Mafia Queen: The DiLustro Arrangement #3

by CD Reiss

  You’d still be mine.

  Do you ever wonder what I’d be? What I could be?

  Do I not take care of you?

  A few months before their deaths, Papino had missed the point entirely. Twice. Through the hinge-wide space between the door and the jamb, I’d watched my mother fall out of love with him.

  And then the handles were hot.

  There has to be a perfectly unmagical explanation for the heat of the crown and its case, but that doesn’t mean history isn’t trying to tell me something. The possibilities of power had made Mamma hungry for it. She resented the disappointments of her station, and they turned her against her husband.

  The coal rocks burn bright white, shimmering with heat inside a hot metal box. We’re having this stinky coal furnace taken out as soon as possible. Then we’re scrubbing this shit out of the floors and walls and plastering all of them over with peppermint and lavender sheetrock, and if that doesn’t get out the smell, we’re sealing off this section of the basement behind seven layers of lemon-scented cinder block. Zio Guglielmo says none of those materials exist, but I can dream.

  But I’ve proven to everyone that I am Santino’s partner and equal. That day, I set myself free of any desire for vengeance. I’ll never kill anyone again. That’s his job from now on.

  We aren’t saints, but we’re home, living in a place that feels more right to me than St. John’s or the Leaky Bean or anywhere across the river ever did. I have a place with him, here.

  Between us, he rules me with love, and my love for him rules my life.

  Santino comes to the basement of Torre Cavallo with the crown’s box under his arm. He grips the bottom with his left hand, which is now only partly bandaged.

  I meet him at the bottom step and kiss him. He hands me the box. I place it on a red milk crate I’ve set in front of the open furnace, between two metal folding chairs. We sit in reverent silence for a moment.

  “Do you remember the night my parents died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know who did it?” I ask.

  “Nobody knows.”

  “You said you had the night off, but you went anyway.”

  “Emilio planned a last-minute dinner, so…”

  “It was her. My mother. She sprung it on him. I remember. And she said if Papà died, she was in charge.”

  His eyes narrow as if he doesn’t know where I’m going with this.

  “Santi, she didn’t love him. She’d been getting harder and harder for months, but that morning, she went ice cold.”

  “Wait. You think she planned it? Camilla Moretti?” He’s practically laughing.

  “Camilla Cavallo. And yes. I think she planned to have my father killed, but she got the wrong guy to do it, and he shot her too.”

  “This is why you brought me down here?” He shakes his head. “They loved each other, Forzetta.”

  “Look at me. Everyone says I look like my father, and maybe I do. But listen to everything that never made any sense. Emilio had a half brother who felt entitled to Camilla, to the crown.”

  His head tilts. He’s getting it, but not yet.

  Not quite yet.

  “I asked Zia Madeline and Nazario—who’s, like, never leaving. They told me everything. I don’t look like my father.” I pause. He can’t see it, but Nazario says he will. “I look like Cosimo Orolio.”

  Santino’s eyes scan me as if for the first time. He doesn’t have to tell me he sees a man I’ve never met. It’s all over his face.

  “He never forgave Mamma for hanging him out to dry after Papà was almost assassinated the first time. I was little, and I was his, but she wasn’t ready to fully betray her husband. So the second time, he did the hit, but he shot the both of them.”

  “My God.”

  I can practically hear things clicking in Santino’s head, observed moments I’m confident he’ll tell me about during calmer days. But he knows I’m right.

  “Damiano was going to marry his half sister.” His face contorts in disgust. “An animal.”

  “It was because of this.” I point at the box. “It made him an animal”

  Santino is still shaken by the revelation, but my brother’s fate isn’t my point. “And it made my mother wonder what she would have been without her husband. It made her feel like he was keeping her down…and he was, but she was part of a world where she wouldn’t have even had a choice without the crown, and her choices were taken away because of the crown too. But what locked her into a life wasn’t a piece of metal. It was expectations. Assumptions. And they had no reason to change any of that because of this thing…” I tilt my chin toward the box. “It fucked with all their heads. I don’t want that. Ever. I don’t want to wonder what I’d be without you. My life with you is the only one I want.”

  He nods, knees to elbows, tenting nine fingertips. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I know.” I open the lid.

  “It’s what brought us together.”

  “But it’s not what keeps us together.”

  Last night, Santino argued to have the crown sent to a museum, but there’s no provenance, no chain of ownership since it was stolen during Mussolini’s regime, then stolen again by the partigiani and left to rot in a warehouse of artifacts the camorra was selling to finance a mob war.

  “Do you not want to?” I ask.

  “No, no.” He tsks. “You’re right. It causes too much trouble. It’s already broken too much.”

  I take the crown out of the box. “Do you feel the compulsion to kneel?”

  “Put it on your head. Let’s see.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “No.”

  Before I can change my mind, I toss the crown into the white-hot furnace. It sits on the bottom of the coal box, implacable at first, as if nothing can touch it. The tips and edges blacken, then turn bright hot.

  Santino and I grab for each other’s hands, holding on for dear life as the object that brought us together in marriage loses its shape and melts into bubbling lava.

