Mafia Kings: Valentino: Dark Mafia Romance Series #6

The dining room was in another white-walled room, but this time, wooden cabinets lined the walls and showed off old porcelain figurines and gold-rimmed plates.

Isabella and I arrived at the same time. After my run-in with Don Vicari earlier, I wasn’t about to be late.

Nobody else was there yet, so I decided to make conversation with my bride-to-be.

“Hey,” I said with a smile.

“Hello,” she said bashfully.

“I read Milk and Honey,” I said, then tried to remember one of the lines. “‘Sex takes two’ – wait, hold on… there was something about consent…”

Isabella’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head.

“You can’t tell my father!” she said in a panicked whisper. She glanced behind me, probably to make sure he wasn’t coming down the hall.

“I won’t,” I said, surprised by how afraid she was. “But you were the one who said the book title in front of him, you know.”

“My father hasn’t ever read a book of poetry,” she whispered. “I knew he’d never open it. But if you tell him what it’s about – ”

“I won’t!” I said, like Jesus, calm down!

“Thank you,” she said, relieved. Then she frowned, puzzled. “How did you get a copy?”

“I borrowed yours.”

Back to full-blown panic.

“What?! Did you come into my room?!”

“No, Ludavica got it for me!”

God damn.

If this was what she was going to be like all the time, it was gonna be a long fucking marriage.

Isabella looked angry. “Ludavica gave it to you?! She didn’t ask me!”

“I asked her for it so I could read it as a surprise,” I said hastily, not wanting to get the servant girl in trouble. “So you and me could have something to talk about.”

“…oh,” Isabella said, stunned. “That’s… that’s really nice of you.”

I suddenly felt bad for her.

It seemed nobody in her life had ever taken an interest in the things she loved.

I tried to lighten things up with a jokey tone of voice. “I was kind of surprised you liked it.”

“Why?” she asked with a frown. She was acting like I’d offended her.

“Well, it’s kind of spicy.” I nearly added, For a virgin, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate me bringing that up, so I kept it to something she’d told me herself. “Especially for somebody who can’t watch TV or go on the internet.”

“Oh,” she said, her anger gone. “I guess that’s true.”

“Maybe we could talk about the book later,” I suggested.

“Not here,” she whispered frantically.

“Okay, okay – where, then?”

“…I don’t know…”

That sadness in her voice… like she would never be able to discuss something she loved, at least not openly.

Suddenly, she looked past me and forced a smile. “Hello, Daddy.”

I turned to see Don Vicari walking towards us down the hall.

“What are you two talking about?” he asked suspiciously.

“Just the books she’s reading,” I replied.

“Oh,” he replied like he couldn’t care less. “Go sit down. I’m hungry.”

He brushed past us and went into the room.

I felt even worse for Isabella than before.

A father who treated her like she was barely there…

But who terrified her, too.

Especially if he should find out what she was secretly like.

As much as I didn’t want to marry the girl…

I made a promise that I’d be a thousand times better to her than her asshole father.

Dinner was just me, Don Vicari, Isabella, and the great-grandmother, who was helped into the room by a servant.

No Ludavica. I guess she wasn’t allowed to be present for family meals.

We sat around a huge wooden table made for 12 people. Don Vicari sat at the far end with the old lady at the other.

Isabella and I sat opposite each other in the middle of the table. Even though we were the closest in distance, the whole setup felt strange and stiffly formal.

For the antipasto, there was some weird kind of dish I’d never seen before. It looked like tiny fish skins wrapped around a bunch of stuff.

“What’s this?” I asked, poking at the silver, scaly thing on my plate.

“Sarde a beccafico,” Isabella informed me. “Butterflied sardines stuffed with breadcrumbs, parsley, pine nuts, and raisins.”

I was not a fan of sardines.

“Are sardines a big part of Sicilian cooking?” I asked.

“Fairly big, yes. My father loves them.”

“…great.”

I tried a bite –

And my mouth got flooded with fishy taste.

Fuckin’ sardines…

I forced it down with a big swallow of red wine, which was just okay – not like the fantastic wines my family produced in our vineyards. But at least it killed the fishy taste.

Isabella smiled. “Not to your taste?”

“It’s fine,” I said as I drank more wine and tried to swish it around in my mouth inconspicuously.

Don Vicari didn’t say much. When he did open his mouth, it was talk about boring-ass things like how there hadn’t been enough rain and everything on the property was dying.

I noticed the old bastard loved to complain, complain, complain.

That seemed to be his greatest joy in life: being dissatisfied and pissed off.

The old lady didn’t say anything at all. She just ate in silence. Whenever I looked over and caught her eye, she gave me a big smile before going back to her food.

The main course was Sicilian-style tuna steaks, which were ten times better than the sardines: not fishy at all, and the sauteed garlic and tomatoes they were cooked in were quite good.

It was during the main course that things went sideways.

“So,” Isabella asked, “how was your first day at work?”

I glanced over at Don Vicari, who gave me a dark look.

“Um… uneventful,” I answered.

“That’s funny – I’ve never heard anyone describe being around my brother as ‘uneventful.’”

“Well, you know…” I said, then trailed off, not wanting to get in trouble with the Don.

“My guess is that the evenings will be pretty uneventful, too, without TV or internet,” she said slyly.

Nice. A callback to our secret conversation in the hallway.

