Page 136 of At The End Of The Day

“Yup. I had no idea they were coming, they just rang the doorbell, told me to do as they said, or they’d get rid of me.”

“And what the fuck, exactly, are they wanting you to do?”

“Not get married.”

He paused again. “Married?”

“Yup,” I sighed, sitting up to lean into the desk again. If I was worried about what gang life would be like as a gay man, it was nothing compared to how the mafia would embrace me now. This conversation could go one of two ways. Either he was going to embrace me and protect my choices, or Maximus Giordana would get rid of me before my parents could, and if that was the case, I much rather prefer my parents because there was a deviance to him that made him scary. He enjoyed killing, thrived off the depravity and torture and pain he inflicted.

At least with my folks, it would be over with quickly. The faster, the better, they always said. Quick and simple left less mess to clean up later.

There would also be no running from the mafia. If things ever got nasty here, we could flee to Italy to my little villa. No small gang from Alabama could touch us there. The mafia could get us anywhere, there was no hiding.

“Uh. Ahem.” My ankles crossed and tucked beneath the chair, my eyelids closing. “My…fiancé…I’m…His name is Vincent. Vinny. Vin. He’s a brother. In the Serpents. I got the gayness. I’m gay. Now. Maybe always? I dunno. I’m marrying a dude, Max.”

Dead. Silence.

I grimaced, my insides lurching painfully. Looked like I made an error in judgement. Shit. This was about to turn bad, quickly.

I coughed and squirmed, suddenly coated in sweat.

“Gayness?”

“Mm hm,” I croaked, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“You know that’s not a word, right?”

Utterly frozen, my eyelids snatched wide to stare past my fingers at the window. Not even paying Mary any attention, my heartbeat was thumping rapidly at the quiet chuckle added to that comment.

“Uh, ahem. What?”

“Gayness. It’s not a word, Dario. Is your fiancé new to homosexuality, as well?”

I squinted and sat up, beyond confused right now. “Uh, no? No. He’s…always been gay. Ain’t even ever been with a woman.”

“And he lets you use that word?”

“Yeah? Um, yeah. Why?”

“Wow. He must really love you, then, because I’d knock you the fuck out for being so disrespectful.”

My pulse skipped and my insides turned over, my breaths growing shorter. “Dis…disrespect?”

“Yeah, you don’t call it ‘gayness,’ Dario. If this is the life’s path you’re choosing to follow now, you have to honor it. Actually, fuck that. You don’t have to label it, at all, but don’t treat it with ignorance.”

“What…wait, wait, wait. Hang on. You ain’t…gonna kill me?”

He snorted. “First of all, I get it, you live out in the deep south and you guys have your ways about you, but I know where the fuck you came from, so don’t speak to me like you’re some uneducated hick. Talk to me properly, Dario. Secondly, why the hell would I kill you over this?”

“Over this? Because Mom and Pops want me dead over this.”

“That really what they said?”

“Yeah, like I said, they just showed up and I ain’t…” I took a deep breath, calmed my nerves, and exhaled through my nose. “I have no clue how they even knew where to find me, but they showed up unexpectedly, told me I was humiliating the family name, and warned me to break things off with Vinny, or they would prove just how dispensable I was to them.”

“Hm. What else?”

“That’s pretty much it. My future brother-in-law had been watching us and stepped in when Pops attacked—”