The Viper Donna: Stepmother's Mafia Justice novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Luncheon
At Aurelio's funeral luncheon his brother Carmine takes the head chair and orders the children to his house, and Viviana shoots his wine glass and takes Bianca back; upstairs, Nico is gone.
My husband was in the ground for three hours before his brother sat down in his chair.
The luncheon was in our dining room in Fort Lee, with forty people and every blind drawn.
I stood by the sideboard in my black dress, holding a plate I had not touched.
Carmine took the head of the table.
He was fifty-five, silver at the temples, with a diamond on his pinky that Aurelio always called vulgar.
"Friends," Carmine said, and the room went quiet at once.
"My brother was the best of us, and he left this house without a hand to guide it."
Heads nodded down both sides of the long table.
I knew every one of those heads.
I had poured their coffee for three years.
"Tonight the children come to my house," Carmine said. "Nico and Bianca belong with family."
My fingers closed on the edge of the plate.
"Viviana will be looked after," he went on. "An apartment in Hoboken. A monthly allowance. Whatever she needs."
He smiled at me, warm as a priest.
"You've done your duty, sweetheart. Now rest."
Nobody argued with him.
The capos stared at their veal, and the old men studied their wine.
I had the feeling of watching a house burn from the street.
Then Bianca laughed, somewhere out in the hall, the bright bossy laugh of a seven-year-old.
One of Carmine's cousins stepped through the doorway with her small hand in his fist.
She wore her yellow raincoat over her funeral dress, because she had refused to take it off.
"I want Vivi," she said, and tugged.
He didn't let go.
I set the plate down on the sideboard very gently.
My handbag sat open beside it, and the little chrome .38 inside had been my father's.
He collected debts for a living, and he taught me to shoot when I was twelve.
I took the gun out.
Forty people saw it, and the sound of forks stopped.
Carmine's wine glass stood three inches from his right hand, full to the rim.
I shot it.
The glass burst, and red wine soaked across his white cuff and into the tablecloth.
A woman screamed, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
Carmine did not move.
He looked at his sleeve, and then he looked at me.
"Let go of my daughter," I said.
I said it to the cousin, but my eyes stayed on Carmine.
The cousin's fingers opened, and Bianca ran the length of the room and crashed into my legs.
I kept the gun up with one hand and dropped the other onto her hair.
"Viviana." Carmine's voice was soft. "You're upset. We all are."
"You're sitting in my husband's chair."
"It's the family's chair."
"It's warm," I said. "He's been dead three days."
A capo near the end of the table coughed into his napkin.
Another one looked at the ceiling.
None of them reached for a weapon, and none of them stood to help me.
Only Santo Lombardi, Aurelio's driver, stood by the kitchen door, and he was looking at Bianca instead of the gun.
A room full of capos, and not one of them had come to my side.
"Nobody takes these children out of this house," I said. "Nobody. Not tonight and not by a vote."
Carmine laid his stained hand flat on the cloth.
"You are a stepmother, Viviana. The law doesn't know your name."
"The law doesn't know yours either, and you're not here for the law."
Something moved behind his smile.
It was brief, and it was the first honest thing I'd seen on his face.
"Keep them tonight," he said, and he lifted his glass hand as if to wave off a waiter.
There was no glass in it, only a dripping stem.
He set it down.
"Tomorrow we'll see who's still standing beside you."
I backed out of the room with Bianca against my hip.
The cousin watched me go, and so did the rest of the table.
I carried her up the stairs, past a wall of photographs where Aurelio smiled in every frame.
"Vivi, you broke his cup," Bianca whispered into my neck.
"I did."
"Good."
I laughed once, and it came out cracked.
I put her down outside the boys' room, because Nico had gone up an hour ago and said he wanted to be alone.
"Go and get your pajamas on," I told her. "I'm going to check on your brother."
I knocked at Nico's door, and nobody answered.
I opened it.
The lamp was on, and his school blazer lay on the bed.
The window stood wide open, and the curtain was blowing in.
Nico was gone.
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