Married to the Mobster

by Leighton Greene

  Of course, now I’ve flown once, I’ll be fine next time. I just like to know exactly what to expect. The thing about Finch is, he’s eternally unexpected. After we landed, still without a word to me, he pulled out a sponge bag from his carry-on and showed me it was stuffed full of pills: blue, purple, green, all the colors of the rainbow. Then he handed it to the hostess with a wink. “Enjoy, Jessica,” he said. “Some of the finest shit New York has to offer.”

  She looked thrilled.

  Then more silence in the limo to the dock. The first word he said, in fact, was “Nice,” when he saw the Maddalena. That seemed to break the seal, and he chattered during the whole tour of the boat by the yacht’s captain.

  “You’re talking to me again?” I asked him, when we were left to settle in to the master suite. More champagne waited for us, along with tropical fruits and Italian cheeses. There were roses everywhere, the air sick with their scent.

  Finch cast his eyes downward in a parody of modesty. “You prefer me quiet,” he said in a mock whisper. Then he looked me square in the face. “I’ll quit drugs for you, baby, and I’ll keep my mouth shut, but you can’t deny me your body. It’s my right, anyway—as your husband.”

  “You’ll sleep in the—” I began, making for the connecting door that I knew from Tino went through to a smaller suite.

  But Finch grabbed at me and tugged me to him. “I want you,” he said seriously. “I’ve wanted you for five years, baby, don’t you know that?”

  “Listen to what I’m telling you: You are a hostage, and I’m not going to fuck you. We’ll sleep in separate beds.”

  “I don’t think Tino would like that,” my new husband said softly.

  I grabbed him by the shoulders and stared into his face. “Are you threatening me, angel? If you think you have any power in this situation—”

  “I’m yours,” he says simply. “Don’t you fucking get it, man? I’ve been yours from the second I laid eyes on you, despite your appalling choices in fashion. And speaking of fashion, we should go shopping and get you some good shit. You wanna be an underling all your life, keep wearing polyester suits that give you electric shocks every time you shake someone’s hand. You want to be the Boss? You fucking dress like it.”

  He’d turned on a dime, my angel, my wing-clipped bird, from pliant to bossy, and although I saw the sense in his words, I hated that he thought he had the right to talk to me like that. But even more, I was terrified that someone would hear him saying he wanted me, would realize that this marriage was no punishment as far as Finch was concerned, and would do something about it.

  “I’ve killed men for insulting me like that,” I snarled.

  “Then they fucking died for nothing, baby, ’cause you dress like middle-management at a department store.”

  And then I surprised myself. I laughed.

  He wasn’t wrong, was he? There are things I know and things I don’t know, and one of the things I don’t know is clothes. I can see my outfits aren’t up to scratch, I just don’t know how to fix it. They’re a damn sight better than anything Fuscone’s brainless puppets wear, but they’re still holding me back.

  Most of the Family still sees me as an outsider. If I want to climb the ladder I need to make myself check every box I can. I need the right watch and the right shoes and the right clothes. I need to speak Italian a damn sight better than I do, and I need to be able to pick a bottle of wine because I know it’ll fit the meal, not just because I like the name of it.

  At the wedding, Finch actually sent back the bottle of table wine and asked for something different, some French name I didn’t catch, and specified the 2008—not the 2009. I had to turn my snort of laughter into a cough at the look on the sommelier’s face.

  All these little things a kid like Howard Fincher Donovan the Third takes for granted, because he’s part of that world. And right now that complex, contradictory rich kid is humping away on top of me like he’s a Jersey hooker and I’m his last customer for the night.

  “Fuck, Luca,” he whispers. “I want you so bad. Take me to bed.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I murmur back to him.

  Finch lets out a frustrated moan and bends down to talk right in my ear. “You still worried about the power differential? That’s what makes it so hot.” He’s close to creaming in his booty shorts; I can hear his breath hitch.

