Page 10 of A Trap So Flawless

“What?” Papà says distractedly as he leads us towards a large table with a white tablecloth near the back of the restaurant.

“Pet. I was called that by my fiancé,” I say, flashing my teeth in a falsely sweet smile. “You know. My other fiancé. Darragh Gowan.”

I think Papà might actually burst a blood vessel in his forehead. His face and neck flush dark with rage. Mamma tenses, and he takes a step towards me, as if he’s planning on dragging me right out of the restaurant.

“Do not speak that fucking name in front of me,” Papà hisses under his breath. “And don’t even think about speaking it in front of Sal. He’s not a man to be trifled with.”

Not a man to be trifled with. Ha. Yeah, I got that impression, considering his last wife – young and healthy, by all accounts – just died recently. A tragic fall down the stairs, from what I’ve heard.

Would be even more tragic if she were pushed.

By her husband.

Who is now going to be my husband.

Apparently.

I turn from my papà’s enraged face, twisting to look back towards the door. As if Darragh might walk through it at any moment. An uninvited ghost.

An apparition.

But all I see is late-afternoon sun streaming in through the glass, illuminating bottles of wine and beautiful tiles and Curse, who stands near the door beside one of Sal’s men.

A waiter in white directs us further into the restaurant, speaking Italian in polite tones to my parents. We resume our trek towards the large table at the back. Only now, there are two men sitting there who weren’t there before. Both dark-haired and dressed in suits. I know immediately that the one on the right is Salvatore Di Mauro. Mamma has shoved his picture under my nose several times over the last week, the action usually accompanied by nervously uttered lines like, “So good-looking for his age, no?”

He is decent-looking, I won’t deny her that. He’s got broad shoulders, a nice jaw, and the few strands of silver at his temples add an air of sophistication instead of age. But he doesn’t have hair the colour of dried blood. He doesn’t have the wounds I gave him inked into his skin. He doesn’t look at me like he can’t quite tell if he wants to strangle me or fuck me.

In fact, Sal looks at me without any sort of obvious feeling at all. There’s a bland, uncaring sort of calculation in his gaze that leaves me cold. He’s sizing me up the way a man buying a car might. No, not even a car. Something much less consequential. Like he’s buying a new water filter for his fridge or a shirt he never plans to wear. Something he doesn’t give a single fuck about. The man beside him – who must be his consigliere – rises at our approach. Sal doesn’t.

Not at first, at least. It’s only when Papà greets him that he finally stands to shake Papà’s hand.

“You remember my wife, Carlotta,” Papà grunts, releasing Sal’s hand and gesturing towards Mamma. Mamma takes up her practised, polished mafioso-wife smile and leans in for two kisses, one on each cheek.

“And my daughter.” Papà says my name with a chilling finality. “Valentina.”

I could laugh. I could run. I could pull out the ring Darragh gave me – the one I’ve got in my clutch purse right now, though I still don’t quite know why I’ve brought it – and brandish it mockingly in Sal’s face.

I don’t do any of that. I smile serenely and lean forward for kisses of my own, ignoring a sudden tightness in my throat. Like an olive getting stuck.

Sal grips my elbows. The shaved line of his jaw scrapes my cheeks.

When he pulls back and lets me go, a short woman with big hair and even bigger boobs joins our group. She is Sal’s consigliere’s wife, and she begins chatting with the others, leaving Sal and me in a little bubble of quiet to the side.

“Nice place,” I say blithely. I know he owns this restaurant, though I didn’t notice what it was called.

Sal sits back down in his chair.

“Sofia’s?” he says.

I freeze, my cheeks twitching with the effort to keep my smile on my face. Sofia was his late wife’s name.

“It was her project,” he goes on, waving a casual hand through the air. “Rename it Valentina’s if you want.”

Well, isn’t that just fucking ghoulish. We’re sitting in the restaurant his late wife ran – a place literally named after her – while we prepare for our wedding tomorrow.

Sorry, I say silently, as if the spirit of Sofia Di Mauro can hear me.

But I sit down beside her husband anyway.

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