Page 22 of Princess of the Mafia

“Promise me. If Vitale doesn’t take you back, I will. We’ll run off somewhere where there are no made men.”

I slid my eyes closed for a minute. I breathed one stuttered breath at a time and counted to three. There comes a time when the parent-child relationship is reversed. Something clutching at my heart strings told me this was one of those times. So I hopped off my seat, hugged her tight, and hid my face on her tense shoulder. There was nowhere we could run where a made man couldn’t find us. So I mumbled a lie. It was easier when she couldn’t see me. “I promise, Mamma.”

Lub dub. The sound of my heartbeat in my pulse. I’d bathed in lavender and sage. To calm my nerves, Mamma had said. Yet that calmness spiraled out of me like the bath water down the drain as I stood outside the bright sunlit day clutching Vitale’s arm. No matter how many times I willed myself, I couldn’t get my feet in the ivory stilettos to move. Because my conscience knew. The moment I walked in through the heavy bronzed doors, I would no longer be a Di Matteo. Bitterness piled inside me. I was sick of these rules. A woman should carry a man’s name like it was a God-given right of hers, while he would fuck around like it was his. Why was I born a girl? Was it so I could bear this pain and understand my daughter’s one day?

Vitale’s hand wrapped around mine. I hadn’t realized that my hands were gripping his like my lifeline. One I could already feel letting go, an inch at a time. The closer I walked to the Don of New York, the more it would give, until I was all his to do with what he wanted, and nothing to do with the Di Matteos.

Sometimes, I wondered if Vitale and I were twins in another time. “You’re always a Di Matteo, Daria,” he rasped like he’d heard my mind.

My throat clogged. Gold shimmered on my eyelids, and pink trailed my lips. I mustn’t cry.

I forced a frail smile out. “Always a Di Matteo.” If only I believed it myself.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LORENZO

Colored light filtered in through stained-glass windows, and dust particles fluttered like glitter in the air. Heat clutched the back of my neck and dripped along my spine. Her words, I didn’t want you to own me, looped in my mind while my ears pounded with the beat of the drums within my chest.

I don’t think I’d ever been nervous about anything in my life. If I had, I didn’t care to remember it. But fuck was I nervous now. Apprehension crawled under my skin, all sticky and clammy, till that was all I could taste, like bile in my windpipe.

Even though my brothers’ presence brushed my back, and my men huddled me, my nerves rattled like the tin cans behind a newlywed car. The idea that she might run tainted my mind like a dead body at Sunday mass.

Because if she ran, there was fuck all that my brothers or my men could do. Except hunt every corner of the world till they found her. Which they would. Relentlessly. Still, I hoped she wouldn’t run. The rumination that I wanted her to run towards me coasted into my mind. I wanted to be her sanctuary from whatever demons she was hiding from. I swatted that idea away like the fly that was buzzing around my head. Fucking Sicily played havoc, even on a sane man’s mind.

The high-pitched shrill of a child set my molars on edge. A little blond-haired brat was creating havoc. Running amock between pews, shoes squeaking, avoiding reaching hands. When a brown-skinned beauty scooped her wiggling body up, I realized the kid and woman were Antonio’s. A frown pulled at my forehead as he strolled towards them with a fucking baby in his arms. His life must be boring, coming home to the same woman every night. Right? But he kissed his wife like he ached to ram her against the nearest wall and fuck. The man was losing his shit.

My gaze skimmed the church. The Martellos on one side and Di Matteos on the other. The stiffness in the air would be suffocation on a good day. For clarity, I wasn’t counting my wedding day as a good day. I didn’t like this show any more than I did coming to Sicily.

The Martellos were made up of uncles, aunts, and cousins I didn’t give a fuck about. I’d bet my designer penthouse that the feeling was paramount on their side. Except they were also terrified of us. I guess I could blame the dead bodies trailing behind us with our fight first and think later attitude. The sickness in me that made me unhinged, as my future wife called it, kind of enjoyed the fear I saw in their eyes. There was a nasty rush of pleasure to be had in seeing eyeballs dull in fear before me.

