like…” She stops, pausing to think about it for so long, I fear the line dropped. “We make plans together.”

  The wedding, of course. He dictates that it has to happen whiplash-fast—inserting himself into the family just as Santino and I get the crown—then probably agrees to all the other plans a bride makes.

  “I’ll be there for you,” I say. “Whatever you need.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I do.”

  “That makes me feel so much better.”

  She tells me her departure time, and together we do the math of time zones, and I realize she’ll be landing as Santino and I will be driving to the lawyer’s—where we will pick up the one thing that can keep her from being sold into marriage.

  I don’t tell her I might be breaking my promise to her by about an hour so I can keep a promise I made to my unborn daughter. If everything goes perfectly, I can keep both.

  26

  SANTINO

  “Coming through!” Violetta chirps like a bird and slithers like a cat around the kitchen’s obstacles.

  She salts the water, tests the sauce, and pours another glass of prosecco in one near-fluid motion. Violetta is like the ocean’s shifting waves. She is the stars dancing around the moon.

  Watching my wife work the kitchen for her birthday party, knowing we planned the most important piece of it together is a joy I never could have imagined.

  When Emilio promised me one of his daughters, I gave up on the idea that my family life would ever be normal. I was right. My life with her isn’t normal. It’s much better than that.

  After everything she’s been through, all the upheavals and secrets and lies, the frustrating, maddening days, Violetta is earth in the kitchen and fire in stilettos.

  When Celia’s out of the kitchen for a moment, I come up behind my wife and slide my hands around her body. One sneaks under her blouse and the other strikes out for an olive like a snake. She slaps my hand, but I keep tight on the olive and feed it to her. She smells like basil and yeast, like Napoli, like home.

  “I want to fuck you on this counter right now.”

  She reaches for th
e olives. “You can if you help me clean it first.” She feeds an olive to me over her shoulder.

  “I’m going to clean it with your bare ass.” I savor the salty brine.

  “We have a job to do tonight,” she whispers. “Keep your mind on it.”

  A small herd of children stampede into the kitchen, followed by a group of her family. Violetta’s six-year-old cousin, Tina, wriggles between us to grab a handful of olives. My wife swats her away, but slips Tina a smaller bowl of sweet black olives. The kids disappear to stick them on their fingers.

  She kisses me once and attends to her guests. Violetta and Celia pass out jobs to our zias and nonnas, who joke about us having only one kitchen. This is my wife’s first gathering as the matriarch, and she’s already a master.

  If we get past this, she will have many more.

  She’s more comfortable than I have ever seen her. She’s the dream hostess every man wants in a wife, and I wonder if she’d be the same if we’d met under other circumstances.

  “Re Santino.” Zia Madeline, the woman who raised my wife, kisses each of my cheeks. “You look well.”

  “All Violetta’s fault.”

  “And I see she did the antipasto herself.” She points toward the tray where the black olives have been carefully placed hole-side-up so the children can stick their fingers in more easily.

  “She is the woman of the house.”

  Behind her, Violetta rushes to her zia, who scoops my wife into a big hug. They chatter as I answer the door for Angelo and Anette, who arrive with Lucia, Tavie, and his girlfriend, Diana. As soon as I greet them, Anette asks me where Violetta is.

  “Why does everyone ask me for my wife?” I spread my arms wide. “Am I no longer good enough?”

  “Don’t feel bad, Santi. Only your family knows you.”

  “May you choke on an olive.”

  Anette pops one in her mouth and heads for the kitchen, catching Violetta as she’s bringing out fresh wine.

  Marco comes in after his wife’s family, patting down his combover. He looks lost without Paola and Gia, but holds his head high as if he has a place in the pecking order—ten kilos of pride in an eight-kilo suit. He nods to me like an equal, and I make a conscious decision to shake his hand instead of punch his face.

  All this trouble is because of his betting habit.

  “Congratulations,” I say. “I hear Gia’s going to be married when she gets back from the other side.”

  “No need to waste time,” he replies with a shrug. “Like you did. Just go.” He raises his hand to indicate Violetta, who is perfect and mesmerizing despite rushing around. “My sister-in-law told me your wife was buying a pregnancy test.”

  “So she was.” I offer nothing more than a satisfied smile.

  “Good,” Marco says, taking that for a yes. “It all turns out in the end.”

  “It can turn to shit in the end too,” I say, looking down at him. “And if you’re not careful, you’ll step in it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  It means that with his neglect and disdain, he turned me into shit, and it’s only a matter of hours before I mess up his fucking shoes.

  “My wife says I shouldn’t write fortune cookies.” I hold up my glass. “Salute.”

  We clink and he takes his leave to poke his pinkie into the hole of a black olive, eating it off like a child. What a joke of a man.

  Violetta charms Tavie and his girlfriend with a story about an afternoon we had on the beach in Italy. Our eyes meet and her cheeks warm in the most beautiful way, as I remember the way her naked body looked under the blazing Napoli sun. I wonder how much of that story she disclosed. Angelo charms her in return with a story about a fish. Zio Guglielmo and Zia Madeline laugh with her over the children trying to steal bread with their olive-tipped fingers. My second cousin, Oriana, passes her baby to Violetta, who rocks and coos with her.

  I didn’t know my mother, so I don’t miss her, but in that moment, I feel the empty place where she should have been.

  Beside me, Marco is replaced by Violetta’s zio Guglielmo.

  “She looks happy,” he finally says.

  “She is.”

