My grandmother is a brittle old woman, with sparse white hair and more years than she’s able to keep track of. I’m pretty sure she’s in her late 90’s, but nobody knows for sure. Despite her age, she still calls the shots for domestic affairs in the family. When my mother passed away, she had her buried in a graveyard on the family estate. Now, three years later, I walk through the expansive lawn in the rear of the same estate, ready to take a bride I’ve never met before.
This should be interesting.
I swallow hard, keeping my back straight and my hands down to my sides, swinging them as naturally as I can muster in such a tense situation. I can’t believe I’m nervous about getting married. I never thought I’d find myself in this position in the first place, but now that I’m here, it seems preposterous that it would cause even a single drop of sweat to form on my brow. It’s not like I’m marrying the love of my life here. She’s just a girl with good connections. That’s all.
I control my breathing, taking air in through my nose for three slow seconds, holding it in my lungs for four, and breathing out through my mouth for five. It’s a technique I learned while on a meditative retreat in the mountains. I’m not much of a spiritualist, but I won’t deny the usefulness of a calm mind. My enemies aren’t my biggest threat. Panic is.
I’ve seen many men succumb to panic, only to act irrationally soon thereafter and get themselves killed. You can’t pick locks with sweaty hands, and you can’t aim a gun when you’re shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Calmness is the ultimate tool in high-risk situations, and I’ve always done well to use it to my advantage.
Why then, do I sweat like a sinner in hell while walking down the aisle toward the podium? Honey isn’t even here yet. She’ll be walked out by my grandmother since she apparently has no remaining family of her own.
I have no reason to be nervous, and yet I am. I can feel it in the way that my heart beats, as though it wants to leap out of my chest and run from this place.
I’m a mafia boss, I remind myself. I’m the one in control. Maybe Honey wants to change me, to make me a good man or something stupid like that, but I’m the master in this partnership. I lead, and she follows. That should be enough to ease my mind.
I walk through the ocean of white wooden chairs that are parted like the red sea when Moses stood before it. Every chair is taken, if not by my extensive mafia family, then by my bodyguards in sleek black suits, not unlike mine. Every single one of them is armed to the teeth, but you wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at them. They look like regular people.
I, on the other hand, don’t look like a regular person. I never have, even though I’ve made plenty of effort to blend in and disappear in the past. It’s just not possible for a man my size not to turn heads.
I have a large frame, which is what draws peoples’ eyes at first. After that, they get sucked in by my muscular physique and prominent features. It’s a blessing and a curse, to be sure, but that’s just the way I am. It strikes fear in my enemies and loyalty amongst my ranks. A leader should look the part, and I certainly do.
Thinking about it, I feel less sweaty and nervous about marrying Honey. It’s not like she’s a three-hundred-pound bodybuilder who could break me in half and make me her bitch. The thought of that is amusing, but in reality, she’s just a young woman, small and submissive like the rest of them. That’s what I hope for, anyway. I wasn’t told much about her, other than that she’s attractive. Most women her age are.
My heart slows down as I step up the red stairs to the alter. The priest is already waiting there, his veiny hand pressed against the cover of what I assume to be a bible, and his expression pleasantly blank. Everything is going to work out just fine. I know it. This is the first step toward the unity of two major mafia families, and I should be excited about it.
It seems as though everyone was waiting for me because as soon as my feet hit the stage, the music starts, and the doors to the house burst open, revealing my grandmother and my new bride, Honey.
When I see her, I’m floored.
Chapter Four
Honey
Maybe it was silly to get my hopes up about the man I’m about to marry. His grandmother seems nice enough, but what if he’s a monster? Most of these mafia people are, aside from my late father. I wish things could’ve been different, but things never go the way they’re planned. Sometimes they go bad, and sometimes they go horribly, disastrously, wrong.
I don’t even want to think about what happened in the Kalahari Desert just two weeks prior to my wedding day, but the images of the hot red sand and the burning sun have scared themselves into my memories for life. Every time I close my eyes, I see red, I see so much fucking red.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say, so once I escaped almost certain death at the hands of the Valangana troops, I was forced to consider alternatives to my father being the leader of the Dormer mafia. After all, you can’t lead when you’re no longer alive, and the mafia needs a leader quickly before it falls apart. That’s where Carter Calandro came in.
Carter’s grandmother has her thin arm hooked around mine so tightly that it feels like an iron cuff at my elbow. For such an old woman, she hasn’t lost
