Mafia Queen: The DiLustro Arrangement #3

by CD Reiss

  “I am not sorry.” He runs his hand over my ass and pinches it. “Not even this much.”

  “You know what I think?”

  “No.” He smirks. “I do not.”

  “I think I should put that crown on and see if you fall like a Tabona.”

  “That crown can be in the box or on your head.” He plants his lips on mine, then rolls us over until he’s on top of me and my legs are wrapped around him. “When I tell you to suck my cock, you’ll get on your knees and open your mouth just the same.”

  In our bed, late in the morning, kissing him with more feeling than I thought existed in the entire universe, I realize how happy I am.

  “Are you all right?” He kisses a tear off my cheek.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever let myself love you this much.”

  “Love rules without rules, my violet.” With a kiss to my jaw, he moves to my throat and then my collarbone. “Even when you rule.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes.” His lips brush between my breasts and down my belly.

  I groan at his attention, turning to the dresser where the crown sits without glory or protection. It’s not harmless. I may never know if its power comes from shared belief or Heaven above, but it’s still a mindlessly evil thing that I do not need to rule.

  “I want something,” I say.

  “The world?”

  “It’s bigger than that.”

  If the community defers to a piece of metal, nothing will change. It’s a hollow victory. My partnership with Santino was earned in blood, but it won’t be recognized by our subjects with a simple statement.

  “What is it?” He kisses between my thighs.

  “I’ll tell you after you make me come.”

  He pauses to look up at me from between my legs.

  “Maybe.”

  “I shouldn’t have called you Forzetta,” he says.

  “No?” Is he going to imply I’m not as strong or powerful as he thought?

  But he smiles and lowers his head to lick where I’m soft and wet.

  “You are a il Ducetta? ” He gives my clit a quick suck. “No. That makes no sense. But you are a little Mussolini—without the moustache.”

  I laugh, then he makes me squeal with delight.

  31

  SANTINO

  In the next three days, Violetta starts turning Torre Cavallo into a home. Our people are here. Our family. She prefers to have meals cooked in the upstairs kitchen. She tells everyone she prefers the food stay far from the smell of the coal furnace, but her presence above is a strategy. It is where she can be seen, and where she can overhear things she cannot when she’s sitting beside me.

  As merchants and priests come up the road to swear loyalty, she hears whispers about the crown. They don’t believe. They think I’m schiavo della fica.

  “Pussy-whipped,” she translates with her feet on the short edge of my desk. Her chair faces in the same direction as mine. It’s late, and I’m pacing.

  I wave it off. Doesn’t matter.

  “Maybe I should give you English lessons now,” she says.

  “You take this too lightly. They only fear you because they fear me.”

  “Let them think what they want.”

  I swipe her feet off the desk and put my hands on the arms of her chair, leaning into her beautiful face. “Letting people think what they want without consequences… This is an American problem. It rots from the inside. By the time you see the black spots on the skin, it’s too late.”

  “So what do you want to do, Re Santino?” She puts her hands on my face.

  I could kiss her now. I could fuck her on this chair again and again, but that would do nothing to impress on her how important this is. “Show them the crown.”

  “No.” Her hands slip away, and she sits back. “They kneel or they don’t kneel…”

  “I’ll cut their knees from under them if they don’t.”

  “All that means is my partnership with you is contingent on an artifact. An inheritance from my parents. Their respect will rot just the same.”

  I stand straight and cross my arms. I am going to fuck her. I’ve decided. I’m already hard with the thought.

  “I have a better idea,” she continues, getting off the chair to reach for my belt.

  “Say it first.” I grab her hand. This needs to be solved. “Then I fuck you.”

  “Trying to prove you’re not schiavo della fica?”

  “Mia Regina, you miss the point. I am a slave to your pussy, and your mind, and your heart. But even a slave can resist long enough to hear his queen’s strategy.”

  “Fine.” She falls back into her chair. “We call a meeting at the café.”

  She tells me the rest of the plan. It is as brilliant as it is brutal.

  At Mille Luce the next afternoon, Violetta and Celia serve two dozen leaders of Secondo Vasto and their wives. They treat Violetta with common deference. The wives try to help. She does not let them. Everyone needs to see her serve them.

  When everyone has been attended to, she sits to my right.

  “You ready?” I ask.

  “Yep.”

  I rise, tapping the crown ring on my left pinkie finger against a glass. The space where my wedding ring used to be is still red and raw, but it’s healing well. I wear the gold band on the right side now.

  “Amici miei.” I call them my friends, then wait until they’re all eyes and ears. “It’s been a week since the bridge that connects us to the rest of the world was cut off. Today, it has been reopened.”

  They applaud. I put up a hand to stop it.

  “Alvise Galdano and his sons used their boats to move supplies over the river.” I raise my glass. “Grazie.”

  They all drink, and those within reach of Alvize and his sons click glasses with him.

  “The threat to us is gone… for now. The men who caused this won’t trouble us again.”

  By mutual agreement with my wife, I’m eliding the full truth. The men I’m speaking about are either dead—like Damiano—or have switched loyalties from Tabona to Cavallo. Cosimo lives, and as long as he does, complete safety cannot be guaranteed.