The Di Matteos I didn’t know well enough to care and didn’t care enough to know. My close in-laws were interesting, though. The manipulative older sister was a case worthy of note, even if I had already forgotten her name. The younger one was just a girl, although a beautiful one, if I read Stefano’s eyes following her around. What I cared for least were the daggers being shot by Mamma Di Matteo. She acted like I’d robbed the cradle. The temptation to spill the beans on how pure her daughters were prickled my mind.

The creak of a heavy door being pulled open snared my thoughts. My pulse halted for a minute before I collected the courage to shift my gaze to the door.

Fuck me! I didn’t know where she’d found that dress, but clearly, it was designed to squeeze the juices out of any man’s balls. I couldn’t decide. Was she dressed or undressed? She was… clearly dressed. Yet, she wasn’t. Soft, flimsy fabric hung from her tits and flowered around her. Hung being the literal word. If she were to take a shallow breath, would it drop to the ground? Jesus! Was the whole fucking church seeing her like this? My angry glare found Di Matteo, except his hit me right back. Another one of those snatching-from-the-cradle looks. You’d think he’d forgotten the alliance we had made. I didn’t like the vibes of any of the Di Matteos, except for one. When her hand was placed in mine, I swear the breath I’d been holding in all morning left me in a relieved sigh.

I didn’t give her the choice of stepping closer to me. Didn’t care to confirm who she’d choose, given the choice between me and her brother. So I tugged her roughly till she fell into step with me. Di Matteo, being the wise man that he was, stepped back reluctantly and took his place with the rest of the family. That’s right. She was mine now.

The priest in front of me reeked of bribed money, while the girl next to me smelled of lavender and something else. It had the most maddening effect on me. Calming and tantalizing and fucking addictive. The more it filled my nostrils, the more it enticed me. Yet her hand clutched in mine trembled like mad fall leaves on a winter tree, and her voice quivered when she rasped words out. Jesus! Her family acted like I’d robbed the cradle. But she might as well have been on the other end of my gun. I didn’t care for this fear in her, and I didn’t care for the annoyance riddling my body.

“What’s it made of?” I growled as my back hit my car, and orange lit up at the end of my cigarette.

I couldn’t wait to get out of that fucking church, and once I had, the only thing that gave me relief was a smoke. Not like it was going to come from my wife standing in front of me, with her petrol blue eyes on the gravel, wringing her hands like she was on death row. I realized I’d called her ‘wife’ by accident over the past few days. No accident about it now.

“Chiffon,” she muttered like she’d rather not tell.

I’d rather she did. Chiffon. Never heard of that, whatever it was, but Chiffon flowed behind her like a flower in the breeze. I blew my smoke to the side and watched it whirl away. I’d taken the side exit right after the vows, right after I’d met stiff lips as a yes to marriage. I couldn’t care enough to walk through the center aisle and out. Everyone thought we were on the way to the reception, to be the first to welcome guests. But what they hadn’t realized was I didn’t give a fuck about welcoming anyone.

I stilled my fingers tapping on the roof of the car, unbuttoned the top button of my dress shirt and yanked the tie off. I’d already dumped the suit in the back seat of my rental. Her curious blue eyes caught on my throat. Something filtered through them, and it annoyed me that I couldn’t tell what. I puffed out another circle of smoke before I slithered my gaze leisurely through her dress. Her discomfort glowed at me. Ah, that I did recognize. But the thing was, if she was going to wear a dress like that, she should have been prepared to get my full-throttled attention, fucking her with my eyes.

I squinted through the bright sunlight. Small four-leaf petals hung on her tits and her torso and trailed all the way down in a v shape to right about where her pussy would be. Coincidence, right?

“What’s this made of?” I nodded to the petals hugging her where my hands would fucking love to be.

“Silk.”

She jerked back, like ice had dripped on her petals, before I realized I’d touched one of those hugging her tits.

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