  “It is done.” He closes the door and latches it. “Do you still love me?”

  “I will always love you.”

  He puts his hands on my thighs and gets down on his knees, resting his head in my lap. I bend over him and put my cheek on his back. We remain like this for a minute before Loretta’s voice comes down from upstairs.

  “They’re here!”

  “Patatina!” My zia rushes out of the car, and we meet in the middle of the yard. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her round cheeks sag. When she throws her arms around me, I feel her grief against my chest. It awakens mine with the hum of a shared language.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say into her collar. “I hoped to bring you up here days ago.”

  Telling her what was sacrificed in my failure to get her—what lies were told and consequences felt—won’t help anyone. I leave that for Sunday dinners in the undefined future.

  “We’re here now.” She rocks me back and forth, tighter and tighter. “That’s all that matters.”

  I hold her at arm’s length, smiling at the sight of her, while the car empties of her sister, Donna’s family. Her husband Angelo, Antonio, Elettra, and Tina.

  “Where’s Zio Guglielmo?” I ask.

  She doesn’t have to answer as my zio gets out last, carrying his old Beretta dei partigiani in a holster like a dare. He greets Santino as my husband comes out the front door to welcome his extended family.

  Zia watches with me and shakes her head. “We saw when they took him.” She stops herself and makes the sign of the cross to ward off the devils in her thoughts. “And we heard what they did to his hand.”

  Santino pats Zio Guglielmo on the back with a bandaged hand. A few days ago, Dr. Aselli sent his assistant to live up here and continue the work on Santino’s hand. Dr. Aselli is too busy to stay himself. As of yesterday, he is Secondo Vasto’s only doctor. We’ll have to get another.

 
; “It’s going to be all right,” I say.

  Santino’s body will heal, and so will our little corner of the world. There is an uneasy peace in the valley below. Our enemies are being rooted out, and loyalties are shifting. But there will be an end to it.

  “You’ve been through so much,” Zia Madeline says. “And you look like my beautiful niece, all grown up.”

  Santino slides his arm over my shoulder, resting his fingertips on the back of my neck, and gives Zia Madeline a kiss on each cheek.

  “She is the queen. My queen.”

  The family I brought up has formed a receiving line. We greet and double kiss, hug, and cry. They’re here, and I didn’t even realize how much I needed each of them.

  Everything’s on the way back to normal. Thank God.

  “So this is the famous Torre Cavallo,” Zia Donna says to my king and me. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” I greet her with a hug, then see my uncle’s mother. “Welcome, Nonna Angelina.” I take her hand and kiss each papery cheek. The last time I saw her, Santino was shoving me into a car after a walk around the block. “You can stay as long as you want.”

  “I knew you’d come to accept it.” She squeezes my hands, and I remember how unfazed she was by my screaming on the day Santino stole me away.

  “I accept him, Nonna.” I pull him close. “But now I have the power to change everything else.”

  “And she might,” Santino says.

  I look up at my husband, who has utter dominance over me, and who I rule with the same power. The unstoppable force and the immovable object, in harmony.

  By some unspoken mutual agreement, we kiss, but we have to break apart, laughing, when Tina rushes in to hug my legs, throwing me off balance for a moment. Elettra follows her sister, and I drape my free arm around them both.

  For the first time—holding these girls—I have no doubt that it was all worth it.

  Epilogue

  VIOLETTA

  With my family in Torre Cavallo and our rivals either dead or shifted to our side, I thought we were done, but Santino always knew better. I have a sense of his rhythms now. The way his attention shifts too slowly because a doubt holds him up.

  “Tell me,” I say in the dark of night when we’re both supposed to be sleeping. The moonlight glints off his eyes when he opens them, and though his doubts pump the brakes on his reply, they do not stop him.

  “Dario Lucari,” he says. “He sent a message today about our deal.”

  “He didn’t exactly live up to his end.”

  “He only promised to help with Marco.”

  “Being an asshole, and trying to steal the crown, puts him in the negative.” I get up on my elbow and lay my hand on Santino’s bare chest. Our men weren’t an abstraction to me any more. They have names and families. “He owes us, and we shouldn’t send him anyone until he pays up.”

  “Don’t get drunk with power, Forzetta.” This is not a reprimand or instruction. It’s a warning, and he’s right. For the moment, he knows the rules better than I do. He’s my partner but he’s also my mentor.

  “How can we trust him with our guys?” I push over him, arms straight, one leg over his hips. “They’re our family. You’re sending them to fight what you’ve basically described as a mega-mafia family—”

  “It’s not a superhero movie. They can be beaten if he says they can.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

  He takes my face in his hands and draws me closer.

  “We cannot say no without causing another problem, and a problem like that? We don’t want it. Trust me. If he beats the Colonia and comes for us with their power and their men, we may win, but we will lose all of our normal.”

  With a tick of his attention out the window, he indicates all of our world, from mountain to river and back again.

  Our normal. I don’t want to lose it after a few days of earning it.

  I get up on my knees and straddle him. Neither of us is pretending to sleep now.

