I squeeze her hand and look at her, asking if she’s ready, because this is it. There’s only one way to prove her power isn’t contingent on a crown.

  She meets my stare and lets go of my hand. I sit, leaving her alone on her feet.

  “Dr. Martino Farina,” she calls. “Show yourself.”

  Heads turn. Gennaro and Carmine get into position, in case anything goes wrong.

  Farina stands, buttoning his jacket. He’s been laying low. Vito delivered the invitation to come here, with the message that the morphine hadn’t harmed Violetta. There was no mention of the drug that ended her pregnancy, so he assumed we didn’t know.

  That was my idea. The math of whether to come or not had to be hard enough to think about, but Farina’s equation had to reach the conclusion that forgiveness was possible.

  Now, standing at his table while everyone else is seated, he looks like a man who wishes he’d checked his work with a calculator.

  “At Damiano Orolio’s order,” Violetta says, “you gave me morphine.”

  “Signorina,” he says with his hands out in a kind of half-shrug, “I knew—”

  “Regina,” I demand, gently but firmly.

  “Regina,” he says more loudly, his chin up. He doesn’t fear Violetta. He should. “It was known that Re Santino was dead. You had no husband, so when Capo Orolio called from the other side and ordered the marriage with his son, it was my duty to make sure you complied.”

  “You were told I was pregnant.”

  “Of course. As a doctor, I can assure you, a single dose of this drug does not cause adverse effects. We can discuss further if you like. Perhaps as part of an internship if you make it through nursing school? I don’t want to bore you with complicated medical terms you’re unfamiliar with.”

  “What about the misoprostol?”

  He swallows so hard I’m sure his entire spine just went backward down his throat.

  She waits, watching him squirm, keeping everyone in the room in suspense. She’s giving them a minute to suspect he did something unacceptable, so the shock of his punishment will be absorbed in that suspicion.

  “It seemed…” He spreads his arms, looking at the faces of his peers before turning back to the queen with his hands folded in front of him. “Just a precaution. Surely no woman would want to enter into marriage with the possibility that another man’s baby—”

  “The king… Re Santino’s baby.”

  “Of course.” He’s now too afraid to defend himself further. Good. I don’t want to hear another word out of him.

  “That second drug you gave me worked, doctor. I lost a baby I wanted very badly.”

  It sounds as if the entire room—even the flatware and furniture—lets out a gasp.

  “Vito,” Violetta says, “take Mrs. Farina outside.”

  The tension in the room rises to a fever pitch, but no words are spoken. The leaders are afraid. Their little betrayals, no matter how slight, and their acceptance of a new rule may come to sit heavily in their laps.

  They’ve already been forgiven for all that, but they need to understand that though things will go back to normal, they’ll also change.

  As his wife is led out, Farina stands in shock, yet he’s not afraid—as if he thinks he’ll be able to walk away because Violetta is the one standing. Maybe he expects humiliation or a dressing down—and that will be shameful from a woman. It would make him an angry man…maybe a dangerous one.

  With a wave, Violetta has two men bring Farina to the front of the room. I am both surprised and proud of how natural she is at this. This is who she is. Who she’s always been. The moments I fuck her and she submits to my will are more precious with every ounce of power she takes for herself.

  Dr. Farina’s pushed to his knees in front of her. He sighs, resigned to the degradation.

  “Regina,” he says, looking down, “I am sorry.”

  “I’d have Father Alfonso come over and forgive you,” she says, taking her gun from its holster. “But he died of a heart attack when his church burned.” When he looks up in shock at the murder of a priest, the barrel of a gun is waiting for him. “So make your apologies directly to God.”

  This morning, I offered to do this part of the job for her. I said I’d do it at her command, with obedience, in front of everyone. That would send a message.

  She refused. I knew she would. It’s the right decision.

  We joked about making sure she had enough bullets, in case she missed at close range.

  But she doesn’t.

