by CD Reiss
“Say a prayer, Dami,” Santino says.
“If you kill me…” He leverages his good arm to get himself into a crouch. “My father’s coming after you. Hard.”
“That’s a wish. Not a prayer.”
“He’ll kill you.” Damiano’s useful arm takes the gun from the dangling one. “And then his own—”
Santino doesn’t wait for him to finish. He raises my gun—the one thrown to the side of the road—and hits the other shoulder. Damiano’s gun clacks to the ground. Both arms are useless now.
I can’t hold back another second. Santino’s here, alive, in my embrace. The taste of him and the rain is on my lips. My heart is thawed. All I want is to spend days in bed with him, telling him how much I love him.
I bury my face in his chest, letting him hold me up—still so strong after everything he’s been through.
“We’re not done,” he says softly. I shake my head against his bare skin, but I know he’s right. We’re not done. “Kick his gun away.”
Letting Santino go takes more strength than I feel, but there won’t be days in bed until I do what he says, and I trust he knows what to do. But when we separate, I feel the pang of want and the safety of the ties that keep us together.
With a breath, I take a few steps toward the man with two flopping arms.
“You think being with him makes you something,” he says. “It doesn’t. He doesn’t give you any power.”
“I know.”
Using the side of my foot, I send his gun skittering over the wet pavement.
“Now pick it up,” Santino says, keeping Damiano in his sights.
Santino takes nothing for granted, but I do because I’m looking at him when I bend for the gun. His competence. His grace. His shredded shirt. The way the rain plays over his face and body.
“Shit!” Santino shouts, and before the whole word’s out of his mouth, the gun is swiped from under me. “Gia!” He aims at her, then Damiano, then her again.
“Stop it!” Gia cries, snotty and bloodshot, aiming the gun at me. “Please. Can you all stop?”
“Put it down,” I say.
“I can’t stand it!” She’s shouting now, raising her voice to a shrill scream. “No more killing. No more fingers. No more pain. It’s too much. Do you understand? It’s too much to take!”
Her hands get tighter around the pistol, and I’m a dead woman.
“Gia!” Santino roars.
That will be the last word I hear. Her name in his mouth.
With a jerky motion, she aims over her head and with a long, primal scream, takes five shots into the air. She runs out of energy and tosses the gun at my feet.
“Fucking Gia,” Damiano mutters, kneeling, knuckles dragging, held in check by the threat of death.
“Shut the fuck up,” Santino barks.
I pick up the gun.
“Shoot me,” Gia says. “I don’t care. Just end this. It’s not what I wanted. I hate it.”
“On your knees,” I say, aiming at her.
She complies, palms upward.
Will Santino stop me? Will Damiano beg for her life?
“Do it,” she pleads. “Please.”
Is no one willing to stand up for this sad, weepy little bitch? I look at Santino.
“You’re a queen now, Forzetta,” he says. “You choose what to do with her.”
What does he mean? Is he seriously giving me authority in his kingdom?
No. He’s not. He confers nothing. This isn’t a gift. I already have the power. He’s just stating a fact.
“I’m sorry, Violetta,” Gia says, stressed and uneven, somewhere between screaming and insisting. “And I’m not sorry. I don’t know why. I think there’s something wrong with me and I can’t take it.”
“Wee wee wee, all the way home,” Damiano mocks, an asshole to the bitter end.
“I can’t live with it all. Tavie and Papà. It’s my fault. Do it. Please. No one will blame you.”
I don’t care if anyone blames me. Santino’s right. I’m the queen, and her life is my choice.
When I kill Gia, I won’t be sorry either. But I’m not afraid of my brokenness the way she’s afraid of hers. How different are we? Both of us fought to be free, and we are. The only difference is she lost everything in the process—her family and her lover—while I gained everything.
I squeeze the trigger. A bouquet of broken asphalt spurts right in front of her.
“You are not cut out for this life,” I say, then watch her flinch as I shoot the space in front of her again.
“And you are.” She points at the hole in the ground as proof. “Just do it.”
“I am, and I’ll do it when I feel like it.”
I pop another bullet around her—and another, and another—intentionally missing her over and over until there’s a firework finale of rock exploding so close, she has to cover her eyes.
“Run, Gia,” I say, eleven bullets later. “Don’t stop. Just the clothes on your back. Run as far as you can. When you find what you think is normal—a life you’re cut out for—live it, and never come back here again.”
She takes her hands away and looks around as if the world is new. At me, then Santino, then Damiano, who is sitting cross-legged on the wet road.
“Go!” I shout.
Gia snaps out of it and scurries downhill. She gets smaller and her footsteps get quieter. Damiano fills the void she leaves with a sound that could be laughing or crying.
“Did I do that right?” I say, turning to my husband.
“There are no rules.”
Of course not. That is plain now. He and I are the rules, and his best friend is waiting to hear our verdict.
“You should be the one.” I point at Damiano, who’s trying to back away on his knees.
I can list every wrong that justifies me pulling the trigger. The full force of Damiano’s fist in my face. The forced marriage. The death of our baby. And even that doesn’t come close to what he did to me when he hurt Santino.
