1
ROYAL
BOY GENIUS
Leticia D’Medici:
You’re NEVER going to guess what Nona Isabella told me about Cousin Violetta and the De Bonna boy Nicolas.
No, really, you’ll NEVER guess.
I can’t helpbut open the messages on the cloned phone I’m working on.What aren’t we guessing?
Leticia D’Medici:
Violetta and Nicolas are getting MARRIED.
Well,that was less thrilling than I hoped for.I sigh and set down my newest assignment, the cloned phone of my brother’s new wife, and scrub my hands down my face.
I always thought I’d be at my brother’s wedding — second wedding — and do the whole best man thing again. And this time I’d give a much better speech about how his newwife is a great addition to our family. This time, though, through an arranged marriage, I’m not exactly sure that’s true. I haven’t even met her.
Not that it entirely matters. Instead of at the church, I’m safe and sound deep in our territory, at home in my parents’ house. Today, I’m the designated sole survivor in the event of a tragedy at the wedding. The biggest truce in the history of our family is culminating in the most archaic rites of two funerals and a wedding.
After today, the Irish Mob and Italian Mafia will officially be partners.
That didn’t stop our family from preparing for the likely event of a double cross. Death and total annihilation are what the arbiters promise for breaking the truce after the deal has been struck. While personally, our family would never risk the penalty, we don’t know the D’Medicis’ morals well enough to place a bet on their desire to stay alive.
The phone vibrates again. I shouldn’t be so damned interested, but the heads of the family literally made it my entire job to snoop through all the information I gathered from the D’Medicis’ operation.
I’m not saying our Italian enemies are bad at crime.
I’m saying if it was so easy for me, a Cavanagh and, until recently, sworn enemy, to simply stroll over to one of their SUVs, climb into the back seat, and clone Antonella’s phone they left right out in the fuckin’ open, the Feds could do the same thing.
It’s a wonder they were winning the war between our feuding families. Maybe it doesn’t take brains to smuggle drugs, broker in information, and launder money... only large numbers of ‘made men’ willing to do the labor on the cheap.
Antonella D’Medici, my older brother’s new wife, was an only child, but every one of her aunts and uncles has at least three children.
It’s probably why she has over three hundred contacts in her phone, all with very similar last names. D’Medici, D’Angelo, Bonetti, De Bonna... I think I recognize a handful of the people with last names that aren’t outright Italian and aren’t also labeled with qualifiers such as ‘professor’ and ‘Eastwick Elementary’ or ‘grad school’ following the names.
This texter, though, the only one sending her any messagestoday, is her younger cousin. Leticia is the real principessa mafiosa and apparently has nothing better to do than text Antonella at least ten times an hour.
I open the phone up and look at the new messages.
Leticia D’Medici:
They’re getting married because Father Domingo caught them in the rectory together. Like, TOGETHER together! AT CHURCH!
Nicolas, I can understand he’s . . . De Bonna . . . but VIOLETTA?!
I almost text her back.I want more details.What does that mean, ‘he’s De Bonna’?Why do we not believe this of Violetta?
The drama is always so much better when it isn’t your family’s to deal with. I can imagine, though, that for Antonella and Leticia, this is probably pretty run of the mill, given all the cousins.
My fingers twitch.
I look up the family tree I’ve pieced together from the contacts and some genealogy websites that I may or may not have hacked into.
Violetta is Antonella’s third cousin, and Nicolas must be ... Stop.I close out of the tab on my monitor. If it were a Mafia-related marriage, I’d probably let myself dig more, but kids getting married because of puritanical reasons isn’t what I’m meant to be looking into.