  “St. Paul’s will be rebuilt,” I continue. “Lasertopia, God willing, will not be.”

  The laughter dies down before I go on. Everyone here deserves a good laugh.

  “There will be changes.” I take a bit of amaretto and put down the glass.

  At this point, I wanted Violetta to take out the crown and wear it, but she convinced me it was a bad idea, then proved it by sending Vito out to gather information about how the story has changed in the past week.

  They’ve heard about the crown, how men kneel before it, but the story got twisted in the retellings. Now, they say I am the one who stood through a sunroof wearing it. Sometimes the story says it’s Dario, who hasn’t been seen since he tried to steal the crown. But no one believes it was Violetta. Even the men who were there don’t speak too loudly, or they claim it was too dark to see, or they were too overcome with its power to notice whose head it was on.

  This is not acceptable. They will not defer to a piece of metal, and I will not accept such a hollow victory. Violetta’s and my partnership was earned in blood, but it won’t be recognized by our subjects with a simple statement.

  “There will be changes,” I repeat, taking my wife’s hand. Our rings click against each other. “Neither my wife nor I will bless another ‘mbasciata.”

  I preside over a confused silence of glances and knotted brows. The end of arranged marriages is one thing, but the thought that my wife could even bless an ‘mbasciata in the first place is another.

  Sweat gathers on her palm.

  I lean down to whisper in her ear, “You wanted a bike, now pedal.”

  She nods decisively and stands. “That is not to be petitioned or questioned. Your daughters are not for sale.”

  Now the resistance is audible.

  Tommy from Lasertopia stands. “I’m sorry, Re Sant
ino, not to question you, but the Lanzonis and us already have a thing you blessed back in April. It cost us a tribute so…uh, I’m wondering if you’re gonna honor it?”

  “Your tribute will be returned,” she says. I know her. She’s nervous. She shouldn’t be. “And no. Your ‘mbasciata is no longer valid.”

  “I’d like the money back as much as the next guy,” Giulio Lanzoni says over the ensuing murmurs. “But Joe and his girl?” He jerks his thumb at Tommy. “They kinda like each other.”

  “Have them come to me,” she says.

  The murmuring turns to shouts about profanity and blasphemy, as if God himself recoils from my leadership.

  “All marriages,” I add, and the noise dies down into shock. “Every single one, if you want to remain here, will be blessed by Violetta. So you aren’t making any under-the-table deals. I know my people.” I let my gaze sweep over the most stubbornly traditional, then I raise my glass. “She is the queen, and you will go to her the same way you come to me. Now, drink to it.”

  Some make sidelong glances, and some take false sips like men crossing their fingers behind their backs.

  “What about the crown?” a voice rises from the noise. It’s Violetta’s Zio Guglielmo. Suddenly, there’s silence, and all eyes are on him. “Show it to them, so they believe.”

  Violetta predicted this would happen, but she did not predict her own uncle would demand a viewing of the crown to protect her.

  “No,” she says.

  “No,” I repeat. “That isn’t necessary.”

  I squeeze her hand and look at her, asking if she’s ready, because this is it. There’s only one way to prove her power isn’t contingent on a crown.

  She meets my stare and lets go of my hand. I sit, leaving her alone on her feet.

  “Dr. Martino Farina,” she calls. “Show yourself.”

  Heads turn. Gennaro and Carmine get into position, in case anything goes wrong.

  Farina stands, buttoning his jacket. He’s been laying low. Vito delivered the invitation to come here, with the message that the morphine hadn’t harmed Violetta. There was no mention of the drug that ended her pregnancy, so he assumed we didn’t know.

  That was my idea. The math of whether to come or not had to be hard enough to think about, but Farina’s equation had to reach the conclusion that forgiveness was possible.

  Now, standing at his table while everyone else is seated, he looks like a man who wishes he’d checked his work with a calculator.

  “At Damiano Orolio’s order,” Violetta says, “you gave me morphine.”

  “Signorina,” he says with his hands out in a kind of half-shrug, “I knew—”

  “Regina,” I demand, gently but firmly.

  “Regina,” he says more loudly, his chin up. He doesn’t fear Violetta. He should. “It was known that Re Santino was dead. You had no husband, so when Capo Orolio called from the other side and ordered the marriage with his son, it was my duty to make sure you complied.”

  “You were told I was pregnant.”

  “Of course. As a doctor, I can assure you, a single dose of this drug does not cause adverse effects. We can discuss further if you like. Perhaps as part of an internship if you make it through nursing school? I don’t want to bore you with complicated medical terms you’re unfamiliar with.”

  “What about the misoprostol?”

  He swallows so hard I’m sure his entire spine just went backward down his throat.

  She waits, watching him squirm, keeping everyone in the room in suspense. She’s giving them a minute to suspect he did something unacceptable, so the shock of his punishment will be absorbed in that suspicion.

  “It seemed…” He spreads his arms, looking at the faces of his peers before turning back to the queen with his hands folded in front of him. “Just a precaution. Surely no woman would want to enter into marriage with the possibility that another man’s baby—”

  “The king… Re Santino’s baby.”

