A Mob Boss Insulted My Weight In A Dead Language — He Didn’t Know Who My Grandmother Was.
Part 2
The effect of my words was instantaneous and entirely catastrophic.
If I had pulled a shotgun from under my apron and fired it into the ceiling, it would have caused less of a shockwave.
The capos froze mid-laugh.
The smug smiles slid off their faces as if their skin had suddenly melted.
At the table to my left, the family underboss, Frank, literally dropped his crystal glass of bourbon.
It shattered against the hardwood, but absolutely no one looked at it.
Every single hand in the room drifted silently toward the inside of their suit jackets.
The air turned completely suffocating.
Don Silvio didn’t even blink.
Sitting perfectly still, his heavily lined face turned the color of pale ash.
The insult to his pride was astronomical, but that wasn’t what paralyzed him.
It was the specific dialect I had just used.
No one outside of three dying villages in the Sicilian mountains spoke that exact variation.
It was a closed circuit.
It was a strict bloodline marker.
And a size twenty-two American waitress had just weaponized it against him with perfect colloquial fluidity.
Halfway out of his chair, Tyler stopped dead.
His dark eyes darted from me to his father.
Pure shock warred with an intense, burning admiration that made my pulse hammer violently against my ribs.
Mechanically, Don Silvio placed both of his hands flat on the table.
Heavy gold rings clinked sharply against the wood.
He tilted his head, his black eyes suddenly piercing.
He analyzed my face not as a nuisance, but as a deeply terrifying puzzle.
He demanded to know who I was, dropping his voice to a low, dangerous whisper that barely carried.
Standing my ground, I felt my heart threatening to crack my ribs wide open.
My hands were shaking.
I crossed my arms over my chest, inadvertently drawing attention to my curves, utterly refusing to shrink myself for him.
I told him my name was Brenda, switching to standard Italian to deny him any more of the intimate dialect.
Ignoring the standard Italian, Don Silvio leaned forward.
He bypassed his son entirely.
He returned to the mountain tongue, narrowing his eyes into dark slits.
He demanded to know whose blood I carried and who had taught me the language.
I swallowed hard, tasting sharp copper in my mouth.
I told him my grandmother taught me.
I gave him her name, Rosa Gallo.
The moment the name left my lips, the temperature in the room plummeted by twenty degrees.
The untouchable Don actually flinched.
He made a microscopic movement with his heavy shoulders.
In the world of monsters, it was the equivalent of a bloodcurdling scream.
Frank quickly crossed himself, muttering a frantic prayer under his breath.
Tyler finally stood all the way up.
His towering frame completely blocked my body from his father’s line of sight.
Reaching behind him, his large, warm hand wrapped securely around my thick waist.
He pulled me slightly behind him in a deeply possessive gesture that sent electricity down my spine.
He coldly told his father that was enough.
Don Silvio peered around his son’s broad chest to look at me again.
The disgust was completely gone from his eyes.
In its place was pure, unadulterated fear.
He whispered my grandmother’s name like a curse.
A grim, terrifying smile spread across his face as he looked up at Tyler.
He laughed, asking Tyler if he thought he brought a simple waitress to the table.
He told his son he had brought the heir of their greatest enemy.
The old Don whispered my grandmother’s name like a curse, but as fifty men drew their guns, whose side do you think the underboss was actually on?