  32

  VIOLETTA

  The evening after Mille Luce, I’m up in the cupola, smoking a cigarette. My family is coming to live up here for a while and enjoy the retreat from the stresses of war.

  The town below, the lawn behind, everything side to side belongs to Santino and me. It’s my birthright through the Iron Diadem and the nail that connects it into a crown.

  So much of this is clear to me. Greed. Lust for power. Loyalty.

  But so much more is muddled.

  “Here you are,” Santino says, coming up the steps. From behind, he puts his arms around my waist. “Queen of the world.”

  “Please don’t kneel.” I turn to face him.

  “I’ll kneel when I want, and you’ll kneel when I tell you.”

  “Really?”

  “Before another hour passes, we need to be clear between us.” He pushes me to my knees, a shock of arousal flooding my body. “Out there, we are equals. One and the same. But when we’re alone, I rule you. Your body is my kingdom, and it obeys.”

  Looking up at him, I see him as ten feet tall, effortlessly in command.

  “Yes,” is the only word I can make.

  “My cock is waiting for your mouth.”

  I unbuckle, unbutton, unzip, remove his bludgeon of a dick, and without hesitation, put it in my mouth.

  “Such a queen,” he says, arms crossed, letting me do all the work. “Shooting the man who hurt you. Didn’t even blink. Didn’t ask for forgiveness. And here you are, on your knees, sucking my dick like you’re starving.” He takes a hard breath. “Put your hands behind your back. Good. Nice. Now, slow. Take all of it.”

  I open my throat and push forward, taking his entire length.

  “You’re in charge,” he says. “Let me see what you do with it.”

  He’s making sure I know he’s the king. He can’t live without his dominance over my body, and he needs to know I can’t live without it either.

  Leaving him to be still, I’m the one who does the work, pushing him down my throat and halfway out until I need to breathe, then doing it again. I’m ready to swallow what he releases when he says, “Stop.” I pull away, spit dripping down my chin.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  Heart pounding with anticipation, I strip down to my skin. He does the same.

  We’re naked. I hope no one’s looking up at the cupola at that moment, yet I hope that if they are, they understand that this man owns me.

  “You’re doing very well,” he says.

  “Thank you.”

  “Get on the floor and show me your cunt.”

  The words alone make me dizzy with heat, but the act of getting on my back and spreading my legs for him is the mightiest thing I’ve ever done.

  He crouches on the balls of his feet and slides two fingers of his left hand inside me. The empty fourth place sends them deeper than they’ve ever gone.

  “No matter who you kill or who you rule, I rule your body.” He removes his hand and flicks my clit.

  I squeak with a burst of pleasure.

  “You do as I say.” He puts his palm against my nub—barely touching it. “Make yourself come.”

  Jerking slightly, I rub against his hand. He doesn’t move it as I grind again. He holds still, watching me use him for my pleasure, arching and bucking myself to orgasm, just as he commanded.

  Then he’s on me, flipping me to my side, spreading me open and thrusting into me like an animal.

  “Don’t you ever forget,” he growls.

  “I am yours,” I gasp. “You own me.”

  “And you love me.”

  “Always. I love you always.”

  I come a second time, and he explodes inside me.

  It’s right afterward, as he kisses my shoulder tenderly, that I realize love might be the key to it all.

  My parents had the crown between them in their bedroom the night I overheard their conversation.

  What it would be like if this thing didn’t exist? Who you’d be?

  You’d still be mine.

  Do you ever wonder what I’d be? What I could be?

  Do I not take care of you?

  A few months before their deaths, Papino had missed the point entirely. Twice. Through the hinge-wide space between the door and the jamb, I’d watched my mother fall out of love with him.

  And then the handles were hot.

  There has to be a perfectly unmagical explanation for the heat of the crown and its case, but that doesn’t mean history isn’t trying to tell me something. The possibilities of power had made Mamma hungry for it. She resented the disappointments of her station, and they turned her against her husband.

