One of them is flying back to Italy for a christening. Someone else’s idiot brother-in-law nearly chopped off his thumb while using hedge clippers. There are jokes about the kids left at home. The burden of taxes.

  The idiots in the FBI. A younger man with a huge nose and thick eyebrows brings up his mantenuta—a woman who isn’t your wife, but who’s expensive nonetheless—joking about her putting him into such a debt he’s going to have to give Lucinda to American Express. They all laugh, except my uncle and the king, who puts down his wineglass so I can fill it.

  “Enough,” Santino says. He’s not even loud or sharp, but the laughter dies as if it’s been shot.

  As I lean over Santino, pouring his wine, I feel his eyes on me. I try to keep my body as far away from his as possible, but our skin is practically magnetized. I can’t breathe.

  “Grazie.” The word rolls from his lips like thunder from a cloud.

  My nipples harden and press against my blouse, tingles exploding across my skin. It’s the volcano choosing another day to erupt yet promising to explode for him and only him—when and only when he chooses.

  I hurry back to the kitchen—my skin burning in shame and lust.

  “Well?” Elettra grabs my arm after I go back to the kitchen with a load of dirty dishes. “What are they saying?”

  “Boring things.” I shrug, secretly thrilled to be playing informant, but also disappointed there’s nothing more exciting to relay. “Family chatter that doesn’t matter. Someone almost lost their daughter’s wedding savings playing cards. That sort of thing.”

  Elettra pouts. “I like it when they talk about exciting things. We never get to be involved. But one day I want to be like my brother, in the thick of it all—”

  “You do not,” Zia Donna snaps. She’s more even-tempered than earlier, but there is still venom in that stare. “Get the espresso cups. Go.”

  “Can’t I just go out there once?” Elettra pleads. “I’ve been doing all the work too. Let me see them, just once, Ma?”

  “Here.” Zia thrusts a second bottle of sambuca into Elettra’s hands and passes me the coffee pot. “Go get those brazen men their coffee.”

  The way she says “men” forces her entire face to curl up as if she ate a soured lemon.

  Conversations in the dining room prove to Elettra that there’s no excitement here. No danger. Just boring people talking about boring things. An Italian circus, just for them to joke about minutiae. I try to catch Elettra’s gaze to tell her, “I told you so,” but then a single word from the man at the head of the table stops me dead.

  “Violetta.”

  Everything stops. Zia and Elettra stop pouring as if his voice turned them into statues. I’m at the opposite end of the table from Santino, pot of coffee frozen mid-air, but the way he stares at me, across so many other men, makes me feel naked, exposed. Vulnerable as a gazelle too young to run with the herd when the lion begins his chase.

  The way they all look tells me my name wasn’t simply mentioned in passing. It was a command to pay attention. A command to answer. A command that came straight from the king.

  “Yes?” The word barely unsticks from my throat.

  “You will take a walk with me.”

  “Capo,” Zio interjects, tilting his head as if he’s starting an argument he can’t afford to lose. “I was thinking—”

  “Hush, Guglielmo.” Santino stands, silencing the entire room with a single movement. How tall is this king? Six-two? Three? A thousand feet, scraping the night sky as he comes to me?

  “I could sell the business.” Zio presses on. “Maybe some property I’ve kept. This house.”

  If I wasn’t confused before, I am now.

  As far as I know, Zio’s business runs in the black. He’s not rich, but I never thought he’d be in so much debt he’d have to trade his property.

  My Zs don’t have children of their own, so all the earlier talk of daughters paying debts was irrelevant, but now Zio’s trying to throw real estate at Re Santino and this all makes no sense.

  Santino opens his gilded fist and holds his hand out to me.

  My muscles collapse, and this man my body cannot ignore pins me upright with nothing more than his gaze. My body is torn between fight and flight, pleasure and pain, fear and thrill. A heavy veil of danger floats above, covering some greater truth, and I’m not sure if I want to see behind it.

  One thing is for sure.

