Davide was a tall, muscled male with thick arms, so his hug felt more like an attack, just like how the scratch of his black hair against my skin forced a shiver through my body.
I tapped his shoulder twice with my palm, attempting to indicate that he could stop, but he did not appear to understand my communication and continued, laughing into my ear, strengthening his arms, and likely speaking words I was too stunned to hear.
When he finally pulled away, I let out an audible groan of relief, one that Adriano chuckled at while my wife became Davide’s next victim.
She cringed over his shoulder.
“Davide,” I warned.
It was relieving that she did not enjoy hugging too, though I contemplated whether our close bodily contact at the garage constituted as hugging. Surely a hug would have been forward facing and we had not been…
I did not know, and I did not desire to think about it too hard either.
Humans were confusing.
Davide placed a hand on Sicily’s spine, leading her to the table. I watched her face lift when she saw her friend, Elena, and how she attempted to sit opposite her. I shifted instantly, stepping forward to guide her to sit between me and Adriano instead. She was in optimal safety there.
The scowl she shot me indicated her anger, and I rolled my eyes in response. Perhaps she would not have scowled if she was permitted to sit with her friend, but she would not have smiled ever again if she had been targeted and killed.
“Congratulations, both of you,” Davide said, interrupting my mind thinking of my wife’s death, as he took his own seat beside his youngest daughter. “Consider this meal our wedding gift.”
I did not correct him that he had already gifted us a significant sum of money for our wedding or inform him that I had spent it on ridiculously large pink cushions to make Sicily feel welcome in my home.
“Thank you,” I answered. “Your restaurant appears to be something my wife may like to return to, so I shall be in touch to book the entire place out one evening.”
Davide chuckled, his wife grinned, their youngest child continued coloring on her napkin, Adriano shot me a look that Ihad learned was of approval, and I was aware of Elena mouthing“oh my god”at my wife, to which Sicily simply blushed pink.
Resting my arm over the back of her chair appeared to grant me the further approval of Elena Ferrari, and I tried not to imagine the paintings of her and her father’s enemy that were seared into my brain.
A selection of food was delivered to our table to thankfully interrupt my thoughts of Matteo Bonafede’s painted penis. Pasta dishes, risotto with expensive seafood, salads, cold meats and bread, fish, steak, and roasted vegetables were plated in front of us, and while this was an ordinary display to win favor, Sicily had not been raised with the extravagance that she should have been; she blinked at it all as if she did not know where to begin.
Primo Bianchi had once possessed all the means and money to give Sicily the upper-class childhood people assumed she had experienced, but in the years that I had known him, it had always been evident that Bianchi had prioritized throwing money at fixing his reputation rather than giving his children the expensive lifestyle they’d deserved.
I took her plate before my own and selected everything that I knew she would like or perhaps would be tolerant of trying considering her ridiculous habit of eating box mac and cheese for lunch daily. She did not look at it when it was placed before her, but she did look up at me, smiling and exhaling like I had cured world hunger.
“So, tell me, Milan,” Davide started as he set food in front of his little twin of a daughter. “Tell me what this Capo business is about.”
“There is no business to it,” I said. “Iwillbe Capo dei Capi.”
Davide leaned back in his chair, skewering a salad tomato roughly onto his fork but not eating yet. “Only if we agree, correct?”
Adriano chuckled. “Sure, but if you don’t, you’ll be fucked.”
“Have the Bonafedes agreed to your rule?” he asked.
Elena’s fork slipped from her fingers, clattering onto her plate, and Sicily sent her a look that she appeared to understand because she fixed the expression of surprise on her face.
I only nodded once Elena had composed herself; I was not interested in making it worse for her or exposing anything that was for my wife to deal with.
Davide scoffed. “Then no. I fucking hated your father and his god complex, but I like you, Milan. I was prepared to follow the Gioffres and allow you to be my Capo, but I would rather be exiled from this fucking society than be neighbors with the Bonafedes.”
I frowned. “You are not required to converse with them. I am prepared to respect your ridiculous feud. You only need to respect me, and I will handle your differences.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the table.
Sicily grew stiff beside me, her focus flickering between the parents and children opposite us. She locked eyes with Davide’s wife, Anna, a few times, and the two of them shared a silent smile that told me they were both finding this silence as intolerable as I was.
And then, as if she could read my mind, the tiny speck of a human opposite me pointed at my wife with a huge grin and fingers covered in bread and cheese and practically screamed, “I drawed a fairy princess that looked like you at school!”
