Page 6 of Married with Mayhem

I pull the green hoodie off and tie it around my waist. The purple tee underneath fits a bit tight thanks to one too many trips through the laundry. A pair of men wearing New York Giants jerseys perk up and nudge each other with jackass grins while gawking at my chest. My sisters like to joke that I won theboob lottery but many times I’ve wished the jackpot was a little smaller.

After a deep breath and a whispered Hail Mary prayer that can’t hurt, I put a call through to my mother.

She answers instantly. “Sabrina!Grazie a dio!Do you know how worried I’ve been?” She unleashes a long string of Italian exclamations that I can’t even keep up with and I need to wait for her to stop.

“I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to sneak off. Didn’t you get the note I left taped to your bathroom mirror?”

“A note! I thought you’d been kidnapped. I had to call your uncle. Now there’s all this cyber stuff. Where are you?”

“I haven’t been kidnapped. Like I told you in the note, I took a flight to New York. I’m here now.”

“You are in New York all alone?” Her voice starts to sound weepy. “What made you do this?”

I grit my teeth and silently count to three so I don’t snap at her. “Mama, I’m going to see Anni and the baby. As soon as the planes are back up in the air I’ll fly to Colorado.”

“But what will you do right now?” she wails. “Your sisters aren’t there. Nobody is there. What will happen to you?”

All of this emotional drama is making my head hurt. While I’m trying to come up with the right words to set my mother’s mind at ease, she makes a plan of her own.

“Your uncle will know what to do,” she says. “Vittorio will tell the New York families to go protect you. They will do it right away. They are all frightened of my brother.”

Oh boy.

Now I have a horrifying vision of half the New York mafia invading JFK Airport on a quest to scoop me up in order to win favor with the dreaded Vittorio Messina. Instead of being locked in a Sicilian castle, I’ll be locked in a New York castle until my unpredictable uncle decides to let me out.

No fucking thanks.

“Mama, listen to me. Uncle Vittorio doesn’t need to call anyone. I’m perfectly safe and I’ll be staying with friends.”

She sniffs. “Who are these friends?”

Shit.I’m really not good at improvising. My sisters have always been my best friends and my external social circle is limited to basement dwelling gamers and former classmate acquaintances.

As my brain thumbs through the short list of contacts who wouldn’t mind a call for an airport rescue and yet wouldn’t expect to see me naked as a reward, the results are depressingly shallow.

But then inspiration strikes and I snatch it without a second thought.

“Monte Castelli,” I blurt out. “I’m staying with him and his brother, Nico.”

“WHO?” she shouts.

“Mama, you remember the Castelli brothers. They are Luca’s best friends. They were very helpful during our…um, domestic issue last year.”

The ‘domestic issue’ involved my father getting his head blown off by Luca when he stormed into the house with the Castelli brothers on a mission to rescue Anni.

My mother makes a noncommittal ‘hmph’ sound as she thinks this over. She’s not getting more hysterical, which is a good sign. She thinks very highly of her son-in-law and obviously Luca trusts Monte.

And, odd as it sounds, I sort of trust Monte too.

Though he’s been in and out of trouble since his early teens and his reputation as an oversexed hookup king is known far and wide, I’m comfortable around him. Monte was often assigned as my bodyguard when I traveled back and forth between Long Island and the city. We’ve been alone together dozens of timesand he never once tried anything shady. That doesn’t mean we’re close buddies, but I’ve been on the receiving end of enough crooked behavior from men to appreciate the ones who don’t openly stare at my tits while salivating and covering their schemes with a phony polite act.

There’s nothing phony or polite about Monte Castelli. Nothing at all.

Honestly, he’s a chronically sarcastic asshole. Whenever we exchange more than two sentences, spirited arguments tend to break out.

But Monte has a few good qualities. He’s loyal to the people he cares about. He has the courage to step up when it really counts.

And he can be funny. Profane and infuriating, but also funny.

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