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It’s fall-off-the-bone tender regardless and is nearly obliterated with the force I use to poke at it. I make myself eat, taking a tentative, unhappy bite. Then two. A warmth spreads through me, the tension in my body evaporating like steam and softening my death-grip on the fork.
I’m starving.
The fact hits me like a truck. I haven’t had a full meal since my birthday brunch with Kay, and I barely touched my breakfast earlier. The fact that the food is actually delicious only makes it worse as my anger begins to fizzle out, one bite at a time. I hate that something so simple makes me see clearer and less cagey and upset.
Salvatore watches me eat, as if satisfied with himself and my sudden obedience.
“Better?”
“How the fuck do you do that?” I demand, my fork slamming against the table.
Apparently, being fed hasn’t taken all of my anger. “How do you just know everything I want or need or—” I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like Salvatore has a fucked-up superpower that lets him read and interpret my thoughts better than I can myself. “How are you in my head?”
He doesn’t flinch at all at my outburst, my words bouncing off his stern demeanor.
“Reading people is what I do,” he says, as if I am not the first person he’s explained this to. “I measure people. What they’re capable of, what motivates them, what they lack. And then, when I find that thing they want or the problem they need solved, something only I can give to them, I do it. When the time comes, they’ll be expected to return the favor. If I couldn’t decode people, I wouldn’t be any good at this, and I am good at it. And let’s be honest with ourselves, you’re not exactly a difficult case.”
I almost ask what he means, but it’s embarrassingly obvious. Salvatore has my inexperience and my virginity under his thumb, has fashioned himself as the key to my locked-up pleasure.
“And I’m the only one who gets the short end of the stick. I don’t get anything I ‘need,’” I drape the word in vehement sarcasm, “you just take everything from me instead.”
Salvatore’s eyes sweep up and down my body, before he answers, utterly certain of himself, “Don’t play stupid, Contessa. You’re getting exactly what you need.”
Any clever retort withers up on my tongue.
I try to press him about my father, or any news of my family, but he doesn’t allow it. We resolve to eat in silence. I pick at my food, thinking bitterly over how medieval all this is. My father might not be a good man, he might order hits and break laws, but he isn’t out in the street kidnapping women.
I study the man across from me, trying to find the truth about anything my father might have said about him. The Moris’s have always been non-traditional, always pushing the boundary just enough to get themselves ahead, but toeing the line close enough that the other families will still abide it.
My father inherited his hatred. The rivalry has spanned generations. The old school mafia, back when the families were more unified and organized, operated like a society of its own. They had a proud reputation for not dealing drugs. Booze, laundering, racketeering, hits.
Those were all fair game for the mob, but drugs were largely regarded as being beneath them. Not the Moris’s. Gambling regulations tightened up and prohibition ended, but drugs only became more lucrative, and the Moris’s were out ahead of the curve.
My family watched their influence be whittled away from them, punished by their own principles. The traditional families were caught in a famine, while the Moris’s had a feast. Over time, it earned them influence, allies, and unfathomable amounts of money. Eventually, everyone adapted to the new way, or they died off.
Except my family. We held on, stubbornly, through the generations—even with all the odds against us. I guess we were the underdogs. That’s how my father always told the story, anyway, and how it was probably told to him.
The hatred between our two families is just in the blood now.
It makes me feel a little strange, sitting here and eating a meal with this man who should be torturing and starving me for just a few syllables on the end of my name.
That was how my father always made them seem: the lawless of the lawless.
After dinner, Salvatore sends for whisky, trading empty plates for a bottle of single malt.
He pours himself a glass. I’m not offered one. I can’t tell if this means Salvatore plans to ship me back to my room or if he’s not done with me yet.
“Did you think about what you did today?” he asks, as he pours himself a glass.
“I didn’t do anything, actually,” I say, laying the double-meaning on thick. “Unless you mean napping.”
He takes my answer too calmly, sipping at his drink. He lets the silence burn like a fire—a fire that’s slowly creeping closer and closer to me, waiting for me to yelp. I’m stricken with the sinking feeling that I’ve given the wrong answer.
“…Do you want an apology?” I ask tersely.
I really don’t want to give him one.
Judging by the stare he gives me; he isn’t expecting one either.