“We will do it.” Santino waves me closer, puts the gun in my hand, and positions himself behind me, arm to arm, hand to hand, his mutilated left fingers breaking my heart just enough to make me more angry.
Damiano’s almost to his feet, but he’s wobbly without his arms to leverage, and his shoes slip in the rain.
“I’m your brother,” he says to us.
“No,” Santino says into my ear, his body arched against mine. His cock is erect against the curve of my ass. I’m wet for it. For him. For the freedom of bloodshed.
“Not yours,” Damiano shouts, slipping again.
Before Damiano can utter another word, Santino’s hands squeeze around mine, and his arms absorb the recoil. Damiano falls back onto the street with a hole in his forehead.
I hold my breath.
He doesn’t get up. The rain drips in his open eyes and rinses the life from them.
Santino’s erection is hard and thick against me as he squeezes our hands again, pulling the trigger to hit the fallen man’s chest.
It’s over.
It takes me a few seconds of leaning against my rock-hard husband, watching the rain hit Damiano’s dead body, to fully realize that my king is with me again, and it’s over.
I feel as though I’ve been holding up the entire world, and now that he’s here, collapsing seems like the only reasonable response. But my knees stay steady, and my shoulders do not drop. My arms lock around him and my lips taste the rain falling from his.
Santino is all right. This isn’t a dream. I’m not between life and death or in a delusional state. He’s with me, standing, breathing, telling me how completely alive he is.
How alive we both are.
And how dead the man who hurt us is.
My brain fires a million miles a minute, flooding with dopamine.
“You’re here,” I say, clutching what’s left of his shirt.
“I’m here.” He drops the gun, takes a fistful of my hair, and forces me into a k
iss that’s not meant for a sweet reunion, but a demand. “Pull your pants down so I can prove it.”
They’re soaking wet, so I can’t get them down fast enough to satisfy my own lust. When they’re around my thighs, he pushes me into the Suburban’s open door. My back is on the seat and my head against the gear shift. He pushes my legs up, and with my legs still bound by my waistband, he gets out his cock and shoves it in me.
As he drives and thrusts, he rips off my pants, pushing my legs apart so he can split me in two, proving to himself that he’s killed a man but is still alive.
It’s a victory screw. A murder fuck. It’s blood and gunpowder and a rush toward the sharp edge of death.
I slap his face. “You left without me.” I slap it again. He drives into me so hard the pain is exquisite. “Don’t do that ever again.”
“I’m not sorry,” he growls, laying his right hand on my throat to keep me still.
I slap him, and he tightens his grip, pounding hard enough to break me, and I want him to. I claw at his face to rip him apart. Taking a man’s life took me to an edge, but not all the way. It’s not enough. I’m still cracking from the inside, and Santino needs to shatter me until the life drains out.
“Kill me,” I cry, scratching his chest. “Kill me with it.”
“We go to death together.” He squeezes my throat until his face is at the end of a long, dark tunnel. “And come back.”
As the tunnel closes and my senses shut down, my body explodes in pulsing electricity.
I am dead. I’m sure of it. No one can feel this much pure pleasure and live.
My lungs take in air as Santino cries out, coming inside me while I’m still inside my orgasm. Gradually, the sound of pattering rain enters, and reality returns.
He’s here, above me, eyes half-closed with release, and it’s a better reality than I ever hoped for.
“We won,” I say, caressing the face I just slapped.
“I found you.” He kisses my throat. “My queen.”
“My king.”
He pushes himself away as if reminded of something. He puts his dick away. “Get in.”
Grabbing my wet pants, I scoot to the passenger seat. He walks away to stand over Damiano’s body, then crouches by him. A minute later, Santino strides back, hands together as he puts my father’s ring back where it was meant to be.
30
VIOLETTA
We are together in our castle. What happened last night is like a dream—if a dream could transform me into who I was always meant to be. I look the same, but I feel different at a cellular level. My atoms are vibrating faster. The firing of my brain is hotter, but my blood runs colder.
Santino sleeps.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him at rest before. I can’t help staring at his black eyelashes and the crease in the center of his lower lip. I want to touch it, but I don’t want to wake him. He’s earned a few hours of sleep.
When we got back, he threw a blanket over my naked legs and carried me into the house. Gennaro got right to business, reporting our losses as one bullet graze and an attack of pre-battle vomiting. The Tabonas, caught off guard and trapped by the guns on the ridge above, woke from their crown-induced haze and dropped their weapons.
I demanded they call Dr. Aselli to take care of Santino’s hand, and while we waited, I told Santino about Dario, who hasn’t been seen since a bolt of lightning struck by chance or heavenly design just as he was attempting to steal the crown. I told him about my plan to rescue him from Lasertopia and Loretta’s vengeance of Carlo Tabona for Elio’s death.
When the doctor came, I was still tending the first and second-degree burns on Santino’s torso as he caught me up on his story of his eternity behind the brick wall.
Now, with the late morning sun finding its way into our slit of sky, there is peace. The crown is out of its box, sitting on the dresser like a piece of costume jewelry.
Santino put it there with his bare hands.
