Mafia Bride: From Pawn to Rebel Queen

The holy water stung my fingertips.

I dipped them again, crossing myself as Father Enzo's voice dripped into the cathedral: *"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti..."* The Latin washed over me like a falling wave, forcing me under with the weight of all I had lost.

Papa's casket gleamed in the light of the stained-glass windows. Mahogany. Gold handles. Nothing but the best for Vincent Romano, even in death. Even when we couldn't afford it.

*Especially* when we couldn't afford it.

That black dress sat on my body like a second skin; the fabric felt heavy beneath the gaze burning into my back. The people who mattered in Palermo were all here, families whose names appeared in newspapers-all the time, always on the obit page, never on the business page. Men whom politicians shook hands with one moment and buried an enemy the next.

"Elena," Alessandro's hands found her elbow, his voice hoarse from maybe cigarettes or grief-it was hard to tell the difference now-edged, "You're shaking."

Was I? I looked at my hands. White knuckles, trembling fingers. When had it started?

"I'm fine."

"You're not."

*No shit.* Fine was all I had left. It was fine that kept me going when the undertaker asked me how I was going to pay for the arrangements. It was fine that pushed me through selecting flowers for a man who'd never bought me any. It was fine, the face I forced onto my features when Mama asked if I thought everything would be fine.

Because somebody had to hold this family together and certainly Alessandro would not be doing so.

The service finished in a benediction I had long forgotten. The other half of the mourners passed the casket: crossing themselves and whispering prayers or lies-I had no way of knowing. Mrs. Castellano kissed me on the cheek and slipped a holy card into my palm. Mr. Torrino shook Alessandro's hand and muttered something about debts being forgiven in death.

It wasn't. Not as far as I had seen the papers sprawled over Papa's desk. The red stamps. The final notices.

"Miss Romano."

The blood ran cold in my veins, and I turned.

Salvatore Conti, Papa's consigliere-if you called it one. More a leech in an expensive suit.

"Salvatore." I kept my voice even. Professional. Like Papa had taught me when I was sixteen and started sitting in on meetings I was never intended to understand.

"We need to talk. About your father's... arrangements."

*Arrangements.* As if Papa were a business transaction rather than the man who taught me to play chess, to change a tire, and to read lies in people's eyes.

"Not here." Alessandro bent in between us, his jaw set. "Not today."

"Unfortunately, the families to whom we are indebted in money do not observe mourning periods." It was a wicked smile from Salvatore. Shark teeth. "The Benedettos want their money by Friday. The Torrinos want theirs by Sunday. And then there is—"

"I said not today."

But Salvatore wasn't looking at Alessandro anymore. His eyes had found something over my shoulder, and the blood drained from his face like someone had pulled a plug.

I turned my head.

Luca Valenti was standing at the back of the cathedral.

Even fifty feet away, I could feel the power his look carried. Dark suit going to put the mortgage payment to shame. Hair slicked back just right. Those dark eyes that appeared to catalog every person in the room as though deciding who lives and who dies.

He was not supposed to be here. The Valentis did not usually grace Romano funerals. Not anymore for at least two decades, ever since whatever transpired between our fathers when I was much too young to understand why certain names would later become whispers in our house.

"Mama mia," Salvatore muttered. "What is he doing here?"

I did not know. But just by the way he looked at me, as if I were something he had hunted down for a very long time, an unnamed fear clutched my stomach.

Luca Valenti did not move. Plaid not approach. Not even offer condolences or shake hands with anyone or do anything else people generally did in funerals.

He just watched.

And smiled.

The kind of smile that promised things. Dark things. Things that happened to girls in black dresses carrying the weight of their family names on their slender shoulders.

"Elena." Alessandro's hand tightened on my arm. "Now."

But I couldn't move. I couldn't look away. Those eyes went right through my carefully constructed facade and caught sight of the little scared girl beneath.

A sudden, horrible thought struck me: Maybe the death of Vincent Romano wasn't the end of the family's problems.

Maybe it was just the beginning.

—-

The reception was scheduled to take place back at our house.

Key word being *was*. A few hours before the service, I had walked through the kitchen to find water dripping through the ceiling. The upstairs bathroom had flooded sometime during the night-the pipe had burst, apparently, the plumber told me. There had been water damage all throughout the second floor. The hardwood was ruined. The drywall was all soggy and would have to be replaced.

Another kick in the teeth from a universe seemingly bent on grinding the Romano name to dust.

So here we are, instead, in Nonna's house, all fifty-odd crammed into her tiny living room, the place adorned in fading yellow floral wallpaper of several decades' restoration, with the furnitures' odor of mothballs and broken dreams. Poor dine-ing of crummy sandwiches and wistfully pretending this isn't the saddest funeral reception ever seen in Palermo.

I smoothed my dress for the hundredth time, the fabric sticking to my thighs in the humid air. The ancient air conditioner wheezed in the corner, blowing lukewarm air that did nothing but move the stale cigarette smoke around.

"Elena, cara mia." Mrs. Benedetto pinched my cheek hard enough to leave marks. "You look so thin. Are you eating?"

*Are we eating?* That was the real question. With Papa's accounts frozen and the bills piling up like autumn leaves, meals had become... creative. Yesterday's dinner was pasta with olive oil and whatever herbs I could find in Nonna's garden. Tomorrow's might be the same.

"I'm fine, thank you."

She studied my face with the intensity of a hawk spotting prey. "Your papa, God rest his soul, he wouldn't want you wasting away. A woman needs meat on her bones."

*A woman needs money in her bank account.* But I just smiled and nodded and let her press a twenty-euro note into my palm like I was a charity case.

Which, technically, I was.

"Elena." Salvatore appeared at my elbow like a bad rash. "We need to discuss—"