Page 28 of My Mafia King

“See you soon,gattino,” he murmurs casually and gives me a soft wink and a faint smile while I turn to stone.

Kitten.

5

DAMASO

The last timeI saw a girl like Carmina, I was seventeen and spent the summer in Sicily.

I didn’t want to go to Italy that summer.

Like every other kid I’d known, I wanted to spend the summer with my friends in New York. My father insisted, and my mother refused to side with me on that one.

They were both enthralled with the idea of visiting our extended family.

Me? Not so much.

I knew little about Italy. I spoke Italian because my parents had taught me, and I knew my cousins, aunts, and uncles, but I wasn’t born there.

I was born in New York. Long Island, to be exact.

That summer, I didn’t know that two years into the future, I’d lose my father and shortly after, my mother.

My father was a decade older, and his health could’ve been better.

My mother died of a broken heart after his passing, which I never thought would be possible, but it was.

So that particular summer, my father and I fought a lot.

Who wanted to spend all that time over there?

Not me, anyway.

I knew that place. I didn’t like the pace and that people were different. The kids were different too.

Even my cousins were different.

I didn’t have much in common with them.

I liked the food, slept well, and the weather was nice, but it was summer.

Summer was nice everywhere.

Yes. Italian blood coursed through my veins, but was that enough to bond with the locals? I didn’t think so.

The first week, I didn’t leave the house. And then, we went to church on Sunday morning and visited some friends a little later.

It was a gathering with food and drinks and noisy people around the table. They were chatting, drinking wine, and laughing, except for one girl.

She was tall, willowy, and shy.

Shy girls had never been my thing, but something about her had caught my eye. One of my cousins had told me she lived with her mother down the street.

Her father died in an accident, and her family owned some land and a modest house.

My cousin also told me they struggled to stay afloat and make ends meet.

I knew little about that topic back then, and not because my family was necessarily wealthy but because we never talked about our struggles.

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