Married To The Mafia

14. Cut The Crap

_________________________

.

.

.

||STELLA KING||

.

"They are after you guys now." I said.

I know it was my fault but I didn't get into this on purpose.

But I knew deep inside that even if I knew, I would have still chosen Anthony and this still would have happened.

Joanne breathed out through her mouth, thinking while Olivia sat down on the edge of the bed, massaging her temple.

"We would have died today if we hadn't gone to get the smoothies." Olivia concluded. I wanted to console her by saying that maybe they blasted the car while they were away to scare them, but I didn't want to lie to my best friends; Anthony had already told me that it was a timed bomb.

Joanne looked up and at Wolverine who had sat back down on the couch.

"You have one heck of a luck boy." She said and turned to Olivia ignoring me. "If he hadn't tried to chew off my music player, I would have left him in the car."

I turned towards Wolverine, Joanne's everything. He almost died twice because of me.

But I just couldn't bring myself to wish I had never met Anthony.

Call me selfish.
Call me a bad friend.
But I couldn't help it that I loved Anthony more than I loved my friends.

We sat there in silence. Them on the bed and me on the couch. At some point, Wolverine moved to nestle close to his mom.

None of us talked. We just stayed like it until someone knocked on the door.

Daniella poked her head in.

"Hey guys, how are you feeling?" She chirped.

"Cut the crap." Joanne said, bored.

Daniella's innocent smile morphed into a smirk.

"Don't think you can talk to me like that anymore you little brat." She sneered. "I am not going to act like this nice lovely person anymore."

"Oh so that's what you were trying to be?" Olivia quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Well, your acting sucked." Joanne sat up. "You overdid it so bad you were ass-kissing us when you had to pretend to be just nice."

"Jo." I whispered. "Cut it out."

I had seen Daniella's real face in these past two weeks. She was not some plastic Barbie doll. She was a cold-blooded murderer. Her whole family was in the mafia. She was playing with knives, guns and bombs when we were with dolls and cars. She could be a bitch but she wasn't that bad. At least to me, she wasn't. But if my girls riled her up, I don't know how she would react.

"Okay." She held her hands up in surrender.

"So why are you here?" Olivia asked.

"Rubina wants everyone in the living room."

.
.
.

|| ANIKA KING ||

.

"So this is your dog." Xander smirked at Joanne as he patted Wolverine's head.

I raised an eyebrow and glanced at Daniella who was glaring daggers at Joanne.

Joanne cocked her head and said, "Hands off!"

It was as if someone flipped Wolverine's switch because he went from friendly to ferocious in a millisecond, snapping at Xander's fingers.

He flinched and took a step back and was presented with Joanne's smirk.

Point for Joanne.

I suppressed a smile.

I was jealous of the girl. She looked so happy all the time and was forever doing things to make others smile. She made my birthday special and walked Stella down the aisle. I wonder what it would take to have so much goodness in one's life that it could be easily shared with others.

Daniella had fumes coming out of her ears. She looked like the cartoon characters Ava watched.

"Ah, you both okay?" We turned to Rubina walking down the stairs.

"Was, until we saw your senile mug." Joanne said. The entire room, except Stella, Olivia and I, glared at her.

Leon liked Joanne as a friend but even he did not take disrespect towards his grandmother well, no matter how wrong she was.

Rubina laughed, to our surprise.

"Always a pleasure to have you around, Jo." She said.

Jo?

"Wish I could say the same, Ru." Joanne sassed.
The woman needs to control her tongue before she get smoked.

"So your cars are gone and your apartment got trashed again huh?" She sat down on the couch across from the girls and next to Gregory.

"Again?" Olivia and Joanne exclaimed in shock.

"Come on! I spent a lot of money on it!" Joanne whined.

"Shouldn't you be thankful that you are still alive?" Anthony asked, his irritation and intolerance to the girls seeping through. He had pretended to be this ultra nice guy in front of them before the truth came out. Now he had started to show his real face. And from the look on her face, I could tell Stella was so shocked by the way he spoke to the people she considered family.

"At this point, not really." Olivia said, staring coldly at Stella who looked down, her eyes teary from all the guilt and hurt.

I looked back at Olivia. I always thought she was a sensible girl. But then why was she blaming this on Stella when none of this was her fault?

"I am just glad Old Man was with me." Joanne commented. Olivia gave her a look but nodded her head nevertheless.

Why does she call her dog Old Man? I wanted to ask her but now clearly wasn't the right moment.

"We take responsibility for what have came upon you." Gregory spoke up. "We have been protecting you and you could say you are still alive because of our interference so I think you should cooperate with us to keep yourselves alive."

I rolled my eyes at my 'husband'. Why did he speak like instructions on a User Manual? God knows what I was thinking getting knocked up by and then hitched to this weirdo. The only reason I tolerated his shit was because he was Ava's dad.

"You mean to say, 'You got into this shit because of us so let us try to help you out of it?'" Olivia air-quoted.

"We have no such obligation." Xander said, looking as disinterested as he was about everything in this world. I think that's his default expression.

"Actually we do." Leon spoke up. "We won't have the right to call ourselves Men of Honor if we let something happen to them."

Phew. At least someone speaks sense in this house.

"Then it's settled." Rubina looked oddly cheery.

What the hell was she up to?

Joanne's face mirrored my thought.

"There's only one way to fix this."

"And that is?" Olivia quirked an eyebrow.

"Marriage."

.

.

.

______________________________

Yep, Rubina has officially lost it.
I am outta here.