Page 47 of Mafia’s Dirty Secret

“Jane, you didn’t have to do all that.” Marie looked up at her friend and smiled. “But I’m glad you did. It sounds great!”

“Well, I could stay at home with my cat and watch Netflix, or come over here and keep you company. Sylvester will wait, he hates me anyway. Silly cat.” Jane sat down on the couch, spread out the goodies she brought, and pulled out a bottle of wine and another one of apple juice. She knew Marie preferred that in the evenings to soda, and that made Marie smile again.

It helped when people noticed things about you. She pulled out a movie from the pile in the bag and held it up. “What’s this about?”

The cover was kind of scary looking and the title was “12 Monkeys”.

“Oh, that’s a good one. And it has Brad Pitt in it, you’ll probably like it, judging from the books you read.”

“Alright. Let me just get everything turned on, then we’ll be ready to go.”

Marie had been certain she’d spend the night miserable and alone, yet, here she was, sliding a VCR tape into an ancient VCR, so they could watch a movie on the ancient TV. It wasn’t so bad after all.

25

It was the quiet hours of the night that got to Marie. Jane helped to fill the quiet hours of the evening, but it was the night that spooked her. She hadn’t slept in the house on her own since she was a child. Not since her mother got ill and stopped carousing, anyway.

Marie tried not to think about the past too much, but since her mother’s death, memories haunted her. Things she didn’t want to remember popped up in her head all the time, and she was on the verge of seeking out a psychiatrist. The problem was, she had no money.

There’d been a nest egg when Marie was born, but Ruby had gone through that. The last of it went to pre-pay for Ruby’s funeral. Now, there was nothing left and bills were starting to pile up. She had to pay the power bill, the water bill, and the cable bill with the $300 she had left in her own bank account and try to pay off some of the other bills with what was left in her mom’s account. There wouldn’t be anything left after she did that. The Social Security Administration wouldn’t pay benefits to people that were dead, after all.

Matteo had said he’d pay for the medical costs, but what about the rest? She had to renew her insurance on the car, the insurance on the house, and she didn’t have a job to pay those bills with. She’d started to get strange bills in the mail, debts that were owed from years ago, and she didn’t know where they were coming from.

She wanted to talk to Matteo, but he’d been strange since the funeral. Even when he did call her, his conversations were stilted, not like him at all. She was worried he’d gone back to New York and found a woman that was more suited to his tastes than she was. Yeah, he’d said she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and insisted she was too good for him but was that really what he thought?

Men were pigs, according to her mother. If the men she’d drug home with her, back in her carousing days, were anything to go by, Ruby had been right. Married men, single men, drunks, bankers, fishermen, tourists, she’d had them all, and that could only mean she knew a thing or two about men, right?

Her books said differently: that not all men were the same, but that hadn’t been what real-life showed her at an early age. Hell, a few had even tried their luck with Marie a time or two. Her mother had always caught on quick, though, and got rid of the bastards before they could really hurt Marie. She’d always glared at her daughter, told her to stop being such a little whore and the men would leave her alone. Marie didn’t know what she’d done to be called a little whore, so she couldn’t stop it, so she just avoided all contact with any man her mom brought home.

Was that who Matteo was? Was he one of those jerks that would take advantage of any woman he came across? Would he tell her all the things women wanted to hear, only to move on to the next one before he’d even washed off the smell of that last one? She didn’t think so.

He wasn’t that kind, her instincts told her that. He was a good man, in his own way. She suspected the rumors about him being in the Mafia were true. He was involved in some kind of organized crime, he had to be. She’d overheard a conversation or two about shipments, and how the law was breathing down their necks. She’d ignored them, acted like she hadn’t heard, but she had.

The idea fascinated her. He was part of some kind of criminal underworld. He had power. A power that she didn’t have. She wanted some of that power, and one day, she’d ask him how to get it. For now, she’d just wait and see what he wanted to talk to her about when he got back.

He’d said it was about her mother.

What could he possibly have to say about her mother?

A few days ago, she’d pondered whether he was related to her. Maybe he was part of a different Mafia family than her father? Or maybe he was some kind of lieutenant? Sent down to take care of her father’s little girl?

She let that one play-out for a while. She’d never known her father, and her mother called him a pig, the same as the other men. Marie knew the truth, that her father had been married to someone else, but slept with her mother anyway. Maybe her father had set up a will for any children he might have fathered, and Matteo had come down to give that to her?

She’d be a millionaire and would never have to worry about anything ever again, in the fantasy. She’d never have to work, or struggle, or buy the cheap brands of products she wanted. She could go on vacations!

She’d go to Italy first, then France. Maybe to England. Or Iceland! She’d have tons of money she could go where she liked! But it was all a fantasy, and she had no money to speak of. Her father’s family had never cared about her, and his wife certainly wouldn’t have. According to her mother, the wife got it all anyway. There’d been nothing Ruby could do.

Marie wondered if her mother had ever really tried though. She hadn’t found anything in her mother’s papers that would have shown where she’d filed suit against Marie’s father’s estate or asked for child support payments from the estate. She wasn’t sure if that was a thing, but surely there must have been some way that Ruby could claim some of that money? The man had been rolling in money.

Marie hated all these thoughts about money and felt dirty for even thinking about it all. She was just lost at the moment and had no idea what to do. Jane had been a help though. She’d told Marie that she could probably get on with the agency Jane worked for if the one Marie was paid by didn’t want to keep her.

“They’re always looking for good people and you have the qualifications, so don’t panic too much. Not yet, anyway.” Jane had told her after their last movie night.

Marie decided to do something else besides sitting at the table and worrying. She sent Matteo a text, but he didn’t answer, so she went out to mow the grass. The weather had started to change, and the dark came earlier now. The kids were already back in school, so fall was on the way and then winter.

Down in her neck of the woods, it didn’t get extremely cold, but it felt like it did to her. She’d have to get all of her winter clothes out soon and give them a wash. She wondered if it was the last time she’d mow the grass that year, as she put the mower away a few hours later. She cleaned off wet grass from the bottom and put it in the storage shed.

When she went back into the house, she checked her phone. Still no message. Something was definitely wrong. He always responded within 15 minutes of a text from her.