  The coal rocks burn bright white, shimmering with heat inside a hot metal box. We’re having this stinky coal furnace taken out as soon as possible. Then we’re scrubbing this shit out of the floors and walls and plastering all of them over with peppermint and lavender sheetrock, and if that doesn’t get out the smell, we’re sealing off this section of the basement behind seven layers of lemon-scented cinder block. Zio Guglielmo says none of those materials exist, but I can dream.

  But I’ve proven to everyone that I am Santino’s partner and equal. That day, I set myself free of any desire for vengeance. I’ll never kill anyone again. That’s his job from now on.

  We aren’t saints, but we’re home, living in a place that feels more right to me than St. John’s or the Leaky Bean or anywhere across the river ever did. I have a place with him, here.

  Between us, he rules me with love, and my love for him rules my life.

  Santino comes to the basement of Torre Cavallo with the crown’s box under his arm. He grips the bottom with his left hand, which is now only partly bandaged.

  I meet him at the bottom step and kiss him. He hands me the box. I place it on a red milk crate I’ve set in front of the open furnace, between two metal folding chairs. We sit in reverent silence for a moment.

  “Do you remember the night my parents died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know who did it?” I ask.

  “Nobody knows.”

  “You said you had the night off, but you went anyway.”

  “Emilio planned a last-minute dinner, so…”

  “It was her. My mother. She sprung it on him. I remember. And she said if Papà died, she was in charge.”

  His eyes narrow as if he doesn’t know where I’m going with this.

  “Santi, she didn’t love him. She’d been getting harder and harder for months, but that morning, she went ice cold.”

  “Wait. You think she planned it? Camilla Moretti?” He’s practically laughing.

  “Camilla Cavallo. And yes. I think she planned to have my father killed, but she got the wrong guy to do it, and he shot her too.”

  “This is why you brought me down here?” He shakes his head. “They loved each other, Forzetta.”

  “Look at me. Everyone says I look like my father, and maybe I do. But listen to everything that never made any sense. Emilio had a half brother who felt entitled to Camilla, to the crown.”

  His head tilts. He’s getting it, but not yet.

  Not quite yet.

  “I asked Zia Madeline and Nazario—who’s, like, never leaving. They told me everything. I don’t look like my father.” I pause. He can’t see it, but Nazario says he will. “I look like Cosimo Orolio.”

  Santino’s eyes scan me as if for the first time. He doesn’t have to tell me he sees a man I’ve never met. It’s all over his face.

  “He never forgave Mamma for hanging him out to dry after Papà was almost assassinated the first time. I was little, and I was his, but she wasn’t ready to fully betray her husband. So the second time, he did the hit, but he shot the both of them.”

  “My God.”

  I can practically hear things clicking in Santino’s head, observed moments I’m confident he’ll tell me about during calmer days. But he knows I’m right.

  “Damiano was going to marry his half sister.” His face contorts in disgust. “An animal.”

  “It was because of this.” I point at the box. “It made him an animal”

  Santino is still shaken by the revelation, but my brother’s fate isn’t my point. “And it made my mother wonder what she would have been without her husband. It made her feel like he was keeping her down…and he was, but she was part of a world where she wouldn’t have even had a choice without the crown, and her choices were taken away because of the crown too. But what locked her into a life wasn’t a piece of metal. It was expectations. Assumptions. And they had no reason to change any of that because of this thing…” I tilt my chin toward the box. “It fucked with all their heads. I don’t want that. Ever. I don’t want to wonder what I’d be without you. My life with you is the only one I want.”

  He nods, knees to elbows, tenting nine fingertips. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I know.” I open the lid.

  “It’s what brought us together.”

  “But it’s not what keeps us together.”

  Last night, Santino argued to have the crown sent to a museum, but there’s no provenance, no chain of ownership since it was stolen during Mussolini’s regime, then stolen again by the partigiani and left to rot in a warehouse of artifacts the camorra was selling to finance a mob war.

