Page 17 of My Solemn Vow (The Mafia Arrangement #1)
ANTONELLA
THE AFTERMATH
“Antonella!” my uncle yells the minute I walk across the threshold into his home.
He storms toward me, his shoes clicking across the terrazzo floor. His face is red and his eyes are narrowed. I know that look. It’s the one he gets seconds before a rash decision.
Uncle Gregorio grips me by the shoulders and shakes me. “What did you do?”
“You know what I did.” I force myself out of his grasp, knocking his hands away. What I did might have been wrong... in his eyes. But it was right in my soul. “And you know it’s not up to you alone if I live or die. Killing me means they will have the right to destroy you.”
He puts up a hand and works his jaw back and forth.
“I always knew you were weak. I thought letting you go to school and then teach would keep you in your place. I gave you what you wanted until I could find someone willing to lower themselves by marrying you. Instead? You pull this bullshit. My brother is rolling in his grave with how ungrateful you are.”
I ignore his jabs and barbs. Before I went to college, Uncle Gregorio’s tantrums would sting. Anytime he brought up my parents, it would bring me to tears.
Anything Gregorio said, I believed. I was a child and didn’t know better.
While part of me is still a scared little girl, hiding away in the darkest parts of my mind, the rest of me has grown, healed, and accepted that Gregorio is a bully used to getting his way.
Keeping Gregorio honest about my father’s wishes already infuriates him. The audacity of a woman as consigliere and being entitled to my father’s share of the family business stings his sexist ego.
Now, I don’t waste the time or energy answering his brutal attacks, no matter how awful his words are. I never let him see me crack. He doesn’t know what to do with that, and he grapples with my refusal to engage in the volley of violence.
“Well, at least I’ve gotten you married off.
You’ll no longer be my problem. This weekend, you’ll marry whomever Ian Cavanagh offers for the truce.
I’ve proposed that he offer his own son.
It would work out perfectly, seeing as how you’re already willing to throw your life away for Valor’s spawn.
Once you’re part of their family, they can do whatever they want with you.
Maybe their inquisitor won’t kill you like he did your cousins.
” Gregorio steps closer to me. Getting in my face, he lowers his voice and threatens me.
“He’s killed six of them personally. This year alone.
Maybe he’ll make you lucky number seven. ”
“Then that will be God’s will and not yours,” I reply.
That earns me a head shake, a withering glare, and an expression so pinched that you’d think he smelled rotten cheese. Finally, Uncle Gregorio storms past me, heading in the opposite direction of my normal course through the house.
Gregorio thinks he can control everything and everyone, but he can’t claim to be a man of God and be omniscient. It’s a fact he doesn’t like to be reminded of.
I’m not even halfway to my room when Berto finds me. Walking down the hallway with me, he asks, “You didn’t happen to bring that gun back, did you?”
With a massive eye roll, I reach into my purse and retrieve the handgun.
I spin it in my hand and offer him the grip while holding it by the barrel.
“Yes, I brought your precious gun home. I knew it was one of your favorites, so I narrowly stopped myself from tossing it into the river on my way home.”
Taking the gun with a soft smile, Berto sighs. “You know, Antonella, it didn’t have to go this way.”
“Save the lecture. We’ve had our piece of the argument.” I give him a soft smile.
I’m nicer to him than Gregorio because Berto doesn’t know how to handle it when people are nice to him.
“Well.” He shrugs, backing down. “We’ll see how that ends for you.”
The reminder of the uncertainty of my future sets my heart hammering in my chest for the second time today when he walks away from me.
My fingers shake as I unlock my bedroom door and step inside. Under normal circumstances, in a normal family, I’d be a hero. I’d have saved a child’s life.
But the drug-smuggling, gun-running, money-laundering, information-brokering D’Medicis are the original Italian Mafia dating back to the fifteenth century.
The name may have suffered a variation, the business undergone a dozen or more transformations, but the blood is the same. So are the traditions.
Until me.
I toss my purse down on my bed and strip out of my work clothes. Normally, I’d hang them up to wear another day, maybe next week even, but they feel dirty, the corruption of today staining the fabric. I toss them in the wash.
I have two hours before dinner, and I want a long, hot shower and a half hour to stare at the ceiling, disassociating, but I know that’ll be too much to ask. I put on my robe and head into the bathroom.