  “This isn’t a game,” I tell him. “This isn’t some fantasy we’re living out where we get away with any shit we like because we’re the main characters. Sam Fuscone hates my guts, and he wants me dead, and he wants you double-dead, angel, because you got away from him once already.”

  “Then shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves while we can?” he says. He’s still grinding, like giving me a lap dance is his one mission in life right now.

  I tighten my fingers on his hips, move him back off me so he can’t get any friction. “You think you’re free to enjoy life, baby bird? You haven’t thought about what any of this actually means. You’ve been high since the day we pulled you out of that house with a bag over your head. Someday soon you’re gonna wish I’d killed you that day, when it dawns on you what all this means.” I lift him off me and place him down on the deck so I can get up. “You’re right. The sun’s too hot for me. I’m gonna go take a cold shower. Maybe you should do the same.”

  His mouth drops open and, for once, no words come out of it. He’s leaning back on his elbows, the leaking pink tip of his cock peeking out over the waistband of those ludicrous shorts, breathing hard. His dark glasses are askew under his captain’s hat, and I see those green-gold eyes are narrowing, whether against me or against the sun, I can’t tell.

  “You fucking idiot,” he says then.

  I figure I must have a touch of the sun, because I don’t care when people call me names, not usually, since they’ve done it all my life. But those three words hit me like you wouldn’t believe, and I see red, instantly. “What did you say to me?”

  He gathers himself up off the deck and stands in front of me, shaking. Is it DTs? Is he scared? I wonder. Then he pokes me in the middle of my chest with an iron finger, his mouth trembling as much as the rest of him. It’s not the drugs and it’s not fear.

  He’s furious.

  “You. Fucking. Idiot.”

  I can’t touch him. If I touch him, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m a man of violence, I always have been, but it’s a cold violence, calculated, not this fireball rising up in me, and I’m the only one standing between him and death as it is. But it’s a strange, conflicted feeling: do I want to kill him, or kiss him?

  I just stare at him.

  “Don’t you know I’ve loved you since the day we met?” he says.

  The thought of anyone on this boat overhearing that is like an ice bucket. I take a step back. “I married you because I owed you a debt, and marrying you was the way to repay that debt. It was also a way to get control over your father and his money.” I say it loud and clear so any lurking spies can pick up exactly what I’m saying. “You’re only alive until the Boss says otherwise. Don’t get it twisted, Howie. This is a business deal, nothing more. I won’t ever love you.”

  I pause to see how he’s taking it. He’s pushed the glasses back up his nose so I can’t see his eyes, but I stare at those black shields without blinking. His cock has retreated, at least. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t speak.

  “Dinner is at eight tonight,” I tell him. “I’ll see you then.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  FINCH

  The Maddalena is a big fucking boat, but even so, it has finite space. It’s hard for me to find a place where I don’t think Luca will be able to find me. Not that the fucker will come looking for me, but I don’t want to chance him stumbling over me again.

  God.

  He hit me right in my feelings.

  I didn’t even know I had any left. I’ve chased enough highs to get rid of any of them, or so I thought. But no. A few nasty words and I’m a little
kid again when my sisters told me they didn’t want to play with me that day. Only it felt worse than that, so much fucking worse. Like the day Mom died.

  I push that fucking thought right out the porthole I’m looking through. I try to never think about shit that makes me sad, because it just brings on that black wave, and then I drown. I’m a party boy at heart, and hey, I can handle some guy turning me down.

  In fact, it’s a fucking novelty is what it is.

  No one’s ever turned me down before, and isn’t it so fucking funny that the first guy to do it is my awful wedded husband?

  It’s hilarious.

  I laugh to myself, and then laugh again, because it didn’t sound right the first time.

  I’ve stashed myself away in a lower-deck room; I guess it’s where the crew might sleep, although this one is empty right now. I’ll go back up top soon enough and sleep in the sun for the morning, make sure Luca sees I couldn’t give a fuck about what he said. Then I’ll find something to do in the afternoon. There’s no internet here; not that there couldn’t be, but Tino Morelli is canny enough not to leave a digital trail from his yacht. There are a lot of old movies in the entertainment lounge, a lot of Sofia Loren. I can watch some of those and drink a few bottles of the Cristal they have stocked. Maybe I’ll jerk off later, since my husband doesn’t seem inclined to let me drain my balls around him.

