Sent me racing.
I stopped for a moment, wiping sweat from my brow, and stared in the distance. Violet, or Viola as my wife called her, had organized a “girls” day for all the women. They were eating at the place my old man had bought for mamma in town. He didn’t care to be in the restaurant business, and the investment wasn’t all that profitable, but mamma loved the food, therefore it couldbleed my old man dry of money, and he wouldn’t have given a fuck. He wanted it for her.
My wife was with the “girls,” enjoying time doing whatever the fuck “girls” do. Eating and gossiping about everything and nothing, it seemed.
My wife.
She had kept a dangerous secret from me. And I was starting to notice that, the longer she spent with my family, and the deeper in she went, she became more like my mamma and sister in ways that were not always panic-easing to the men around them.
When a woman was more curious about monsters than she was fearful of them…
I groaned, rubbing a hand over my heart.
My wife was making a mark on my hometown too.
Three nights before, The Road House held the celebration of life for Everett Poésy, known to his grandchildren as Gramps.
Sistine had dressed in a denim dress and white cowgirl boots, and her hair waved and fell over her shoulders. Not only did our time in Fiji make her glow, but it was coming from some place deeper. A deeper place that I knew meant she was in love with our life, with me.
“Aspettare!” she had said, holding up a finger to me, rushing back to spritz some perfume on herself.
“Fuck me sideways,” I had muttered. My eyes had found a lot of women, but my eyes had never locked onto a woman so beautiful in my life.
My wife was, simply put, the most beautiful woman tome.
The village of open-mouthed fucking idiots at the local bar seemed to feel the same. All the men, some I had gone to school with, patted me on the shoulder all night long.
“Damn, bro. Your wife is gorgeous.”
Yeah, no fucking shit. I noticed this when I first set eyes on her. When I first married her to lock that vow down.
“Don’t fuck it up, Mariano,” Benji said to me, handing me a shot of whiskey.
We toasted to my grandfather, his picture on the bar, and then downed it.
“You do, you’ll have men rushing in line for a chance at her hand.”
“A fucking chance,” I had said. “The only fucking chance they’ll get is one at death.”
Benji laughed, as if to say…there goes Mariano again.
Some of these motherfuckers had no clue who we were. Our family motto was only a saying to them, not knowing it meant something to us. It meant our word was still good—it had value, which a lot of the world seemed to fucking forget the definition of. Loyalty as well. Vows. Romance. Ruthlessness. Whatever had meant something to men back in the day, and usually meant shit in the day we lived in.
Most of the men in town were harmless, at least when they knew I was involved. We were all cool, but they knew I had boundaries, and they wouldn’t cross them. Even when a woman wasn’t involved. My old man had taught us that. We were men, and without boundaries, we would get trampled on. A man doesn’t get trampled, and even if he’s close to it, he keeps his head held high in the dirt.
He stands like a man.
He dies like a man.
I had toasted to my grandfather again, shot the shot back. Growled low in my throat when I realized how the entire bar was watching my wife dance, who, only an hour or so ago, when we had first arrived, was worried that she was disrespecting the dead by dancing and laughing.
“Nah,” I had said. “This is what Grampswanted. This was who he was in life.”
“Va bene,” she had breathed out, running a hand down her dress, itching to get on the dance floor.
If this town had handed me a beer and welcomed me, as Matteo was known to say, the town had handed my wife a glass of champagne in a mason jar and welcomed her in. Everyone was in love with her. She was so fucking charming, even frogs would turn into princes at her feet—even without the fucking kiss.
I had unleashed her on the world.
