Swallowing, I take the box in my hand and raise an eyebrow. Trying to mask my emotions, I tease, “How do you know I won’t flush it?”
He laughs and raises a hand, uncomfortably tugging at the tie around his neck.
“Call it a hunch,” he replies. Before I can say another word, he turns around and begins to saunter toward the door. He pauses, turning around and glances at the kitchen.
“Flora, always a pleasure.”
Then he turns back around and exits the restaurant. My gaze follows him as he crosses the parking lot and it stays with him until he disappears into the back seat of the sedan. I glance down at the box and slip it into the front pocket of my apron. As curious as I am, I know better than to open it with my mother lurking around.
Later, after the lunch rush is over, I excuse myself to the bathroom to open the gift and my eyes nearly fall out of their sockets. There, encased in the velvet box, is a diamond tennis bracelet. A gasp flies out of my mouth and I start to count the diamonds but after twenty, I give up. No one has ever given me diamonds before. Now I understand why they’re a girl’s best friend.
They’re stunning.
As tempted as I am to see what the bracelet looks like on my wrist, I decide to snap the box closed.
How does a man call you a mistake and forty-eight hours later gift you diamonds?
Shoving it back inside my apron, I grab my phone and pull up Rocco’s contact information. It starts to ring, and I draw my lower lip between my teeth, trying to decide how I’m going to play this. If I accept the bracelet, I’m condoning his behavior. I’m giving him a green light to play with my heart.
“Bug,” he answers.
“Hey,” I murmur, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “Is that how I’m stored in your phone?”
He chuckles.
“No.”
“I opened your gift,” I say, leaning my back against the vanity. Drawing out a heavy sigh, I continue, “Rocco, it’s beautiful, but I can’t accept it.”
“The fuck you can’t.”
A sad smile forms on my lips. I should’ve expected that kind of response from him.
“Rocco,” I start, pausing to gather my thoughts. “It’s too much.”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it,” I admit.
“Then, it’s not too much, Violet.”
It feels like it is.
It feels like I’m setting myself up for disaster.
“Answer your phone later tonight,” he says gruffly.
“Why?” I whisper.
“Just do it.”
Then without another word, he disconnects the call.
He calls me in the middle of the night and without hesitation, I answer.
When he tells me to come outside, I sneak out of my window and hurry down the fire escape.
And when he takes my face in his hands and slams his mouth to mine, I kiss him back.
It’s desperate.
It’s passionate.
It’s consuming.
It’s everything a kiss should be.
Maybe I am naive after all.
Chapter 15
Rocco Spinelli
I was officially straightened out. It happened in the backroom of a little trattoria in downtown Brooklyn. Artie Donofrio and Tony Bongiovanni acted as my sponsors. Normally, for a man to be made his sponsors would have had to know him for at least ten years. But the normal rules didn’t apply in Uncle Vic’s world and I met Donofrio and Bongiovanni three hours before my induction ceremony.
My uncle looked on as I pledged my life to his organization, taking the oath of the Omerta. Then he stood before me, took my hand and pricked my trigger finger with a needle. He reached inside his pocket and produced a prayer card of Saint Francis of Assisi, positioning it beneath my hand. We remained silent, both of us watching as my blood dripped onto the card. When the bleeding stopped, Uncle Vic took a lighter from Artie and lit the end of the card.
He lifted his chin and his eyes locked with mine as he handed me the prayer card. In that instant as I held the burning card between my fingers, a reel of all the women in my life, past and present, flashed before my eyes.
My mother.
My sister, Gina.
And the girl I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I tried, Violet.
I saw the disdain in their eyes.
I saw the fear.
I saw the grief.
I saw it all and I pushed it to the back of my head as I stared at my uncle and said, “As burns this saint, may my soul burn in Hell if I betray the oath of the Overt. I enter alive, but I will have to get out dead.”
The card continued to burn to ash in my hand and never once did I blink. I stared at my uncle and for the first time in my life, I saw pride reflected in those gray eyes. When the ceremony was over, he took my face in his palms and kissed each cheek. Then he patted me on the back and whispered two words I’d remember for the rest of my life.
Thank you.
An hour later we were sitting at a long table in the trattoria, surrounded by Uncle Vic’s crew, passing overflowing plates of food and drinking top-shelf liquor, celebrating my induction into the mafia. I wasn’t sure if every man at the table knew Uncle Vic’s plan for me or that he would be turning himself over to the authorities soon, but as I looked around the table, I realized they soon would answer to me.
They’d steal for me.
They’d kill for me.
They’d lay down and fucking die for me.
It was a lot to process.
I pushed my plate away and ordered another drink. Hours went by before the plates were cleared from the table and Uncle Vic announced the night was just getting started. We wound up a nightclub in the Meat Packing district—surprisingly, one that Uncle Vic didn’t have a piece of. The booze flowed and every woman with a short skirt tried their hardest to get past the velvet ropes that separated our table from the rest of the club.
At one point Uncle Vic threw his arm around my shoulders and asked me what was wrong.
“This is your scene and you’re sitting here like a fucking monk,” he said, shouting over the music.
He wasn’t wrong. If we were back in Miami, I’d have two girls on my lap and another two on deck, but as I sat in the smoke-filled club, all I could do was think of Violet.
She was consuming my every fucking thought and that was a real problem. For Christ’s sake, I paid a debt that wasn’t mine and this morning, I went into my safety deposit box and took out my mother’s tennis bracelet.
After she passed, I gave Gina all our mother’s jewelry, except for that and her engagement ring—which Gina will eventually get too if she ever decides to find herself a husband. I think the girl is married to her career, but who am I to judge.
To each his own.
Anyway, I remember standing in the bank with Uncle Vic at my side, going through all my mother’s belongings. There wasn’t much, most of it she had sold to make ends meet after my father was murdered. But she had the bracelet, her engagement ring, and a few odd pieces, like a diamond cross and pearl earrings.
All the gold bangles and the thick gold rope chain she always wore when we were kids, were gone. Uncle Vic said she probably kept the diamonds because there wasn’t much of a demand for them as there was for gold.
A valid point.