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I needed to speak to Gabriel right away. I looked at my bride and faltered for a few seconds. Maybe I should call her mother to help her—but Casmundina Bonardi struck me as the sort who would probably get hysterical and make things worse.
“Stay here,” I instructed Jessica. Throwing on some clothes, I added my knife holster and tucked a gun into the back of my belt before swiftly making my way to Gabriel’s hotel room and banging on his door.
He opened his door, and after one look at my face, he let me in and I informed him what Jessica had just told me.
“She’s not a virgin, and her parents and our parents knew all along?” Gabriel said, clearly as surprised as me. The requirement for a girl to be a virgin on her wedding day was absolute in the Mafia world.
“I need to talk to her father.”
Gabriel nodded and together we made our way to her parents’ hotel room. We were all staying in the same hotel as it had been hired out exclusively over the weekend for the purpose of the wedding.
I pounded on the door of Cecilio Bonardi’s room. I was raging and I had to force myself to breathe.
Cecilio answered the door in striped pajamas and with a gun in his hand. “What’s the meaning of this? We were about to go to sleep.”
“So I see,” I drawled, seeing Jessica’s mother nervously hovering in the background, dressed in a nightgown and with cream spread all over her face.
“Is something wrong?” Cecilio barked at me, while his wife couldn’t help looking as guilty as hell.
“We better talk inside.” I pushed my way into their room. I didn’t have time for polite formalities.
Once inside their room, Cecilio turned to me. “Well? Explain yourself,” he demanded.
Fuck, he was a pompous jackass. “Bonardi, did you or did you not know that your daughter was not a virgin on the morning of her wedding?”
“Of course I knew.” He didn’t even hesitate before answering. “She told her mother and me. My daughter never lies to me.”
My next words came out in a dangerously low voice. “And you didn’t think to mention this? You didn’t think that I, as her proposed husband, had a right to know?”
“I left it up to your father to tell you,” Cecilio blustered.
“What the hell has my father got to do with this?”
Cecilio didn’t answer, and he and his wife looked at each other uneasily.
I pulled my gun out and aimed it at Cecilio. “So help me God, tell me what the fuck my father has got to do with all this?”
Cecilio looked uncomfortable. “Well…he took Jessica…you know, bedded her. I thought you knew. It was at the doctor’s clinic when she went to get her contraception.”
Fury burned a trail through my whole body, ready to explode at the slightest ignition. “He bedded Jessica? Why?”
Cecilio threw his hands up. “Emanuel said it was his right as Capo, so that he could check she was still pure for his son.”
“And you kept this a secret from me?” My voice was a harsh growl.
“I thought your father would have told you—you know, to not expect blood tonight and to lie when you are asked to confirm her virginity tomorrow morning. And I thought he would have informed you, of course, that Jessica was indeed pure.” His voice quickened. “Let’s be clear—she was definitely a virgin for your father, so your family can’t claim she wasn’t intact.”
I could only stare at the arrogant bastard standing in front of me, while fighting down the urge to end his miserable life right now.
Cecilio, however, didn’t know when to shut up. “I won’t have our Bonardi family name called into question over Jessica’s virginity, especially after what has happened with her older sister. Jessica was pure until your family got their hands on her. The Santinos got a virgin—whether it was you or your father who took her innocence, that’s no concern of mine. I’ve done my duty and fulfilled my obligations under the marriage contract, make no mistake about that.”
I should knife him in the gut right here and now, I thought. What monster wouldn’t care that their daughter had been forced by a man twice her age?
As I clenched my fists, I felt Gabriel’s hand on my shoulder and saw him signal to me that we should leave. As much as I wanted to murder the despicable man in front of me, I couldn’t forget that he was an Underboss of the Società. And the person I really needed to take my burning rage out on was my fucking father.
We left his room and when we got in the elevator, I was about to hit the floor for my father’s room.
But I stopped in my tracks. What the fuck was I doing?