“Probably so,” I agreed with a smile of my own.

“If you get bored, I went through my books and found some you might like. I figured you weren’t really one for history or philosophy, but I have a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. Have you ever read that?”

“I saw the movie a long time ago.” When she looked at me blankly, I said, “The one with Guy Pearce and Henry Cavill.”

She looked at me like I’d said some weird Icelandic names. “…who?”

Jesus Christ.

“Never mind. But yeah, I liked the story.”

“You might like the book, then,” she said cheerfully.

I shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”

If the complete lack of entertainment around here continued, I was going to have to find something to fill my time.

Don Vicari snarled at the end of the table, “If you want to waste your time with your nose in a book, Isabella, fine – but don’t waste his time, too.”

I looked at him, shocked.

It wasn’t just a dick thing to say – he was actually angry, way out of proportion to anything she’d actually said.

Isabella blushed deep red and looked down at her plate in shame. “Yes, Papa.”

“Apologize to him,” Don Vicari commanded.

“I’m sorry, Valentino,” she whispered, unable to look me in the face.

I sat there in shock for an instant –

And then I lost it.

I turned to Don Vicari and snapped, “What the hell was that?”

The old bastard looked at me in surprise.

“She was just trying to be nice to me,” I said angrily.

The shock quickly drained from Don Vicari’s face and was replaced with pure rage.

I guess nobody’d spoken to him that way for quite a while.

And possibly the last guy who had spoken that way to him had wound up dead.

A deathly silence filled the room.

It was at that point I realized I might have seriously fucked up.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Isabella staring at me. Her face was white as a ghost.

“What did you just say to me?” Vicari seethed.

I had a choice.

I was already under his thumb as far as the work situation went. Nothing I could do about that.

But this was an entirely different matter.

I could back down and let this asshole grind me under his heel, now and for the rest of my life…

Or I could stand up for myself –

And Isabella.

I knew that if I did stand up for the both of us, it could go badly –

But if I didn’t, my life here in Sicily was going to be hell on earth.

So –

FUCK this guy.

“My future wife was trying to be kind to me,” I said in a cold, vicious tone that matched Vicari’s own. “She was trying to share something with me that means a lot to her – something that she loves. And since she’s going to be my wife, I won’t have anyone talk to her like that.”

Don Vicari looked like he was about to kill me –

But before he could say anything, I hit him with the haymaker:

“After all, don’t you want me protecting your daughter after we marry? Sir?”

Again, credit to Niccolo for the verbal judo. He’d taught me the general principle a couple of years ago when he was explaining how a consigliere could negotiate for his don.

If somebody challenges you, you figure out the one thing they CAN’T say ‘no’ to without making them look like an idiot.

Then you pose a question where they’re FORCED to say ‘no’… or they have to agree with you.

Vicari just sat there stewing in his hatred – but what the fuck could he say?

No, I don’t want you protecting her.

Nobody but a shitheel would say that.

I guess he could’ve said, I’m her father, so I can talk to her any way I want.

But my immediate reply would have been, Well, I’m going to be her husband. And I don’t let ANYONE talk that way to my wife.

If there’s one unspoken rule in the Cosa Nostra – and Italy, really – it’s that you don’t fuck with a man’s woman. And I don’t mean sexually (although it goes for that, too).

What I mean is this:

If you insult a man’s woman, you just insulted him.

If you abuse her in any way, you just abused him.

And if the woman is his wife?

The insult is ten times worse.

If you don’t stand up to the other guy – if you don’t act like he just spat in your face – then you just proved you’re not a man.

Nobody will respect you – and they shouldn’t.

A man who won’t stick up for his woman is a piece of shit, unworthy of respect.

The same rule had to apply in Sicily. If anything, it was probably an even bigger rule around here.

If Vicari was going to get in a pissing match with me over this, then he was the fucking asshole – and we both knew it.

Even if he was a mafia don, that didn’t make the rule go away.

I know, I know –

Most guys, if their woman got insulted by a mafia don, would just sit back and take it.

Because if they didn’t take it, they might wind up dead.

But other men would look at them with contempt or pity…

And their wives sure as hell wouldn’t respect them anymore.

But me?

I wasn’t the kind of guy to sit back and take it.

So if Don Vicari and me were gonna throw down –

Might as well get it over with.

At least none of his hired goat-fuckers with shotguns were in the room.

If it was an even fight, I might even kill him before he could kill me.

But…

It didn’t come to that.

He backed down.

“Waste your time, then,” Vicari snarled. “See if I care.”

And he went back to eating his food.

I glanced over at Isabella.

Though she still looked like she’d crapped a brick, I saw something else in her eyes:

Awe.

I winked at her – with the eye opposite Don Vicari, so he couldn’t see (I wasn’t that stupid). Then I went back to my food.

We ate the rest of the meal in silence.

At the end, Don Vicari got up and left without a word.

“Thank you,” Isabella whispered.

I nodded and smiled. “No problem.”

She got up and left…noveldrama

And I was alone with the great-grandma.

She got up from her chair with great effort…

Walked over to me, her face blank…

And raised her hand towards my face.

For a second, I thought she was going to slap me for talking to her son like that –

And I’d have to take it.

No way I was going to do anything back to an old lady.

But instead, she patted my cheek softly.

“You a good boy,” she said very seriously.

Then she smiled sadly and walked out of the room.