  There’s a debt owed him, and I have no idea how it will be repaid.

  “Come, Violetta,” he says. “Walk with me.”

  As if in a trance, I let the lion lure me from my aunt and uncle’s house.

  4

  VIOLETTA

  We’re alone on the little porch with Zia watching from the other side of the screen door.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, hesitant and anxious.

  “Around the corner for a bit. This way.” Santino gestures. “I just want to talk.”

  The way he says “talk” feels ominous. But just around the corner is just that—around the corner. I can survive a conversation for that long. I go down the steps first and hear the screen door squeak open. Zia exits, buttoning her jacket. Her sister, Zia Donna, slings her bag over her shoulder, staring sternly at the space Santino occupies between us, without looking directly at him.

  Are they coming with us?

  Santino slips by me and opens the wrought-iron gate to the sidewalk. I pass it, and he holds it open for my zias, who follow, looking imperious and empowered.

  Santino comes to my side, and we walk down the block. The spring air is cooling, and I enjoy the chill on my skin. The night birds chirp and the highway buzzes half a mile away. My aunts walk behind, their footsteps hard on the pavement.

  Once I confirm they’re following, I know the ritual. Its purpose is to provide witness if he tries to treat me dishonorably. It comes after a request for marriage. It’s courtship, and it’s terrifying.

  It’s also secretly—very secretly—a little thrilling, though I still refuse to see why I’m being courted by this powerful and devastatingly handsome man.

  “What do you want to talk about?” I ask. Looking at him feels impossible, so I study the street trees and the stop sign at the corner, trying to think of anything but my proximity to him.

  “Tell me about yourself.” It’s not a question, but another demand in the life of a king.

  “That’s a little vague.” Before the words are all out of my mouth, I can’t believe I came back at him like that. My heart races, so I focus on the cracks in the concrete instead of trying to gauge how imposing he is.

  “If the question is vague, the answer can be,” he says with a joking lilt to his voice I didn’t think he was capable of. “One for one. See?”

  I sigh. I can say whatever I like then, so I might as well start with the bullshit everyone knows.

  “I was born in Naples—the same place as you. My parents died when I was five.” I glance at him when I say died instead of were shot in the street, and I don’t see much of a reaction. “So,” I continue, looking straight ahead. “We were sent here to live with my aunt and uncle.”

  “Losing one parent so young is a tragedy. Losing both—”

  “It’s fine,” I interrupt, which probably never happens to him, so I rush in with more words. “I was lucky to have an extended family on this side. Really. I just…I don’t like to dwell on it. When did you come over?”

  I pat myself on the back for the adept change in subject.

  “Five years in Napoli, then here,” he says, ignoring my question and freezing the self-congratulations. “Do you speak?”

  Obviously, I know how to make words with my mouth, but in the context of the Secondo Vasto culture, that’s not what he’s asking.

  “No.” I feel ashamed to admit that I come from Italy but can’t speak the language. “I understand everything. Just don’t ask me to conjugate a verb.”

  Is that a smile on his face? For a moment, he doesn’t look predatory or majestic. He looks like a guy with something to offer. “I can teach you.”

  “I get along just fine.” Relearning Italian is literally the last thing on my mind. Speaking in English to my family means I’m helping them with their English. And, honestly, I don’t want anything from this man.

  Well, there are several things I’d want from this man, under different circumstances, but that’s beside the point.

  “I miss home.” His voice rumbles in my very veins, yet the longing and authenticity of his sentiment softens me. “Our people, we have rules that work. We don’t need to explain them or justify. Here…maybe you don’t have this since you came young. But I arrived only eight years ago, when I was twenty-five, and I was set in my ways. I don’t have to explain them.”

  He’s thirty-three? Jesus, that’s old. How is someone so old so attractive? It feels strange. That means the first time I saw him, he was…

  “I’ve seen you before,” I blurt out. “When I was younger.” I swallow a strange lump in my throat. “Seven years ago. Eight, maybe?”