  “Of course.” He’s now too afraid to defend himself further. Good. I don’t want to hear another word out of him.

  “That second drug you gave me worked, doctor. I lost a baby I wanted very badly.”

  It sounds as if the entire room—even the flatware and furniture—lets out a gasp.

  “Vito,” Violetta says, “take Mrs. Farina outside.”

  The tension in the room rises to a fever pitch, but no words are spoken. The leaders are afraid. Their little betrayals, no matter how slight, and their acceptance of a new rule may come to sit heavily in their laps.

  They’ve already been forgiven for all that, but they need to understand that though things will go back to normal, they’ll also change.

  As his wife is led out, Farina stands in shock, yet he’s not afraid—as if he thinks he’ll be able to walk away because Violetta is the one standing. Maybe he expects humiliation or a dressing down—and that will be shameful from a woman. It would make him an angry man…maybe a dangerous one.

  With a wave, Violetta has two men bring Farina to the front of the room. I am both surprised and proud of how natural she is at this. This is who she is. Who she’s always been. The moments I fuck her and she submits to my will are more precious with every ounce of power she takes for herself.

  Dr. Farina’s pushed to his knees in front of her. He sighs, resigned to the degradation.

  “Regina,” he says, looking down, “I am sorry.”

  “I’d have Father Alfonso come over and forgive you,” she says, taking her gun from its holster. “But he died of a heart attack when his church burned.” When he looks up in shock at the murder of a priest, the barrel of a gun is waiting for him. “So make your apologies directly to God.”

  This morning, I offered to do this part of the job for her. I said I’d do it at her command, with obedience, in front of everyone. That would send a message.

  She refused. I knew she would. It’s the right decision.

  We joked about making sure she had enough bullets, in case she missed at close range.

  But she doesn’t.

  32

  VIOLETTA

  The evening after Mille Luce, I’m up in the cupola, smoking a cigarette. My family is coming to live up here for a while and enjoy the retreat from the stresses of war.

  The town below, the lawn behind, everything side to side belongs to Santino and me. It’s my birthright through the Iron Diadem and the nail that connects it into a crown.

  So much of this is clear to me. Greed. Lust for power. Loyalty.

  But so much more is muddled.

  “Here you are,” Santino says, coming up the steps. From behind, he puts his arms around my waist. “Queen of the world.”

  “Please don’t kneel.” I turn to face him.

  “I’ll kneel when I want, and you’ll kneel when I tell you.”

  “Really?”

  “Before another hour passes, we need to be clear between us.” He pushes me to my knees, a shock of arousal flooding my body. “Out there, we are equals. One and the same. But when we’re alone, I rule you. Your body is my kingdom, and it obeys.”

  Looking up at him, I see him as ten feet tall, effortlessly in command.

  “Yes,” is the only word I can make.

  “My cock is waiting for your mouth.”

  I unbuckle, unbutton, unzip, remove his bludgeon of a dick, and without hesitation, put it in my mouth.

  “Such a queen,” he says, arms crossed, letting me do all the work. “Shooting the man who hurt you. Didn’t even blink. Didn’t ask for forgiveness. And here you are, on your knees, sucking my dick like you’re starving.” He takes a hard breath. “Put your hands behind your back. Good. Nice. Now, slow. Take all of it.”

  I open my throat and push forward, taking his entire length.

  “You’re in charge,” he says. “Let me see what you do with it.”

  He’s making sure I know he’s the king. He can’t live without his dominance over my body, and he needs to know I can’t
live without it either.

  Leaving him to be still, I’m the one who does the work, pushing him down my throat and halfway out until I need to breathe, then doing it again. I’m ready to swallow what he releases when he says, “Stop.” I pull away, spit dripping down my chin.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  Heart pounding with anticipation, I strip down to my skin. He does the same.

  We’re naked. I hope no one’s looking up at the cupola at that moment, yet I hope that if they are, they understand that this man owns me.

  “You’re doing very well,” he says.

  “Thank you.”

  “Get on the floor and show me your cunt.”

  The words alone make me dizzy with heat, but the act of getting on my back and spreading my legs for him is the mightiest thing I’ve ever done.

  He crouches on the balls of his feet and slides two fingers of his left hand inside me. The empty fourth place sends them deeper than they’ve ever gone.

  “No matter who you kill or who you rule, I rule your body.” He removes his hand and flicks my clit.

  I squeak with a burst of pleasure.

  “You do as I say.” He puts his palm against my nub—barely touching it. “Make yourself come.”

  Jerking slightly, I rub against his hand. He doesn’t move it as I grind again. He holds still, watching me use him for my pleasure, arching and bucking myself to orgasm, just as he commanded.

  Then he’s on me, flipping me to my side, spreading me open and thrusting into me like an animal.

  “Don’t you ever forget,” he growls.

  “I am yours,” I gasp. “You own me.”

  “And you love me.”

  “Always. I love you always.”

  I come a second time, and he explodes inside me.

  It’s right afterward, as he kisses my shoulder tenderly, that I realize love might be the key to it all.

  My parents had the crown between them in their bedroom the night I overheard their conversation.

  What it would be like if this thing didn’t exist? Who you’d be?