Page 63 of Mafia Princess

When I pictured this meeting, I thought I’d come in guns blazing. I thought I’d be so angry, that I’d punch her teeth out and put a bullet in her head for ruining me for the only person who’s ever loved me besides my father. But I can’t imagine anything I could do would punish her more than this.

Once, Mom was a mafia princess like me. She grew up rich, and she married a mafia king.

Or maybe she never grew up at all. Maybe that’s why she thought she could do whatever she wanted, and it would never come back on her. That she could run off and become an actress and everything would go her way, the way it always had.

But now, as we sit across a wobbly table from each other, I look at her full in the face for the first time. I have to admit that as bad as this place looks, it’s just a place. Just as they keep it clean even though it’s a shithole, good people can come out of the worst circumstances. People can come from nothing.

The opposite is also true. Bad people can come from every opportunity, every privilege. Someone can grow up rich, with everything handed to them, getting away with everything, and then marry a rich man who doesn’t watch them in the bathroom with their own kids. And they can end up like this. Her once lustrous chestnut hair hangs in thin strings from her head. Her clothes droop off her body, her shoulders so thin I can see knobs of bone sticking up against her shirt. Her cheeks are sunken, her teeth stained and broken, her eyes lifeless.

“Mom, what happened? I thought you went off to become an actress.”

“I did,” she says. “Just—give me a minute. I can’t believe this is real. Am I dreaming?”

“Not dreaming,” I say. “I came to talk about what happened when I was a kid.”

“Let me get a smoke,” she says, getting up and pulling open one drawer and then the next, muttering curses. At last, she comes back with a pack of cigarettes and sits down, lighting up with a shaking hand. She immediately coughs, a deep, wet, rattling cough. “You want one?”

“No, thanks,” I say, making a face before I can help it.

“That’s right,” she says. “Don’t want to stain those pretty teeth. Looks is all a woman has at your age. Gotta keep up appearances until you can be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”

“Mom,” I say, my voice hardening. “I’m already married.”

She coughs again, waving smoke away with one hand as she stares at me in the dim lighting of the kitchen. I can see track marks on her arms from whatever she’s shooting up. “Is that why you came?” she asks, her voice bitter, like I’m selfish for not coming to see how she is.

“Yes,” I say, anger building into a hard knot in my chest. She didn’t even ask about him, about the wedding that she didn’t attend.

“Well,” she says. “Congratulations.”

“I didn’t come for congratulations,” I say, my voice hard. “I don’t need anything from you, not even your best wishes.”

She snorts, then holds in a cough. “Don’t tell me you need money.”

“No,” I say. “I came to kill you. You ruined me, Mom. How could you do that to your own daughter? What kind of sick fuck does that?”

Her fingers tremble as she holds her cigarette, staring at me like she’s shocked that I’d bring it up, that I’d dare speak those things aloud. After all this time, she probably thought she’d never have to answer for what she did.

“I never wanted to marry your father,” she says, her voice trembling. “I wanted out, but he wouldn’t let me. My father wouldn’t, either. Women are just pawns to them, pretty playthings to use and sell off when they tire of them.”

“That’s your excuse?” I ask. “Your father used you the way you used me?”

She goes on speaking without acknowledging my words, sucking angrily at her cigarette every few sentences. “They just want to breed you like an animal and make more pretty playthings for them to use. And then once you’ve made them an heir and another piece of meat to auction off, they have no interest in you. Your usefulness is gone by twenty-five, and they don’t need you anymore. They go find a new little whore and leave you at home to raise their kids so they can use them to their advantage all over again.”

“Don’t you dare speak badly about my father to me,” I say, gripping the edge of the table so hard I think it’ll crumble. “He’s the only person in my life who did the right thing.”

She snorts smoke out both her nostrils. “Your father’s a monster, Eliza,” she says, and I remember that she’s the first person I ever heard call him that. “You really think that other family killed your brother? No, sweetheart. It was your own beloved father. He found out what Johnny’d been doin’ to you, and he killed his own son.”

“Whathe’dbeen doing?” I swallow hard, staring at her through the haze of smoke. I don’t want to believe her. If my father found out but thought it was my brother hurting me, not Mom, he might have killed him. But she’s lying. I know she is. Dad would have gotten me help. And my brother’s death was too hard on Mom, and that’s why she left.

Or maybe she left because she was afraid he’d talked before he died.

“That’s why you left, wasn’t it?” I ask. “Not to protect me, not because you loved me but couldn’t stop and you wanted to keep me from what you were doing to me. You weren’t even conflicted about it, were you, Mom? Are you even sorry?”

“You look like you’re doing fine,” she says. “Come in here looking all pretty. Expensive clothes. That handbag probably cost a year’s rent in a place like this. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you, Eliza? Would you rather I’d taken you with me?”

“No,” I say, horrified at the thought. I don’t even want to imagine what I’d have become by now if she’d taken me from Dad. But he’d never have let her. He might have let her leave him, not gone after her like most mafia men would. But if she’d taken his daughter? He would have hunted her to the ends of the earth.

“Then I did a good thing by you,” she says. “You’ll see soon enough. Marriage takes the best years of your life and leaves you with nothing. You’re too young to believe me, but you will.”

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