  “Yes. I moved here shortly before that day.”

  We’re at the second corner, and I stop there. “You remember that day?”

  “I remember lots of things, but that girl in the hall, I can never forget.”

  My cheeks burn pink at the honor of being so memorable, and I know right there that getting all squishy isn’t going to help me get through the second half of this conversation. With a glance behind to check on my aunts’ progress, I start walking again, trying to sound casual.

  “Have you known my zio long?”

  “Sure. I’ve known a lot of people a long time.”

  He’s not going to hold up his end of the conversation. That’s the true fact right now, and it humanizes him in a way.

  “But my zio’s house was one of your first stops when you got here. And let’s skip the part where you say you remember lots of things.”

  “I don’t like explaining. Remember that.”

  Remember when I cared?

  Me neither.

  “So, you stop at our house practically right off the boat—”

  “I took a flight.”

  “And you see me there, remember me in a dark hallway? Do you remember my sister, Rosetta?”

  He laughs—the kind that tells me I’m ridiculous, not that I’m funny. “Do I strike you as an idiot?”

  That feels like a trap if there ever was one.

  “Not at all. Quite the opposite. You strike me as a guy who doesn’t answer straight.”

  “I can. Try again.”

  We turn the corner, but it doesn’t feel as though we’ll be returning to the house anytime soon. If only my head and heart could get straight how we feel about this situation.

  “Okay. Tell me what you do for a living.”

  “This and that.”

  I laugh so hard I have to stop and bend over. When I look up, he’s smiling as if he knows exactly what cracked me up.

  “Show me how to answer like an American,” he says. “Tell me what you do.”

  “I’m at St. John’s University studying nursing. See? Did you note the specificity?”

  “I did. But you didn’t say why.”

  “Okay so, lesson two…an open-ended question can be answered with a story.” I’m not trying to be a cutting snot-ass, so I check his expression. He doesn’t look offended, so I continue. “My older sister died from pneumonia while she was on the other side. And yes, they have fine, fine healthcare in Italy, but for some reason, not in that town and not for her. So this is what motivates me. Even more than my parents, losing my sister was a big deal, and if I can keep someone else from going through that, I’ll live happy. Now, you get to tell me what motivates you.”

  “I’m sorry about Rosetta.” He lays his hand on my arm. All the blood in my veins races to that very spot, spreading heat across my entire body. I’m not sure if it’s from the touch or the unexpectedness of my sister’s name in his mouth.

  “Thanks.” I step away, and his hand falls off me. “Now, you tell a story.”

  “I knew your father.”

  The statement stops my heart. I’m caught off guard by the revelation, but I’m not surprised he knew Emilio Moretti. We’re from a small corner of a big city where everyone knows everyone.

  But then he says nothing. Just those four words.

  “That’s your story?”

  Santino shrugs. “It’s a lot to say to someone you just met, no?”

  “Not really. I mean, yes, but maybe a little context?”

  We have half a block to go, and he spends a chunk of that deep in thought.

  “I think he’d be proud of you,” Santino says finally. “Smart girl. Going to school. Good cook. Very beautiful.”

  He ticks off compliments like pretty beads, and each one of them makes me blush a little—except the last one, which makes my cheeks burn like hot lava. Rosetta was the beautiful one. In the looks department, I’m extra average, with a side of ordinary. My brown eyes are a little too far apart and the brows are black and arched. My nose is too big and my neck is weirdly long. I’ve never learned to manage my hair, which bursts into cowlicks when it’s short, and when it’s long, it can’t decide between curly and straight, so it’s both.

  “Well…” I start to deflect the flattery, but Santino’s got a shovel so why not dig himself a big old hole?

  “You’d make a good wife,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “What? You disagree?”

  “Well, I’m not a generic good wife for any generic guy. I’m not a cupcake, or a…you know…a reliable car that’ll go two hundred thousand miles for whoever happens to be driving it.”

  “No, I don’t mean…” He tsks. “Violetta. Do you misunderstand me on purpose?”

