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I’m about to ask her what the hell her problem is, when I notice the scared look on Bianca’s face. Then what this woman just said really clicks. I smile sweetly as I stand to look her dead in the eye.
“Oh, you mean the little creep who doesn’t realize no means no?”
The woman sneers at me. “Ahh yes, the blushing bride.” She drags her gaze up and down my outfit with a look of utter distain on her face before she turns to glare at Bianca again.
“My Silvio was sweet enough to feed me a white lie about falling through a window after too many drinks.”
I roll my eyes. More like Silvio waspussy enoughto lie about a girl smashing a glass into his face when he was being a creep.
“You’d have been lucky to get Silvio, you little bitch,” she spits venomously at Bianca.
The mean girl posse behind her murmurs and mutters, nodding in agreement. I mean Jesus, have any of them evenmetthis woman’s prolapsed asshole of a son?
“Mrs. Bonpensiero,” Bianca mumbles, now looking white-faced and scared. “I—I’m sorry, I just…your son and I…”
“She doesn’t want to be with your son because he’s a gigantic douchecanoe with all the personality of a hemorrhoid.”
Dead silence. Silvio’s mother narrows her eyes at me.
“Ibeg your pardon?”
“Here’s an idea,” I mutter. “How about teaching your son to treat women as human beings instead of objects, and maybe he won’t get highball glasses smashed into his face anymore.”
Her eyes go wide. “How do you know about?—”
“It wasmyglass.”
Silvio’s mother stares at me in pure horror as the gaggle of witches behind her gasp and murmur to each other like a Greek chorus.
“I would havehoped,” she finally hisses quietly, “that Dante would have ended up with a woman with some class.”
I smile. “AndI’dhoped to eat lunch today without having to deal with a cunt like you.”
Mic. Drop. Silvio’s mother looks caught somewhere between shocked and livid as she stares at me, mouth agape. Finally, without a word, her mouth closes. Her eyes narrow to lethal slits before she turns on her heel and marches out the door, head held high, her little mean girl crew scurrying after her.
“You know how I said it wasn’t that bad when you worried about someone having you whacked before dessert?” Bianca murmurs quietly to me as the rest of the room pretends they weren’t totally watching all of that go down.
“Yeah?”
She swallows. “It…may have just gotten that bad.”
No one says anything at first when I sit back down. But I get more than a few grins and winks from some of the other ladies at the table. And pretty soon, we’ve all moved on to discussingwhose offspring is betrothed to whose, whose son is in jail or out on parole, and having alengthygossip about some new Serbian-Russian Bratva bigshot who’s recently made New York his home that the ladies I’m eating with breathlessly assure me is God’s gift to the female gaze.
“What about you, Angelica?” one of the ladies at the table grins to another. “I think you’re due to add to your collection soon, aren’t you?”
The table, including Angelica, erupts into laughter. Bianca turns to me and holds up five fingers.
“On her fifth husband,” she mouths with an arched brow.
“I’d sooner collect husbands than cats, Teresa.”
Teresa clearly gets that it’s a joke as she pantomimes looking offended. “Don’t you dare talk ill about my kitties.”
“How about you, Tempest?” Angelica smiles. “Collect anything?”
I’m shaking my head no when Bianca giggles next to me.
“Dante does. He collects rings,” she blurts, and then immediately covers her mouth. “Oh, God,” she glances at me. “Please don’t ever repeat that. He’s super weird and secretive about it. He even keeps them hidden, no idea why.”