  But for now I’ll just sit here for a while and look out at the ocean.

  It’s a little darker than the blue of Luca’s eyes. It looks calm. Only I know there are things swimming in the depths. Deadly things.

  Fuck, I want so bad to go back up to my room and swallow down a handful of the emergency pills I stashed in the lining of my luggage, where I knew Luca wouldn’t think to look. Even just a couple to take the edge off of things. My heart could relax, let go of the pain.

  But I don’t go up to my room. I don’t even move. I just stay there staring out the window for a while.

  This is a business deal, nothing more. I won’t ever love you.

  And then I realize—he called me Howie when he said it. Not Finch. Not angel. Not baby bird.

  Howie.

  What the shit-fuck-damn is that supposed to mean?

  Dinner is amazing that night. It’s our official honeymoon feast according to Nunzio, the yacht manager, cooked by his wife Maria, the yacht chef. Nunzio makes it sound like such a celebration that I almost forget why I’m here. This could be a date in a top restaurant; Nunzio could be our waiter; Luca and I could be on a first date, getting to know each other, instead of sitting here on our goddamn disaster of a honeymoon.

  I can’t help thinking of all those things we’ve missed out on—the awkwardness, the fumbling around for things we have in common, even a slightly less-bloody meet-cute—and it fills me with rage that we’ll never have those.

  We’ll never be able to tell sappy stories to the kids about how we met, and when Luca proposed, and how I cried when I said yes, yes of course I’ll marry you.

  And then Luca says to Nunzio: “Do me a favor, have a taste of this first. Let me know what it’s like?” He’s gesturing to the antipasto, our first course.

  Nunzio gets this embarrassed, polite look and insists he could never intrude on our wedding feast.

  “Perhaps I’m not making myself clear,” Luca says. “You’re going to taste everything before we eat it. And if you don’t do it, we’ll call your wife up from the kitchen, and she can taste it. And if you both refuse, I’m going to kill you.”

  Nunzio gives a stupid little laugh, like he thinks Luca is kidding.

  I stand up, making them both look to me. I love my fucking idiot husband down to the ground, no matter how much he tries to push me away, but there are some things that are just wrong. “Luca, sweetheart,” I chuckle. “Don’t kid around like that.” Luca and Nunzio both look at me like I’ve said something in Swahili. “Nunzio, he’s just messing around, but he’s got a terrible sense of humor. Better just leave us to it for now.”

  I smile at the old man, my best smile, the autocratic one I inherited from Mom. People always did what she wanted, when she wanted, and she only ever commanded with a smile. Everyone talked about what a wonderful, charming woman she was.

  Well, she was wonderful and charming, but she was a manipulative mastermind on top of it. People obeyed her without question. And me? I learned her tricks early. She kept me with her as much as she could, and I don’t mind admitting I was a Mama’s boy. I can’t blame Maggie for hating me a little.

  Nunzio goes out as fast as he can without tripping up, and Luca turns his ice-beams on me. I’m about to be put on blast.

  Attack is the best form of defense, they say.

  “Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t you dare talk to them like that. These people are just doing the best they can with their lives, husband of mine, and you don’t get to threaten them. If you want someone to taste your fucking food so bad, pass it over. Better me than you, right?”

  Luca pushes back his chair and stalks close to me, but I don’t move. I can’t. If I give in now, he won’t ever take me seriously. And right now, I am fucking serious as the bullet that killed my mother. “No,” I say again, as he opens his mouth. “You don’t get to be an asshole to them. Take it out on me if you like, but you show them some respect.”

  He glares so hard I should be dead if telekinesis was a thing. Luca is sizing me up, wondering if I’ll back down.

  I don’t.

