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His voice is low. Almost a snarl. “I told you I wanted you to scare him.”
Daddy, I want to tell him, You know what I did was much better than that.
For months now, Daddy raged about the chaos and disruption that Gianni created. Gianni Crespi was showing him disrespect. He threw Daddy’s kindness and goodwill back in his face. He made him look a fool. He was going to get us all into jail. Or worse, into open warfare.
Daddy was in a black mood constantly and it set his temper on a knife edge. It was like living next to an angry volcano. He wanted Crespi brought into line. He wanted him disciplined. He wanted vengeance.
So I did better than that. Gianni was leading the Crespi family toward a confrontation. He planned to move up and take over our family’s position. I knew it. I had it from good sources. When I told Daddy, he laughed in my face and told me Gianni Crespi would never have the balls.
In the mob hierarchy, our family, Famiglia Benedetti, sits at the third level from the top, and that means we’re being tested from every direction, all of the time. We always have a fight from at least one direction over our businesses, our clubs or our territory. Usually more than one.
Gianni had plenty of warnings, and he still started skirmishes that could easily have got out of control and burst into open war.
What I did was I put the whole Crespi clan in their place. They won’t give any trouble to a Benedetti business or to any of our people. Not now and not for a long time to come. Is what Daddy said about Gianni and the Crespi family’s captains and advisers?
No. Surely not. Not unless every one of them from Armando all the way down is seriously suicidal.
Daddy will go to the council of the Families. Then they’ll tell Gianni, or his consiglieri will tell him. If he moved on us now we would wipe him out. And we would have the backing of the Families to do it.
I know that the council of the Families wants to see good order kept at all costs. Honor comes first, then good business. Keeping order is what makes both of those possible. Good order means we take care of our own and we solve our own troubles. The cops have no need to come near us, and not a single one of us will ever go to them, except to pay them off.
What I did will keep peace and good order between the Benedetti family and the Crespis now, for some time to come. It will show everyone on the lower ranks that, below the Puccis, the Romanas and the Fortuna family, we’re in control. Business stays safe, we don’t need to trouble the cops. Everything can go on as normal.
And I did it for us. For our family. For Daddy.
I know Daddy wouldn’t have done it that way, but he should have. And he should have done it sooner. He knows that as well as I do. He’s mad at me now because I did what he didn’t have the stomach to do. I wish he could just stay calm enough to see what I did, and that I did it for him. But the number three place is hard on the nerves.
Still, there’s no use in me arguing with Daddy about it. That would only make him madder.
It’s still a shock when he decides, though. It’s a sentence of permanent exile. He’s going to banish me from my home, the place that I love. The only home I ever had.
“No. Now, I need you to marry one of the Fortuna boys. It will have to be the youngest, obviously. We haven’t much that I can give for a dowry, and the oldest boy is bound to marry up, into the Romano family or the Puccis.”
He’s going to cast me out. Send me away from my family. And from him. It’s hard not to shed a tear. But I won’t. Not while he can see me, at least. I’ll keep my voice strong and level, and my head up. I’ll show him that I’ve learned what he taught me, even while he pronounces the sentence on me.
So he sends me away, to marry Carlo Fortuna. The no-hope youngest son of the family one step up the ladder from ours.
I’m going from a hazy future with no obvious prospects to a certain and inescapable black hole.
CHAPTER TEN
Amafia bride is all that a mafia princess can ever hope to be. And rule one for a mafia bride is that she must be a virgin. Even for a princess like me, the rule is unbreakable.
A picture of Cristina Delfioria lights up in my memory. She got married to Joey Spizzella in the cathedral. Big wedding. Huge. Everybody was there. All the families. Rumor went round that he found out on their wedding night that she’d been with men. This was a pretty open secret when she was at St. Luke’s High, but apparently it came as a big surprise to Joey.
When the two of them waved to the wedding guests from the landing halfway up the big staircase at the Metropole Plaza hotel, they kissed before they turned to walk the rest of the way up to the presidential suite for their wedding night.
That was the last time anybody ever saw Christina.
The one and only qualification. The thought nags at me. It’s such a big deal that I know I can’t trust anyone enough to ask. There’s nobody I can go to. What does it mean exactly? Specifically? There are lots of things you can do. I know. But what exactly can you do, how far can you really go and still be considered to be a virgin?
Federico told me that as long as you haven’t had a man’s cock inside you, all the way up and in your pussy, you’re a virgin. But what about other things? Soap. Shampoo bottles. Toys.
Fingers.
Tongues.
Or what about things in other places. Do they count?