  We are quiet once more, as I doubt whether I have the right to speak for her.

  “Thank you for raising her so beautifully.” I raise my glass in toast to him.

  “Anything is possible in America.” He raises his own glass, and we toast the country where dreams meet reality.

  Violetta clinks her glass of prosecco to announce dinner is ready.

  The lights are out and the little fires flicker over the red script of Happy Birthday Violetta. My wife glows, then during the last stanza of the song, she looks at me and smirks.

  It’s now, and she’s ready.

  “Make a wish!” Elettra cries, eyes big with her own wishes. Her mother brought the cake and Violetta gave them the 2 and 0 candles for the top.

  Violetta blows out her candles, and I know she has no wish. She has a demand that has turned into a plan. Everyone applauds and the lights go on.

  I stand and raise my glass. “To my beautiful wife, Violetta,” I say in Italian. “Who has made me the happiest man in the world.”

  Everyone awws. It’s like a fucking movie.

  “Salute!” I toast.

  “Salute!” everyone toasts back.

  We all sit and Anette starts to cuts the cake, when my Violetta stands and taps her glass with a spoon.

  “I have an announcement to make,” she says in Italian when she gets every last bit of attention.

  She gets a gasp and an uncomfortable titter from my left. It could be that she’s speaking Italian when so much has been said in front of her with the assumption she didn’t. Or it could be that a newly married woman usually has only one kind of announcement to make.

  “My husband, Santino.” She raises her glass to me, and I nod as if I suspect she’s going to surprise them with a pregnancy announcement, and approve by raising my own glass to her. “The man you men all call the king—while we girls pretend we don’t know why…” She looks around and the women giggle. “Is going to pay Marco’s debt so Gia can choose who she wants to marry.”

  Tavie leaps from his seat, shouting, “Yes!”

  The room falls as silent as death. No one will look at me. Outside, even the birds don’t dare to chirp. My house could burn down from the heat of their shock and awe. And in the middle, surrounded by blurred faces of confusion and horror, is my smiling wife, who lifted my world up with a beautiful party in a role she so masterfully played and then destroyed it with two sentences in Italian.

  I sit there as if I’m ignorant, as if I’m almost—almost—impressed by how she manipulated this situation. As if I wish she’d done it to someone else, instead of turning her genius against me.

  So I laugh. I laugh loudly and hard. I laugh so forcefully the others have no choice but to laugh with me lest they show their disloyalty.

  Even Marco—especially Marco—laughs as he’s supposed to. The hardness in his eyes, however, says this will require some smoothing over. I don’t like the way he’s staring at my wife or the glances he casts my way. Marco may have raised me, but once I became a man, it is for my zia Paola I show him respect, and now I will have to lean into that all the more.

  I straighten my sleeves, clear my throat, and make a show of taking a sip of prosecco. Everyone follows, and little by little, order is restored.

  Violetta says nothing as she serves the cake, but she stares at me with a sultry look, challenging me like a beautiful tyrant in stilettos.

  I follow her into the kitchen as the women clear the tables. Children weave between us, sneaking pastries and chasing Armando, who shoots me a few cryptic glances. I grab Violetta’s arm and pull her by the pantry.

  She tries to play coy and runs a finger down my chest. “I know you’re feeling frisky right now, but there’s an entire house full of people who want to play cards.”

  I grab her hand and pin it above
her on the wall. “You are so fucking sexy.”

  “Make him an offer, Santino.” The smirk leaves her face and is replaced by something fierce and earnest. “Go be a king and a saint.”

  “And I’ll bring the devil to bed tonight.”

  Before I can kiss her, she slips past me, back out into the kitchen. Tavie runs in, breathless.

  “Is it true?” he asks, pushing through the women to get to me.

  Violetta returns to the dirty dishes as if nothing has happened. She’s ruthless.

  “Say it’s true!” Tavie shakes me from my brief stupor.

  “Tavie,” I warn, pulling him into a quieter corner.

  “It has to be true, because I’ll kill him if he touches my sister. I swear it on my mother’s life.”

  “Ma smettila!” I shush him. “Never, ever swear like that unless you intend to kill your mother.”

  “I swear it.” The boy points his chin up and scowls. The quiet cousin, who long kept to himself and never made waves, grows before my eyes into the man we joked he wasn’t. “On my mother’s life, I swear it.”

  “Go sit down, Tavie.” I lay a heavy hand on his shoulder. This is not his fight. “Go.”

  “Zio?” My niece, Lucia, stands behind me with her cousin’s baby on her hip, too young to know when she should be silent. “Is it true, Santi? Are you going to do it?”

  All the women stare at me expectantly. No one hushes the girl or scolds her for asking such questions. They want to know. This affects them, and it’s their business.

  “These are matters for the men,” I say, then leave out the back before I can see their reaction. As I slide the glass closed behind me, muffled sounds of kitchen life resume.

  Outside, the men gather for a quick smoke before the cards are dealt. Time to act as though I’m putting out a fire my wife started without me.

  As soon as I arrive, every man nods in respect before he puts out his smoke and silently goes back inside in a great exodus.

  Every man, that is, except Marco.

  He squares off and stares at me, blowing a line of cigar-reek from the side of his mouth, away from my face. I pull a single cigarette from the pack in my pocket and pack it along the box. Nothing is said as I reach for the steel Zippo in my breast pocket, or when it clacks as I open it and we breathe the smack of fresh kerosene. Not a word is said until it’s all back home inside my jacket and I exhale.