“For God’s sake, it’s not rocket science. Just pick out a pretty ring!”
Seeing that Quinn’s about to become unhinged, Gianni snaps, “You’ll go with him. It’s decided.”
“First thing in the morning,” agrees Quinn darkly.
A judge handing a prisoner a death sentence couldn’t sound more threatening.
“Fine. What time should I expect you?”
He snaps, “I’m staying here tonight!”
Fed up with his bearish attitude, I say flatly, “What a treat.”
I lower the heat under the pot and remove my apron. Then I put together a plate of spaghetti and sauce for Lili, along with a slice of the garlic bread that came out of the oven just before they walked in.
I turn away and head toward the door. Gianni looks at me quizzically.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m taking your daughter her dinner and delivering the news about her new wedding date, which you hadn’t gotten around to badgering me into yet.”
He’s aghast. “What about our dinners?”
“None of your arms are broken. Help yourselves.”
I feel Quinn’s eyes burning holes into my back as I walk out.
When I get upstairs, I knock lightly on Lili’s closed bedroom door. “It’s me. I thought you might be hungry.”
There’s no response for so long, I think she might be asleep. But then the door cracks open, and she’s standing there in her pajamas, red-eyed and pale.
“Hey, zia,” she whispers.
“Oh, sweetie, I know. A little food might help.”
She backs up, letting me into the room, but she’s shaking her head. “I can’t eat. I feel sick.”
She crosses to her bed, crawls under the covers, and pulls them over her face.
I set the plate of food on the nightstand, perch on the edge of the bed, then gently pull the blankets down. Smoothing a hand over her forehead, I say, “You want to talk about it?”
She sniffles. “Which part? The shootings, the explosion, the dead bodies, or that angry Bigfoot Papa wants me to marry?”
“Any of the above.”
She blows out a hard breath, puffing out her bottom lip, then closes her eyes. “Not really.”
“Okay. But there’s something I have to tell you.”
Her eyelids fly open. She stares at me in panic. “Oh God. What now?”
I’m about to tell her about the wedding being moved up when the ringing of a phone interrupts me.
The sound is coming from somewhere under the blankets.
This wouldn’t be strange, but Lili doesn’t own a cell phone because she’s overprotected and her father thinks all teenage girls do on their phones is take pictures of themselves in their underwear to post on the internet.
As the ringing continues, Lili slowly pulls the covers back up over her face until only her wide, horrified eyes are showing.
I say firmly, “Give it to me. Where is it, Lili? Hand it over.”
When she doesn’t respond, I stand and whip the covers off her. She immediately starts scrambling around, searching for the phone that’s tangled somewhere in the sheets.
I find it first and snatch it up. It’s a cheap, old-school Nokia with a small screen and a pixelated readout.
A burner.
She didn’t get this on her own.
As Lili whines and grapples with me, trying to grab it back, I hit the Answer button but don’t say anything.
“Hello? Lili? Corazon, are you there?”
The voice is young, male, and has a slight Spanish accent, and of course I know who it is.
“Hello, Juan Pablo,” I say, walking away from the bed so I can hear over Lili’s pleas. “This is Lili’s aunt, Reyna. We need to talk.”
“Zia, please! Give me the phone! Let me talk to him!”
I go into her bathroom and lock the door behind me, ignoring her muffled pleading.
On the other end of the line, Juan Pablo is silent. I sit on the closed toilet seat, lean over and prop my forehead in my hand, and sigh.
“Look. I have nothing against you—”
“You fired my father,” he interrupts, sounding indignant.
“You deflowered my niece,” I shoot back.
“We’re in love!”
“I know you think that means you should be together, but it’s not going to happen. Her father won’t allow it. I need you to promise me you’ll leave her alone.”
He says flatly, “No. You can’t keep us apart.”
Surprised, I huff out a breath. The balls on this kid.
I’m inclined to like him, but considering he’ll be a corpse if Gianni discovers any of this, I’ll save my affection for the living.
“Maybe I can’t, but her father and the rest of the Mafia can. Do you have any idea what will happen if they find out about you?”
His voice rises. “You think I care what a bunch of racist goomba fucks think about me?”
“This isn’t about your race.”
“Bullshit!” he hollers. “That’s all it’s about! Your kind hate us!”
I listen to his angry breathing for a while, feeling bad for him, but also stung that he assumes I dislike him based on his race…but also completely understanding why he’d make that assumption.
A person only has to hang around Gianni for half an hour to get a solid education in what prejudice looks like.
Keeping my voice low, I say, “I don’t hate you. But even if you were Italian, you couldn’t be together.”
His breath hitches. “Because I’m poor?”
“No, sweet boy. Because she’s engaged to be married.”
“To someone she doesn’t love! She was forced into it! If you care about her at all, how can you let that happen?”
He’s so impassioned, so furious and desperate and so obviously sick with love, I’m moved.
So I tell him the truth, even though it gains me nothing.
“I wish I could help her, Juan Pablo. I wish you could be together, because I believe you’d make her happy. But in the world Lili and I live in, we don’t get a choice. And if you try to interfere with this marriage, my brother will kill you. That isn’t an empty threat. He’ll kill you, and it won’t matter to him at all.”
In an anguished, theatrical burst, he cries, “I’d rather die than live without her!”
Jesus Christ, these kids are a Shakespearean tragedy waiting to happen.
“Keep this up, and you will die. I don’t know what else to say.”
“You can say you’ll help us!”
“Okay, enough. You seem like a good kid. I don’t want you to get hurt. So this stops. Now. If you really do love Lili, you have to end this. It’s making her miserable.” My voice hardens. “It’s putting her in danger, too.”
Into his fraught silence, I say, “Or do you think men like my brother and her fiancé won’t care if they find out she isn’t a virgin? Because let me tell you, Juan Pablo, you won’t be the only one to pay a price. And what they’ll do to her…death would be preferable.”
When I disconnect, my hands are shaking.
I stand, set the phone on the floor, then stomp it under my heel as hard as I can. It splinters into pieces.