The Body #1: Santo and Fiorella

Chapter 7 (Santo): She Won't Find Out

**** TW for suggested acts of violence against women **** 

Life can change in an instant. A bullet, a knife, a car accident -- those can all alter your life in many ways. However, as I was to discover, a few, carefully-chosen sentences can also turn your life upside down and inside out.

One minute, I was a newly married man who'd fallen so fucking in love with his bride I could barely wait to get home to her every night and the next...my entire life was being fucked to hell.

I'd just finished my weekly meeting with the Head of the Body, Dario La Forte, and I was anxious to get home and celebrate my six-month anniversary with Fiorella when he said, out of nowhere, "How's married life, Santo?"

When Dario went off-script, it made me wary, but I smiled easily without missing a beat. "It's good."

You never wanted to give Dario insight into how you really felt about the people you loved the most. 

Underplay everything with him, my father had always told me. Never let him know how deeply you feel about people or things.

"Pretty little thing you've got waiting at home."

I didn't like another man noticing my wife. But I kept the easy smile on my face instead of pulling my gun.

"She is."

He nodded to one of his three body guards in the room. "How about you, Enzo? You think Santo's wife is pretty? Fuckable?"

What the hell? What the fuck was going on here?

"Yes, sir," Enzo answered.

He asked the other two guards the same question and received the same answers. And I fought to maintain a passive face, pretending I wasn't running multiple scenarios through my mind about how I could kill all four men in the room before they realized what was happening. If I were to react negatively, Dario's men could kill me, leaving Fiorella vulnerable to whatever atrocities Dario could imagine.

"You see?" Dario shrugged, a dangerous smile on his face. "You have a wife many men envy, Santo. I bet I could easily have thirty, forty men lined up to fuck her, one after the other, tearing into that sweet, sweet  pussy until she was so used up, so destroyed, it would be a mercy to kill her. Maybe I'd even allow you the honor of ending her after you watched my men taking turns having fun with her."

Never react to Dario. My father had drummed that lesson into me since I was small. Wait him out. Figure out where he's going with an idea, and find out what he wants before you respond.

"Or," he said with a grin, and I knew whatever option was next would be just as horrifying as the first scenario he'd run past me. "Or I could gather your pretty little wife, her parents and her little sisters here and let my men fuck all the women before we have a little round of torture. We'll start with the youngest and play with her for a while before I have you put a bullet in her skull. Then we'll work our way through her family, making your little wife watch them all die at your hands before it's her turn."

Never react to Dario. Wait him out.

"Would you like to see any of that, Santo?"

"Not particularly," I said casually, with a shrug, forcing myself to stay seated and, in that way, stay alive so I could keep my wife alive. "I don't want to have to find a new wife to train. This one is doing pretty well, and she's an excellent cook."

Dario burst out laughing. "She does seem to be from what I've seen and heard."

Lighten the mood, Santo. Try to distract him from the topic. "My father likes her cooking, too, so I'm not surprised he's been bragging about her to you."