Page 9 of Mafia and Protector

Over the years, the families running the Società had become very wealthy. The Società had started out in L.A. by controlling the port and the drug trade, before extending its influence into various other enterprises. In recent years, the wave of indictments against Mob families in the north-east of the country had allowed Mafia organizations in other areas—such as Florida, L.A., and Vegas—to flourish.

I looked across at my future father-in-law. Cecilio Bonardi was a pretentious fool. I hoped his daughter didn’t take after him, although she’d appeared pleasant enough from what I had seen of her at the contract signing.

The Bonardi’s drawing room gave me a headache every time I had to come into it. It was straight out of the old country. The furniture was heavy and adorned with so many embellishments and flourishes that looking at it too long made one feel dizzy. Everything was either colored in garish gold or cringeworthy crimson, the décor screaming that the Italian inhabitants of this house had ‘made it’ out here in America.

The only exception to the color scheme was the green, red and white Italian flag in the corner of the room; however, even that shrieked tackiness, especially with a fan set up deliberately in front of it to make the flag flutter madly in its electric breeze. There was nothing Casmundina Bonardi didn’t think of. She even had plastic covers on the chairs—her Italian relations would be so proud of her.

As I checked my watch, I heard the door open and turned to watch Jacob come in with Jessica on his arm.

Dear Lord, whatwasshe wearing? Was this really the same demure girl who signed the engagement contract with me just a few days ago?

As she walked into the room, she was pulling hard at the bottom of her outfit, her actions drawing even more attention to the indecent hemline of her bright orange dress which violently clashed with the burgundy walls of the room.

I’d never spoken to Jessica before the day I gave her the engagement ring, but from what I had seen of her that day, she seemed to be a nice girl. However, if this was how she usually dressed, then maybe she wasn’t the right girl for me.

She was also wearing the sparkly gold sky-high heels again—and she seemed just as unstable in them as last time.

They had seemed an odd combination with the simple lilac dress she had worn at the contract signing; to be honest, they looked no better with the current dress.

I sighed inwardly. My family ruled the Società Mafia; one day, I would become the Consigliere, and be second-in-command of the organization. My wife needed to be classy, not trashy.

The horrendous dress and shoes aside, she had a nice figure and a face with delicate features and huge gray eyes. She was wearing her dark hair loose over her shoulders, and as she walked toward us, the lighting caught the rich chestnut glints in it.

It was hard to know what to make of her. I tried to catch her eye, but she resolutely avoided my gaze.

Her mother placed Jessica and me next to each other at the dinner table. I would rather have sat where I could talk with the other men about business. That was the whole reason for this marriage, after all, not so that I could benefit from female company. There were plenty of attractive girls at our clubs who were more than willing to warm my bed.

I tried to engage Jessica in conversation, but she either ignored me or gave one-word answers as far as possible to any questions I put to her. The rare times I managed to catch her eye, her expression made it clear that she thought I was going to eat her alive.

After the meal, as we stood having coffee in the drawing room, Gabriel approached me. “So how was the dinner chat with your fiancée?”

“Far from a success,” I said tersely.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow in question.

“She hardly said a word to me.”

“Perhaps she’s just nervous,” suggested my brother.

“It’s made more difficult by not having much to talk about. I don’t even know the girl, so what are we supposed to talk about? I can hardly tell her that she looks nice in that dress.”

Gabriel chuckled.

I looked across the room at Jessica. “This girl in front of me is completely different from the one I met a few days earlier. In her father’s office, she was modestly dressed and demure in her demeanor. The girl in front of me now is dressed like a hooker, and she’s either jumping out of her skin when I speak to her or being deliberately rude by ignoring me.”

As the night wore on, I felt my blood pressure rising and eventually I pulled Jessica to one side.

As I laid my hand on her arm, she flinched and stepped back, and her reaction riled me even more. “We need to talk. Follow me.”

She looked like a deer caught in headlights, her eyes huge and unblinking.

She followed me back to the dining room and I closed the door behind her; although knowing Mrs. Bonardi, she would probably within the next ten seconds have her whole body pressed up to the other side of the door, trying to listen in to what I had to say. Not that I cared.

I took a step toward her and her whole body tensed. I looked hard at my bride-to-be.

“You’re fighting me,” I told her. “Why?”

She looked at me with her wide gray stare, but her mouth remained resolutely shut. Getting her to talk to me was like drawing blood from a stone.

---