Page 50 of Runaway in the Mafia
“Let him cool off,” Remigio pleaded. “He’ll—”
I held up my hand to silence him. Marco squirmed in his seat in front of me. Anyone who knew me knew it was too late. Butstill, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Wanted to try not to fucking blow the head off another family member.
Clear lines were being drawn. Loyalty was being questioned. The balance had shifted. The younger generation had taken over. No one knew, other than Antonio, that I had already signed the contract for the fucking marriage. I could probably have said it and gotten rid of all this tension. Been done with it. Clear the air. But I didn’t. Something held me back. It was tangible. It was brown. It was the sound of her moans coming on my fucking Mont Blanc.
Pent-uptestosterone and alter egos put me in a foul mood. I walked out of the charged room, looking for the only relief I could find. Mamma was brewing something with her back turned to me, but the kitchen didn’t hold the kind of entertainment I sought. I was almost out of there when she called out, “Romeo, take this to Aha—” she turned around. “Oh, Vitale, I thought you were Romeo.”I wasn’t my fuck faced cousin who was all over a girl.She glanced at the clock. “Amunì, it’s one already.” She took the pot off the stove and poured it into a mug. “Lunch isn’t ready yet,figlio mio.”
She took it for granted that I’d stay for lunch. I couldn’t even contradict her anymore. I was always staying for lunch. And fucking dinner, too.
An annoying presence grated on my back. “Romeo…” Mamma held out the cup. “Can you take this to Ahana?”
The hand in my pocket fisted around the chain enclosed within my fingers. The fucker slipped past me and grabbed the handle like he was the perfect errand boy. Any job I gave him, he couldn’t be bothered to finish off. But this… he was too fuckingeager. Annoying. I wanted to blow his head off and bury him six feet under. Instantly.
“Is the Princess having a lazy day?”
Mamma gave me a death glare. “That girl isn’t one of your sisters. She wouldn’t know lazy if it hit her in the face.” She walked over to Romeo and covered the mug with a plate. “Make sure you’re quiet when you go into her room. She’s having one of her headaches.”
Romeo going into her room? In what world was that an approved thing?I don’t fucking think so.
I let him carry it out with a wide grin. Then I waltzed out of the kitchen with a soft whistle in my tone. I dropped it the moment I was out of sight from Mamma and took the stairs two at a time. I was just in time to catch him knocking on her room door.
Eager little bastard.Just because he was called Romeo didn’t mean he had to go after my fucking Juliet.
I came up right behind him. “Give me that and bugger off.”
“Jesus fuck,” he startled. “Did you have to creep up on me?”
“I didn’t. You were preoccupied.” I gestured towards the mug. “You’re wanted.”
He glared. “Where?”
“Somewhere.”
He shrugged and handed the mug over to me. At least he wasn’t an idiot. “Whatever, man. I’ll have her all to myself anyway soon enough.”
I took it back. He was a moron. I predicted agony in his future.
I waited until he was out of sight before I pulled the handle down and slipped inside. Instantly, my world fizzled. Everything became darker, warmer. Cosier. Probably because she’d made the room all dark, but I found the curled-up bundle in the bed easily. Shutting the door behind me with a soft click, I moved tothe bed. She was curled up in to a foetal position, face turned away from me, head buried under the pillow. Two Ibuprofens rested on the bedside table. Something I couldn’t fathom tightened within my chest. I placed the mug beside her pills and sank onto the bed next to her.
“Hurts so badly,” she whimpered, and I didn’t know why, but it caught at my heart strings and tugged.
I didn’t like it, and it pissed me off. I couldn’t help but growl, “That’s what you get when you call people and cry.”
She almost knocked her head on the bed head pulling her head up. I growled and shoved my hand in between to soften the bump. Her face crumbled at the sight of me and her eyes squinted from the pain. Her skin was an unhealthy ashen shade. Too fucking grey to be anywhere near chestnut brown. It made me angry. Rattle with frustration. It hadn’t slipped past my mind that she had one of these headaches every fucking time she made those calls. She may have forgotten that Giuseppe was my fucking errand boy. I hadn’t. He reported back to me eagerly. Each week, she went out under the guise of meeting up with her client in town. She did meet them alright. But she always ended it with one of her calls. Did she think I was a fucking idiot? Or maybe she didn’t think of me at all. I didn’t even know what pissed me off the most.
She licked her lips to erase the dried cracks lining them. “What are you—”
“Shut up.”
My hands were jerky as I cracked the Ibuprofen out. The fact that she actually did that told me how bad her fucking headache was. “Give me your hand.” She was obedient and held them out. I handed the mug. She cupped it, her throat working. Her eyes carried a weird moistness to them. I took a deep breath and softened my tone. “Drink up.”
Her hands clenched around it, and instead of drinking it, she shakily carried it to the side of her forehead and rolled it along it as if the heat soothed her pain. She was like a puppet, her movements all stiff.
“Open up,” I pulled her lip, and her mouth popped open. I gritted my teeth as my fingers touched her tongue and placed the pill on it. “Now, drink up,” I ordered. She was so obedient. It should have felt like a dream. I didn’t like it. “Again.” And we repeated. She sipped her tea slowly. A mixture of ginger and turmeric by the smell of it. Her huge eyes grew to twice their size when I tugged the band on her ponytail off.
“Keeping your hair in a tie isn’t going to fucking help you now,” I grumbled.
Her eyes slid closed, and her shoulders slumped. “You can go now.”