  “What if we just send him the dumb ones?”

  He laughs, then quiets, considering the curves of my body. I’m a little sore from his attention a few hours before but not too sore for another go.

  “And what if…” I pause, wiggling against him. “After we send Dario his payment, you and I take the honeymoon we never had.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “What if we just got in the car and drove?”

  In the time it takes a heart to beat, Santino goes from tenderness to dominance, rolling me over and pinning me to the mattress.

  “This again?” Santino kisses my neck and chest, his lips working down my breasts and belly with the urgency of his mind. “Just drive west until we’re eating fried chicken and saluting football?”

  “Just be away and do nothing but try to make babies. And try and try and…” The next try falls into a gasp as he kisses between my legs, soothing the soreness into soft warmth.

  “There’s no trying, Violetta. Only doing.” With that, he makes me come with my arms outstretched and a cry from the depths of my pleasure.

  “Let’s do it then. We drive into the sunset and come back good and knocked up.”

  “I like this plan. Now open your legs.” He pushes my knees apart and up before I can comply, leaning on my bent legs so he can drive inside me. “We start tonight,” he says when he’s so deep our minds connect. He moves slow, always mindful of when I may be sore from an earlier fuck. His eyes close and his head turns. I know him now. He’s close.

  “Violetta,” he whispers. “You are everything.”

  “Santino,” I reply as his motions arouse me as if he just hadn’t given me an orgasm. “Take me.”

  I don’t clarify whether I’m asking for him to take my body or take me away into the sunset because I don’t have to.

  To our soldiers, Santino explains the mission, its dangers and benefits, then asks for volunteers. The half dozen men required step forward, including Vito, and Remo, who wants to see New York. Surprisingly—and privately—Gennaro offers to go.

  And then, after we send them east, Santino and I slip away for the honeymoon we never had. We get in the Alfa and drive west.

  I don’t know what I expected, but I have never seen anything like my country.

  It is truly vast. Santino retracts the roof as we cross through the southern tip of Indiana, and the immensity of the sky, its clarity, its everywhereness creates a vacuum so powerful, I fear I’ll be sucked upward and into it—a tiny speck of a woman, lost forever. I grab his hand to keep me on the earth, even as the ground moves under me.

  “You all right?” he asks, shouting over the wind.

  I’m overwhelmed by the size of the world, the limits of my knowledge, the inconsequential impact of my body and mind.

  “I’m fine.” I squeeze his hand.

  We’ve passed through Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho, avoiding cities in favor of the open road and unbroken horizon line. I am in a new world, away from the natural boundaries of mountains and river. Unenclosed. Limitless. Free, yet humbled into amazement. The sown fields go on endlessly, barely taming a few inches of soil depth. Houses are built low and wide as if they respect the sky too much to challenge it. I understand why indigenous people revered the majesty of the heavens and the regenerating life of the earth. Every single thing a person could observe around them was a miracle, worthy of its own prayer.

  “You’re doing that thing again.” He takes his hand off the wheel to make a circle with his three fingers to define what I’m doing.

  “What thing?”

  He tsks. “Come on. This.” He waves in my direction, as if that explains what he sees.

  Santino can be lazy and would rather use a gesture or a vocal tone when words fail, which lead to assumptions, which can lead to misunderstandings. I want to know exactly what he means.

  “I’m quiet?”

  “You’re closing your eyes with your eyes open.”

&nb
sp; I love him so much. He has all the words he needs.

  “Doesn’t it all overwhelm you?” Now it’s my turn to gesture toward the vastness I cannot describe.

  He scoffs. “The only thing that overwhelms me is you.”

  “Wait until we have our fourth child.”

  “Did we say four?” he asks. “Is that all?”

  I have to look at him for a few seconds to be sure he’s joking, and even then, I’m not one hundred percent convinced.

  “We need to have an Armando and a Camilla,” I say.

  “I want a Tavie.” He puts his arm behind my seat, and I lean into him. “He was a good kid.”

  “That’s three.”

  “As long as I fuck you enough to have ten children,” he shrugs. “How many is up to you.”

  I turn my face upwards, pressing my nose into his scruff. He smells of the wind and the widening horizon line. He’s the road narrowing to a point in the distance, farther and farther with every mile under the tires.

  He’s Secondo Vasto. Our forever home. Our normal.

  I take a deep breath of him, drawing in the sweet scent of freedom.

  * * *

  LA FINE

  * * *

  Thank you for going on this journey with me.

  Take a deep breath, and read on, because though Santino and Violetta have found their happily ever after, Dario has some work to do.

  * * *

  Yes. My next dark mafia series belongs to the dangerous, shadowy figure of Dario Lucari. His first book is called Take Me .

  * * *

  Sarah’s kidnapped on her wedding day, held by a man who wants vengeance on her father, married to him against her will, and thrust into a world of betrayal, lies, and deviance she’s lived in her entire life…but never known.

  All she has to do to escape is destroy everything she’s ever loved, and love a man she must destroy.

  * * *

  Take Me is available everywhere.