After showering quickly and drying my hair, I pull on a wrap dress for dinner. While I’m tying the fabric, the door to my room opens. I go straight to my nightstand drawer and draw my gun. As I point it toward the door, my thumb naturally rolls over the safety.
Leticia, who was sneaking into my room, screeches and quickly covers her mouth to muffle the sound.
She steps inside and, after closing the door, hisses, “Antonella. What on earth? Why did you pull a gun?”
“Because my door opened unannounced,” I answer logically. I put the gun back in the drawer and groan. “Please, by all means, let yourself in.”
“What happened today? All Berto would tell me is that you’re getting married.” Leticia climbs onto the bed and flops down on her side, looking at me. “I don’t see a ring.”
“They really don’t tell you anything.” I sigh and wave for her to move over.
Leticia rolls onto her back, leaving me room on the queen-size bed to climb on beside her. We lie there, looking up at the ceiling, in silence for a bit.
When I can stomach the answer, it comes out. “I called the truce today.”
“Oh. My. God.” She raises her head and looks over at me.
“The truce, as in, if they can’t come to an agreement, you’ll end up dead.
There needs to be two funerals and a wedding?
” Eyes wide, she draws a deep breath. “The truce where you had to pull a weapon on one of our people and make a solemn vow to protect a member of the other family with your life. That truce?”
I nod. “That truce.”
She pales and falls back down to the bed, her body stiff as a board next to me. “I’ll pray so hard for you.”
“Thanks.” I look at the stucco on the blank ceiling.
“My dad will kill you,” she groans.
She’s being metaphorical because despite Leticia being the daughter of the head of the family, she has zero exposure beyond what I tell her of the family business.
“Well, not if the Cavanaghs kill me first.” I hold my hands up in a demonstration of weighing the options.
God, I hope Valor Cavanagh loves his daughter. At least enough to spare the person who saved her.
“Okay, so tell me everything.” Leticia slaps my side with the back of her hand.
It takes me a whole ten minutes to relay the two-minute interaction with Berto and the three-minute communication with the Cavanaghs back to her because Leticia asks a million questions.
“Well... I guess we should get dinner out of the way. Mamma already has a dress on order for you. It’s waiting on tailoring.” Leticia sighs.
“Good, I won’t have to shop then.” I let out a massive sigh to match.
If Francesca is ordering a dress, it would be because Gregorio told her to.
It won’t be much longer, and Leticia will have a marriage arranged for her.
There will be a long engagement and a big fanfare leading up to a full weekend of events beyond a traditional wedding.
Leticia is every bit ready to be the good Mafia wife.
She’s been poised to please. Whereas, deep down, I’ve always known that however I ended up married, I wouldn’t be fawned over like some Italian Mafia princess.
Leticia has hundreds of inspirations tagged away in her internet pin board, and her sliding off the bed and straightening her dress nervously is more than a tick.
She’s itching to do something for this wedding now that she knows what’s happening.
“I’m getting you the something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. So that’ll be covered. It’s amazing how fast this all moves.”
I get up off my side and shake out my dress but keep my eyes on her. I don’t know how to tell her that it doesn’t matter. None of this really makes any difference to me.
Her eyes well with tears, and her bottom lip wobbles. “I wonder where you’ll live. Whoever it is probably won’t let you work. Oh... no. What will we do? I won’t get to see you every day. I just got you back.”
I want to comfort her and tell her that it’ll be okay. That I’ll be fine. But I won’t lie to her, and it’s too easy to get lost spiraling into the unknown. If I get soft and give into fear, then Berto and Gregorio win.
Neither Leticia’s tears, quivering lips, fallen shoulders, nor her arms wrapping around her middle break my resolve. She so easily shows all the feelings I wear guarded close to my heart.
Briskly, I round the bed and pull her into a hug, trying to protect her. I give up being honest. I can’t let her be this afraid. Ignorance is bliss. Spare her feelings. “It’ll be okay. They won’t keep us apart. I’ll call you all the time.”
“Promise?” she whines into my shoulder.
I squeeze, wobbling us back and forth. “Besides, it’s me they’re marrying off, not you. I’ll get married to an underling who’s happy to be considered important enough to be married off. No one will want the woman who called the truce. He’ll be easy to manage. Nothing will change between us at all.”