Chapter 30

Mafia Kings: Valentino: Chapter 30 We left the hotel in a caravan of Alfa Romeo SUVs, all black.

Don Vicari didn’t like to splurge on his jet, but at least his cars were only a few years old.

Vicari sat behind the driver. I sat behind the guy riding shotgun.

He was literally riding shotgun, by the way: he had a sawed-off double-barrel Remington between his legs, angled down towards the floor.

I prayed that Niccolo had been right about Sicilians being extremely paranoid. Otherwise, it sure looked like they were expecting to get ambushed by somebody.

As we got on the interstate, the BMW sedan carrying Niccolo went one way while the rest of the vehicles went the other.

Don Vicari stared silently at the driver’s seat. Neither the driver nor the guy riding shotgun said anything, either.

It freaked me out a little how nobody was talking...

But I didn’t really want to talk anyway, so I gazed out at the scenery.

Palermo seemed to go on forever. It was way bigger than Florence, the city closest to my home.

Well...

What used to be my home.

Suddenly, a ringtone broke the silence.

Shotgun Guy reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a cell phone. He answered it, listened, and then held out the phone. “It’s for you, boss.”

Vicari took it. “What,” he said emotionlessly.

His face darkened.

“Tell him you’re not hanging around to take him back,” he growled.

After the guy on the other end said something, Vicari looked even more pissed off. “Fine. Fuck him, then.”

He hung up the phone and passed it back to Shotgun.

“Your brother switched plans on me,” Vicari said without looking at me.

My heart beat faster from hope. “Dario?”

“No, the consigliere.”

“Oh.” Nic. “What did he do?”

“He’s not taking the jet back to Tuscany.”

“What?” I asked, surprised.

Vicari’s face twisted into a bitter scowl. “Maybe he doesn’t trust me to deliver him home in one piece.”

“That’s not it,” I replied.

Vicari turned slowly to look at me – sort of like, You got somethin’ you wanna fuckin’ say?

I quickly explained.

“The very first thing Nic told me was to never question a Sicilian’s integrity. He said you swore on your dea– uh, your departed wife’s soul that we’d be safe, so I know he trusts you 100%.”

Vicari stared at me for a few seconds longer.

Then he gave a mildly surprised “Huh.”

At least he no longer seemed pissed off.

“Did Niccolo say why he’s not flying back?” I asked.

“No.”

I could tell he was still annoyed, so I dropped it.

Fuckin’ Niccolo. Drags me to Sicily and sticks me in an arranged marriage – but do the rules apply to HIM? Oh, FUCK no.

Don Vicari went back to staring wordlessly at the back of the driver’s seat.

I pulled out my phone to scroll through Instagram –

And, to be honest, I wanted to see if Caterina had texted me.

“That reminds me,” Don Vicari said as he held out his hand. “Give it here.”

“What?” I asked in shock.

“Give me your phone.”

“Why?!”

“I don’t want you talking to girls back home when you’re supposed to marry my daughter in two weeks.”

He’d kind of nailed me.

But I wasn’t going to give up that easily.

“There aren’t any girls back home,” I lied.

Don Vicari gave me a contemptuous smirk. “I had my people check you out.”

“...oh?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“They say you’ve got quite the reputation as a ladies’ man.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” I said humbly... even though it wasn’t.

For the first time ever, Vicari actually smiled. Not one of his creepy serial killer smiles, but something with actual warmth.

Of course, he wasn’t looking at me when he did it. He was staring off past me into the distance, lost in thought.

“You know, I was a ladies’ man back when I was your age. I courted all the most beautiful girls in Sicily. Fucked most of ‘em, too.”

The driver and the shotgun guy both laughed.

“They know my reputation,” Vicari said as he pointed at his men. “‘Big Dick Vicari.’ Isn’t that right?”

“That’s what they say, boss,” Shotgun said with a grin.

Um...

Okay...

“Caused a lot of problems for my old man,” Vicari said cheerfully. “Angry fathers trying to kill me. We had to make a lot of problems go away.”

I was assuming that by ‘go away,’ he didn’t mean bribing them.

Jesus fucking Christ...

“Hell, I probably got a lot of bastard kids all over Sicily. Never wore a condom, not once, and I never pulled out.”

The guys in the front laughed even harder.

I was getting intensely uncomfortable with this conversation.

“Of course, all that stopped when I met my sainted Matelda,” Vicari said, switching on a dime from happy to somber. “God rest her soul.”

The driver and shotgun guy both immediately stopped laughing, too.

Shotgun actually crossed himself.

Then Vicari turned to me. “So when a pretty boy with the face of a movie star tells me he hasn’t got any girls back home, I know he’s either lying or he’s a finocchio.”

Finocchio was the word for ‘fennel’ – but also a slur for being gay.

“So which is it?” Vicari asked coldly.

“...there was a girl,” I said back just as coldly. “But not anymore.”

“Good,” he said as he held his hand for my phone. “Let’s keep it that way.”

“I need it to talk to my family!”

“You can have it back whenever you want to call them.” When I didn’t move, Vicari growled, “It wasn’t a request.”

I wondered what would happen if I just said ‘no’ –

But I noticed that Shotgun was watching the rearview mirror to see what I would do. The driver glanced into the mirror every few seconds for the same reason.

Then Vicari gave me that chilling smile I’d seen earlier – the one where the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“I’d hate to have to treat my new son-in-law like my consigliere.”

A shiver ran down my spine...

And I finally handed my phone over in angry silence.

Vicari slipped it inside his suit jacket. “And just so we’re clear, you will not be fucking other women. You’ll be faithful to my daughter your entire marriage, or I’m gonna have something to fuckin’ say about it. Capiche?”

“Capito,” I muttered.

Understood.

What else could I say?

Nah, I’m gonna fuck whoever I want, you old mafia son of a bitch.

That was a good way to wind up like his dead consigliere.

Normally, I would’ve been angry.

This wasn’t exactly the ‘Bang all the kitchen girls in Sicily you want on the side’ situation Niccolo had promised.

But I was so heartsick over Caterina, I couldn’t even think about any other women.

All I wanted was her.

Actually, I was more pissed that Vicari had taken my phone away than I was about him threatening me to stay faithful.

Without my phone, there was no way I could contact Caterina.

But Vicari wasn’t finished.

“Also, my daughter is a virgin,” he warned, “and she’ll remain a virgin until her wedding night.”

I wanted to say, When I fuck her, you don’t want me to pull out, right?

But again, I didn’t want a punch to the face or a bullet to the back of my head.

“Of course,” was all I said.

Don Vicari nodded, then went back to staring at the back of the driver’s seat.

We rode the rest of the way in silence, which was fine by me.

For about the thousandth time since landing in Sicily, I wished to God I had taken Dario up on his deal.

Because right about now, I could have been taking Caterina to bed as my wife...

Instead of riding in a car with a fucking psychopath.