Last night, before he started the Suburban, my husband picked up the crown from the dashboard. He’d never really seen it up close under anything as bright as the car’s dome light. He turned it around to the back, where the nail connected the diadem’s U-shape, and let out a long exhale.
“This is it?” he asked.
“Yes.” I tried to take it from him, but he wouldn’t let go.
“How did you get it?”
“It’s a long story with a crazy ending.” I let go, and he tossed it back on the dashboard to start the car. “Was it hot? The metal. Did it burn when you touched it?”
“It’s cold out. Why would it?” His brows knit as if he didn’t understand the question.
Why should he? It didn’t burn him because he didn’t expect it to, proving the crown is just a random antique, and its power is a crowdsourced effect.
This is what I believe, until I remember a thing I never understood.
Rosetta’s upstairs, stuffing Mamma’s old lipstick into her overnight bag so she can try it at Nonna’s. I packed my favorite pajamas with the roses and kittens.
When I come downstairs, my mother is still wearing the purple hat with a black ribbon. She looks good in hats, and she looks good now, but I remember the moment before I went upstairs. Her flat features. The waxy never-aliveness across her face for that split second before she shooed me away with “Sciò!”
She’s fine. Alive. Round with a new baby brother. Smiling at me.
“Is Papino still mad?” I ask.
They were fighting last night. Whenever Mamma is mad at Papà, I feel as if she’s mad at me, but when he’s mad, it feels as if the world is going to end…and he was very, very mad last night, barking into the phone about America. He seemed very serious.
“He is mad, my little chicken.” She tickles my belly. “But it’s our choice to care or not.”
How can anyone not care?
One day, I was hiding in one of the many little storerooms in the back of the grocery. It was a perfect place to hide from Fiori when we played nascondino, but only when the door was open. Once I was tucked between two boxes of canned olives though, the door closed. I could only see two men’s feet. One was Papà. I stayed frozen between those boxes because I wasn’t supposed to be there. So I never found out who the other man was. All I heard was his voice pleading with Papà not to be mad, and all I saw were his shoes, bent at the toe as he kneeled, begging.
“You don’t care?” I ask.
How can Mamma not care if Papà was mad when a grown man was reduced to weeping over the same thing? Aren’t women weaker?
“Violetta.” She crouches to my eye level and squeezes my arms. “When a man won’t let you be who you are, you stop caring.”
“About Papino?”
“About anyone.”
For my five-year-old self, this revelation is not about a marriage. It’s about a family.
“What about Rosetta and me? Do you care about us?”
Had we let her be who she was? Had we stopped her? She seemed frustrated with us sometimes, and she yelled or cried. Was that who she wanted to be?
“I’ll always love you both. More than life itself.”
Papà comes in then. His call is done, and his footfall is heavy with whatever disappointments he’s lugging around.
“You ready?” he asks.
Mamma stands and nods, barely looking at him.
“Don’t cause trouble,” he says to me, following her out.
I promise myself I won’t cause any trouble. I’ll be good. Mamma might stop caring about me, and if she does, she’ll be her most unalive.
In the newspaper pictures, the purple hat was a few feet from her body, leaning against the half-open door of the restaurant. The pool of blood under her head crept toward it, but in the pictures Rosetta showed me, the blood didn’t quite reach.
I wanted to ask for the hat because I was sure I’d look good in it too. Just like Mamma. But I didn’t have a chance. We were sent running to a new normal.
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“What do you look like that about?” Santino asks.
I don’t know how long he’s been awake. Could be half a second. Could be the entire time.
“Your hand.” I pretend to mean the left hand with the missing finger, but I’m really thinking about the way the crown was cool to his touch, and how it would feel if I stopped loving him the way my mother stopped loving my father.
“Don’t waste your time feeling sorry,” he demands. “I’ll still fuck you the same. And I punish you with the right hand anyway.”
“Keep promising me a good time.” I reach around him and take his left arm, pulling it forward. He lets me see his hand in all its bandaged glory. We won’t see it again for a while. The wound was a mess. An abomination. A hole in the universe. “Does it hurt?”
He scoffs. “It hurts. Fa molto male. But when I thought of losing you, the pain was nothing. It was better than morphine.”
This bravado thing isn’t going anywhere. He is who he is, and he’ll never admit to weakness or pain, but I can admit to it for him. From the finger, I knew they didn’t even get in the joint space where there’s no bone. They just cut the proximal phalange above the socket, leaving bone splinters and raw tendon gristle. But seeing this mess attached to him and not in a disembodied part buried another seed of rage in the fertile soil of my love.
“I’ll get the codeine.” I start to get up, but he pulls me back onto the bed.
“I’m fine.”
“That’s up to Dr. Aselli.” I straddle him while he holds my wrists.
“It was a good thing there’s a doctor left you don’t want to murder.”
“You want Farina’s dick shoved down his throat as much as I do.”
“We’re going to kill them.” He lets go, and I drop to put my nose next to his. “You and me. For everything they did to keep us apart.”
“Come, come? Cosa hai detto?” I ask him what the hell he’s talking about, then kiss him and pull back an inch to find his eyes meeting mine. “You left without me.”