“I kissPapàfirst!” Looking up at me, Mia smooched her lips. I leaned down and kissed her, but instead of giving her over to her mother, I handed her off to Scarlett’s mother, who had entered the room and took her from me.
Everett had handed the German man his cigar so fast that ashes fell on the man’s fine suit. He smiled innocently at his wife.
Mia waved to everyone, Luca placing a kiss on her wrist as she passed him, her grandmother escorting her out.
Scarlett went to leave, but before she could get far, I pulled her wrist, urging her down to kiss me.
“For luck,” I said.
She knew the look in my eye. It was for luck, but for something else too. Her brother had lost his hearing at a young age, and hanging around him and her family, I had picked up on the language.
I signed her a question. I wanted to know if the man at Luca’s table with the thick neck had a custom suit—and if so, was the suit made by the Fausti’s private tailor.
She squeezed my shoulder, saying nothing, but I knew she would give a subtle look around the tables to find out.
“I did not realize your wife was deaf,” Vanni said, veiling the remark as a joke. “I can now make a comment about her looks, ah?” He laughed.
No one else did. Least of all my wife and her father, who were sensitive to the fact that his son and her brother hadn’t been able to hear in life.
That was how Elliot and I had become close. No one wanted to play with him, and after I invited him to hang with me, we clicked. After that, whenever someone tried to give him hell, they answered to me.
Scarlett’s hand tightened on my shoulders when I rolled them.
Vanni stood up, straightening his tie, lifting his glass, going for another drink.
He had no idea what hit him until he realized it was me.
I brought him across the room, slamming his back to the wall, my arm against his throat, choking off his air supply. His ruddy complexion started to turn blue around the edges, his eyes turning comical, bulging out of his head.
Men moved behind me, but I had no attention to spare.
I heard my wife gasp, a slight commotion, but couldn’t seem to let him go. I said something to him, something whispered and hard.
A hand came to my shoulder, the wordsoncoming from my father’s mouth, and after pressing against his throat a little harder, I let go.
It wasn’t Luca who had pulled me from the darkness, though; it had been my wife. I didn’t want her to see me lose control, to take his life.
Vanni leaned over, gasping for breath, holding on to the wall to stabilize himself. I stared at him, for a second, a minute, and then turned, finding guns drawn.
His brothers had drawn their weapons, so had mine, and Scarlett stood stock-still, eyes hard on mine. The only sign that she was about to lose it was the way she kept opening and closing her hands.
“This is why women should not be involved in our games, ah?” Luca said, clasping his hands together.
The men around the room, those accustomed to violence, laughed, going back to their hands.
Over and done, their demeanors said.
Luca ordered my brothers to holster their weapons. Dionigi made a hand motion for his sons to do the same, but his eyes were trained on my wife. Knowledge swam in the depths. He recognized her, or he recognized whatever someone else told him about her.
Scarlett shook her head, as though she were in a daze, and started to leave.
Dionigi stepped in front of her, and I stepped to the side of her, pulling her behind me some.
“Let me apologize for my son,” Dionigi said. “He has a unique sense of humor.”
Finding her sense of defense, she came back with, “Unique? I’d say downright rude.”
Dionigi shrugged. “What is the saying? You say rude, I say…whatever. I have heard things about you, Ballerina. You are special, ah? A terrible shame what Giovi Spataro did. I heard about it, ah?”