  “What do you care?” he asks. “About them, I mean. You don’t know them.”

  “I do know them,” I say, because it’s true. I’ve lived my whole life with people like Nunzio and his wife, people who get paid shit money to act like their employers are better than them just because they’re rich. “The mark of greatness is to treat everyone as an equal, Luca. That’s something you need to learn. Fuscone would have contempt for the staff, I bet. You want to be like Fuscone?”

  That fucking gets him, right in the gut. I see hatred pass over his face, but it’s directed at Fuscone, not at me.

  Luca retreats, and as he goes, I sit once more, my knees wobbling. Two more seconds and I would have caved or passed out or something. The man has willpower out the wazoo.

  He sits in his own seat again, flicking out the napkin and placing it in his own lap. “For the record,” he says to me, “I don’t care if someone’s trying to poison me. But I do care if you come to harm.”

  “How chivalrous, baby,” I say, flicking out my own napkin.

  “It’s not chivalry. It’s business.”

  “Of course.” I smile brightly. “How could I forget?” I’ll give him a pass on that one. If he feels the need to get in a low blow, I’ll let him. He’s earned it.

  Luca looks at the array of cutlery beside the plates. “And Finch,” he adds casually, “if you ever contradict me in pubic again like that, we are going to have a problem.” He stares at me long enough to see me drop my eyes.

  “Understood, husband.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  LUCA

  I’ll say this for Howard Fincher Donovan the Third: he’s intriguing.

  He’s also correct. I shouldn’t go around threatening innocent people like some low-level thug. That’s how the Sam Fuscones of this world operate, just as Finch said. But I’m better than that, or at least I want to be. Tino Morelli would never have acted like I did just now. Tino has a sense of decorum not common among my kind these days. We are violent men who wield our power like cudgels; sometimes we just wield actual cudgels.

  Violence and unpredictability are how I’ve built respect. Or fear, at least, which has always been my goal, based on Machiavelli’s advice: better to be feared than loved. Now I’m starting to wonder how useful fear really is. It certainly doesn’t guarantee loyalty. I’ve seen it many times: people say or do anything to save their own hide.

  But not Finch, strangely enough. He’s told me in his inimitable way that he’d prefer not to die painfully, and he’s literally
laughed in the face of it, but I’ve never seen him really lose himself under threat of death like other men seem to do. Perhaps he feels like there’s not much of him left to lose.

  I’m familiar with that feeling myself, having compartmentalized my whole life so ruthlessly that only the core of me is left. I thought I was all I needed.

  I watch Finch helping himself to the platter of antipasto, and I wonder whether it was courage or recklessness that made him stand up in defense of Nunzio. I’m not sure which I’m more comfortable with. And perhaps it was both. Perhaps the not-so-still waters of my new husband run much deeper than I suspected.

  I pick up a fork and spear a slice of salami for myself before it’s all gone.

  “Not that one,” Finch says around the food in his own mouth.

  “Hm?” I ask.

  “Not that fork.” He gives me a conspiratorial smile. “I know. There are so many fucking forks and knives and weird things I don’t even know the name of. I get confused, too. But that’s the wrong fork. Use the one on the outside there, with the two points. There you go, that’s the one. Sharp little fucker, but it’s mostly just for moving stuff onto your plate.”

  I pick up the small two-tined fork on the extreme left. “This isn’t for dessert?”

  “No, baby. The one you were using is the dessert fork.”

  “Does it matter?” I ask, irritated. “They all do the same thing. Transport food to mouth.”

  Finch leans back in his chair and smiles at me. This is our formal wedding dinner, and he’s dressed in ripped jeans and a faded old tee, but he can’t hide that moneyed glow. He could still be in those goddamn booty shorts and be more comfortable and relaxed in this setting than I am. “It doesn’t matter, baby,” he says. “Not to me.” There’s an underlying meaning there. I almost feel like he’s testing me.

  I look at him while I think it over. “It matters to others,” I say and he gives a slight nod, like I passed.