  “Do you not want to?” I ask.

  “No, no.” He tsks. “You’re right. It causes too much trouble. It’s already broken too much.”

  I take the crown out of the box. “Do you feel the compulsion to kneel?”

  “Put it on your head. Let’s see.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “No.”

  Before I can change my mind, I toss the crown into the white-hot furnace. It sits on the bottom of the coal box, implacable at first, as if nothing can touch it. The tips and edges blacken, then turn bright hot.

  Santino and I grab for each other’s hands, holding on for dear life as the object that brought us together in marriage loses its shape and melts into bubbling lava.

  “It is done.” He closes the door and latches it. “Do you still love me?”

  “I will always love you.”

  He puts his hands on my thighs and gets down on his knees, resting his head in my lap. I bend over him and put my cheek on his back. We remain like this for a minute before Loretta’s voice comes down from upstairs.

  “They’re here!”

  “Patatina!” My zia rushes out of the car, and we meet in the middle of the yard. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her round cheeks sag. When she throws her arms around me, I feel her grief against my chest. It awakens mine with the hum of a shared language.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say into her collar. “I hoped to bring you up here days ago.”

  Telling her what was sacrificed in my failure to get her—what lies were told and consequences felt—won’t help anyone. I leave that for Sunday dinners in the undefined future.

  “We’re here now.” She rocks me back and forth, tighter and tighter. “That’s all that matters.”

  I hold her at arm’s length, smiling at the sight of her, while the car empties of her sister, Donna’s family. Her husband Angelo, Antonio, Elettra, and Tina.

  “Where’s Zio Guglielmo?” I ask.

  She doesn’t have to answer as my zio gets out last, carrying his old Beretta dei partigiani in a holster like a dare. He greets Santino as my husband comes out the front door to welcome his extended family.

  Zia watches with me and shakes her head. “We saw when they took him.” She stops herself and makes the sign of the cross to ward off the devils in her thoughts. “And we heard what they did to his hand.”

  Santino pats Zio Guglielmo on the back with a bandaged hand. A few days ago, Dr. Aselli sent his assistant to live up here and continue the work on Santino’s hand. Dr. Aselli is too busy to stay himself. As of yesterday, he is Secondo Vasto’s only doctor. We’ll have to get another.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I say.

  Santino’s body will heal, and so will our little corner of the world. There is an uneasy peace in the valley below. Our enemies are being rooted out, and loyalties are shifting. But there will be an end to it.

  “You’ve been through so much,” Zia Madeline says. “And you look like my beautiful niece, all grown up.”

  Santino slides his arm over my shoulder, resting his fingertips on the back of my neck, and gives Zia Madeline a kiss on each cheek.

  “She is the queen. My queen.”

  The family I brought up has formed a receiving line. We greet and double kiss, hug, and cry. They’re here, and I didn’t even realize how much I needed each of them.

  Everything’s on the way back to normal. Thank God.

  “So this is the famous Torre Cavallo,” Zia Donna says to my king and me. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” I greet her with a hug, then see my uncle’s mother. “Welcome, Nonna Angelina.” I take her hand and kiss each papery cheek. The last time I saw her, Santino was shoving me into a car after a walk around the block. “You can stay as long as you want.”

  “I knew you’d come to accept it.” She squeezes my hands, and I remember how unfazed she was by my screaming on the day Santino stole me away.

  “I accept him, Nonna.” I pull him close. “But now I have the power to change everything else.”

  “And she might,” Santino says.

  I look up at my husband, who has utter dominance over me, and who I rule with the same power. The unstoppable force and the immovable object, in harmony.

  By some unspoken mutual agreement, we kiss, but we have to break apart, laughing, when Tina rushes in to hug my legs, throwing me off balance for a moment. Elettra follows her sister, and I drape my free arm around them both.