  “Do I? Based on your earlier statements, you want a smart wife, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Very beautiful. One who can cook?”

  “What can I say? I like to eat.”

  This toxic male pig doesn’t deserve to make me smile that easily, but he has his own touching, backward charm.

  “But why? Why is she a good cook? Because she enjoys feeding you? Or eating? Or does she hate cooking even though she’s good at it? Ask yourself those questions.”

  “Or I can ask you? Why are you a good cook?”

  Santino DiLustro always has a way to turn the conversation away from himself and back onto me. I’m not going to get him out of that habit in half a block.

  “Cooking,” I say, surrendering the conversation to him, “has two main considerations. Space and time. How many burners, and how long. Like a dance. This is the space, this is the rhythm. And you go! If you’re organized, it’s beautiful. The bread and the escarole come out hot at the same time, if you think on your toes and you’re organized. It reminds me a little of triage actually. You have to arrange things in order of importance to give everything equal significance.”

  We round the last corner.

  “I was right,” he says.

  All of Santino’s crew are outside the house, waiting with the men of my extended family. Maybe Santino predicted they’d be outside and he was right about that?

  I steal a glance at him, and it almost hurts to look at him. I look back at my zias. They don’t wave but turn away. I should feel safe and at home, but it’s unsettling.

  “Guglielmo,” Santino says.

  “Please. Capo. My respects—” From the spirality of the intro, I can tell Zio’s about to work in some long explanation for I don’t even know.

  “Basta,” Santino says like a teacher hushing a recalcitrant child. “She will make a good wife.”

  “She’s too plain.” Zio bobs his hand down the length of my body as if I’m a car with rust under the chassis.

  “Uh, hang on—” I say to exert my own will on whatever’s happening here.

  “I need your permission, Guglielmo,” Santino says.

  I’m so stunned he’d ask anyone permission for anything, you could knock me over with a feather.

  Zio and Zia look at each other with a few decades of shared fears and hopes.

  “We’d better start cleaning up,” I say. “It was nice meeting you, Santino.”

  I hold my hand up in a wave, but no one moves. The king does not cast his gaze upon me, because it’s fixed on my sweaty-templed uncle.

  “Do not withhold your blessing,” Santino commands without a threat, just a routine authority.

  “Of course,” Zio says. He looks at me with tears ready to fall from glassy eyes. “I know Violetta will be treated like a queen.”

  “As she is,” Santino says. “So will she be known.”

  Zia hugs me, crying with apologies, as I watch my uncle blink away tears.

  “It is done.” Santino claps. He’s no longer just a shitty conversationalist who wants to take a walk, but a king laying down the law of the land. “The debt is paid.”

  What. The. Fuck?

  “Wait…what?” I ask.

  “Violetta Moretti, daughter of Emilio Moretti, is now mine.”

  “Stop!” I shout, shaking my aunt off me. “Hold the epic fuck up, and do not”—I point at Santino—“do not interrupt me again when I ask you. What. The. Holy. Fuck?”

  He has the smirk of a devil who knows the exact position of my soul, how to extract it, and how tender it will be when he eats it.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll go to St. Paul’s, and we will be married.”

  Now I know I’m in a terrible nightmare. Who says this? Who does this? Who talks so coldly about marrying someone they literally spent ten minutes talking to?

  Am I still sleeping? Surely, surely, I’m passed out in the bread bowl in the kitchen and dreaming/nightmaring this horrible mess…because of stress. That’s what Scarlett would tell me. She would tell me, per her dream book, this means I’m overstressed and need a vacation and if I can only wake up, then I can leave for Malta in a few days and let this whole thing become a figment of my imagination.

  Except I can’t force myself awake.

  Santino grasps my arm and leans down to me, hissing like a snake who doesn’t want anyone else to know when he’ll strike me. “You will be a queen, or your aunt and uncle will be removed as obstacles and you’ll be replaced with your cousin, Elettra.”