Arranged Mafia Marriage

Jeanne

He’s lost it. Clearly, he’s lost it. Does he really think he can drive through the wall of men who have their guns pointed at us? Footsteps pound and I glance over my shoulder to find men pouring through the doorway we just came through.

Crap! My feet seem to move of their own accord, and I throw my leg over the bike behind him.

“Shoot at them.” He jerks his head over his shoulder.

“Wait, what?”

“Just aim and shoot. You do know how to shoot, don’t you?”

“I can try.” I stab my tongue into my cheek, then pop the safety of the gun I’m holding in my right hand, as he raises his guns and fires. Bang, bang, bang. Bullets screech past my head. I scream, then huddle closer behind him. He careens to the right, then to the left, and I hold on with one hand, as I depress the trigger on the gun and keep it there. Oh, and I also squeeze my eyes shut. I know, I’m a wuss, but hey, while this is not my first time holding a gun, it’s my first time aiming it at living men, and I honestly don’t know if I want to see my bullets hit them. On the other hand, if I spend one more minute in that damn room, I’m going to lose it completely. So, between the two, yeah, I’ll shoot. Besides, they’re the ones who kidnapped me. That makes them the bad guys, right? I keep shooting until the empty clicks of the chambers reaches me.

“Hold on,” he yells as the bike leaps forward. I tuck myself into his back, still holding the empty guns as he races out of the garage. We must pass the bodies he’s shot down, but I still have my eyes closed, so I don’t know. It’s okay, it’s not cowardly if you are protecting yourself against nightmares, right? He takes the next curve so fast, I almost slide off.

“Cazzo, hold on, will you?”

I crack my eyes open long enough to throw my arms around his waist. I’m still holding the empty guns, but I hold onto him the best I can as he guns the motor up the driveway and toward the steadily closing gates.

“Jesus, what are you-” He gathers speed and I squeeze my eyes shut again. He powers the bike up and we seem to fly forward and through the quickly-shrinking space between the gates and onto the road. I draw oxygen into my lungs, which burn. My throat hurts-did I scream? I think I remember screaming. My fingers cramp and the muscles in my arms protest. I loosen my hold on him, then scream again when the bike jumps forward. Twerp! I hold onto him as we hit the main road and he guns the motor again.

We travel that way for another ten minutes, then he swears, “Cazzo, we’re being followed.”

I can hear him clearly. That’s when I realize the helmets are equipped with a two-way communication channel.

“I’d hoped we’d have a little more time, but we don’t have a choice now.” He turns so suddenly, the bike seems to scream in protest. I confess, I scream, too, and hold onto him.

“What are you doing? Have you lost it completely, you-”

He straightens, then zooms toward the oncoming car, which I recognize as one of the ones from the garage. Keeping one hand on the handlebar, he shoots at them. And he doesn’t veer off of the road. He sets us on a collision course with the car. My heart slams into my rib cage. The pulse thunders at my wrists. I squeeze my eyes shut again and huddle behind him as he continues to shoot. Then I hear the sound of brakes squealing, and I’m accosted by the smell of burnt rubber.

I open my eyes in time to find the car sailing off the road and into the adjacent field. Only, there’s another car coming at us. While I don’t recall seeing it in the garage, he must, for he gives it the same treatment. I manage to keep my eyes open as he continues to fire. The windshield of the car cracks. The driver slumps forward and the car swerves off the side of the road and into the field on the other side. He slows down a little then-thank God-before he turns the bike around and comes to a standstill.Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

He clicks on the safeties of the guns, then reaches forward to open the carrier on the bike. He slides the guns in, then takes the empty gun from my hand and tosses it in, as well. He snaps it shut, kicks off the stand of the bike, then eases forward.

We travel at a normal speed, which is wise. At least this way, we’ll attract less attention. Not that this man is able to walk into a room without everyone turning to look at him. It’s the way he is-his presence, the way he can’t help but absorb all of the oxygen in the space. He’s also arrogant, has a big opinion of himself, and thinks he can overcome any challenge thrown at him. Which, to be fair, he just did.

“Do you think we got out of there too easily?” I burst out.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, wouldn’t Freddie have been more careful with how he got us food; wouldn’t he have anticipated something like this happening? Shouldn’t he have tied you up or something?”

“Then he wouldn’t have been able to watch us fuck.”

“Not that I would have let you… but yeah-” I purse my lips. “Still, I find it weird that we got out of there that easily.”

“I wouldn’t call shooting up two cars and a dozen men too easy.”

“A dozen men?” I wince. “Do you think they’re dead?”

“I know they’re dead.”

I push my forehead into his back. “I know they were bad men, but still, they may have had families, and children, and-”

“They knew the risk they were taking when they came into this business.”

“So, do you and your brothers leave home every day, knowing you might not return?”

“We are… prepared. Several of my brothers are married now, and that complicates things. It’s why Michael wants to try and turn the business legit, in as much as it’s possible to minimize the risks.”

“But once you’re in this life, you can’t really walk away, can you?”

“That’s true,” he agrees, “but it is possible to bring down the level of uncertainty you deal with every day.”

“So, what happened earlier-the number of men you shot, the cars you wrecked-is that not a normal occurrence?”

“It’s not abnormal.” He blows out a breath. “Look, I was brought up in the Mafia. This is the life I know. Some of us trained to have a profession beyond it. Like my brother, Massimo is both a qualified finance professional and a lawyer, Xander was an artist, Christian is also a lawyer, Seb is going to start up a media business, and Adrian’s investing his money in a chain of coffeeshops. Michael, my older brother, knew he would become Don one day, while me?

“This is the life I know. The intricacies of this way of living… It runs in my blood. There were no guarantees for me. I wasn’t the oldest, yet something about this lifestyle suits me, you know. I never thought I’d become the Capo. Then Seb gave up his title, and Michael made me Capo in his place.”

“So, do you feel all your efforts so far have been worth it?”

“You’d think,” he says in a low voice. “You’d think, after everything I’ve seen and done, I’d be ecstatic to finally be recognized for my efforts. But…” He shakes his head. “Becoming a Capo didn’t make a damn difference. It didn’t fill this empty space inside of me. It didn’t feel like a big achievement. There was something anticlimactic about it, and cazzo! Why am I telling you all this?”

He bends over the handlebar and the bike leaps forward.

“It’s okay to share; it’s not going to make you less of a man,” I murmur.

He doesn’t reply. We ride in silence for the next hour. I take in the passing fields, the grey clouds in the sky that seem to hang so low. We reach a roundabout with the signs pointing toward St. Ives-signs in English-and that’s when it strikes me. “We’re in the UK?”

“In Cornwall, actually,” he clarifies. “But you surmise correctly.”

“Oh, my god, they brought us to the UK?”

“It would seem that way,” he agrees.

“You don’t seem surprised?”

“Probably because Freddie is from the UK. Though, why he’d bring us here, to the back of beyond, I don’t know. Could’ve saved us some time if they’d decided to keep us in London, but no, they had to choose a place far away from civilization.”

“We’re in Cornwall; that’s not exactly uncivilized,” I point out.

“It’s not London,” he retorts.

“Where did you grow up, anyway?” Not that I am curious or anything, but if I am going to be stuck with him for a while longer, then it’s best to know more about him, right?

“I spent some of my early years in Palermo, and before you ask, yes, Italy is excluded from the list of uncivilized places. It’s the cradle of civilization, after all.”

“I won’t refute that, but to negate any other city is a bit narrow-minded, don’t you think,” I scoff.

“My formative years were spent in LA, so that city’s off the list, too,” he declares.