Married to the mafia boss Series

Anastasia

Angelo Ricci is deaf.

The Mafia Don of Boston is deaf.

It’s been hours since he signed to me and yet I still can’t get it out of my head. His hands spoke to me. He signed to me. My entire life my difficulties were because of my language barrier. People don’t want to bother talking to a deaf person.

It’s too hard.

My father never wanted to deal with my disability either. When I was young, much too young to remember, they sent me to someone who could teach me sign language and show me how to navigate the world without hearing.

Even my best friends didn’t want to deal with learning. At first they said they’d try and I was happy because they did, but then after a month they gave up. They didn’t want to practice or remember everything. They thought it was cool learning a phrase or two like, “What is your name?’ or “How are you?’ But when it came to learning more and more phrases they didn’t want to memorize any more and had better things to fill their minds.

Most of my childhood was spent with an interpreter. At home, my mother knew sign language for me and when I had to talk to my father, she was their to translate. I became accustomed to being quiet because no one could ever understand me. I can read lips, but I can’t speak. I was born deaf, I don’t know the sound of my own voice, I don’t know how to enunciate words.

After mother died, my father tried to learn so he could talk to me. He can understand most phrases, but he’s slow to sign and if I sign too fast he gets angry with me. He ended up using a low rank soldier who knew sign language to become a translator. That’s when I stopped trying to talk to him. If he didn’t care enough to try and communicate with me himself, then I didn’t care to talk to him.

Ballet was my form of expression. My way to speak to an audience. I danced with my emotions on display. I danced with passion. It was my communication to the world. It was fitting in with the other dancers, performing side by side with them. The only challenge was performing to the music I couldn’t hear, but the vibrations at my feet, the count in my head-if you looked on stage you could never set me apart from the others. I was just like everyone else.

Now for the first time in a long time there is another person who can speak to me-understand me. I was shocked, I was almost overly enthusiastic until I realized just who was standing in front of me.

Angelo Ricci, Boston’s Mafia Don, despite it all, he is a murderer, he is my kidnapper, and he will stop at nothing to use me to get what he wants from my father.

He left when I gave him the cold shoulder. It was minutes before I turned back to look for him after feeling an absence of his presence to see he left. He left the cell and a stranger-my guard-replaced him. My stomach twisted in a knot and I felt sick. I couldn’t help but wish he’d return. I wanted to talk to him.

But there’s no use in talking to a man who wouldn’t think twice about killing me.

No matter what he is the enemy and any ounce of human decency or niceness he may give to me-it is for show. It isn’t real. He is a kidnapper. He doesn’t care about my comfort because if he did, I wouldn’t be in a cell.

He is the enemy, I close my eyes and repeat like a mantra in my head. He is my enemy.

The minimal light in the cell darkens and when I open my eyes, Angelo is standing there. The dark bags under his eyes tell me he got no sleep last night. It’s hard to feel sorry for him when he probably slept in his California King sized bed with expensive silk sheets while I slept on a freezing and grimey floor.

The stench alone in this place is the worst, a mix of sewer and feces. I shiver at the thought of rats and bugs crawling along the floors. The dampness of the ground and the coldness of the stone walls makes sleeping unbearable, the only thing I have on is a tiny nightgown. It’s a surprise I haven’t picked up a cold. I try to rub my arms to make the goosebumps go away-they don’t.

“Are you hungry?’ He signs.

Starving, but I refuse to cooperate. I’m not here as a guest. I’m a prisoner. I stubbornly cross my arms and raise my chin.

“Starving yourself won’t help anyone.’

I turn away from him. Out of the corner of my eye I see him walk away. My stomach falls thinking he’s gone for good, until he shows up holding a tray. On the tray is food. The smell is overwhelming-in a good way. It smells freshly baked. It’s not some crappy food you’d see in a real prison, it looks and smells like something from a five star restaurant.

He unlocks and opens my cell wide enough to set the tray down and relock it. I stare at it, a chicken breast, seasoned and cooked to perfection. Mashed potatoes. A flakey, moist biscuit. I’m drooling. I don’t even care that it’s morning and it’s not breakfast food. I didn’t have anything yesterday except a green jello cup the guard gave me last night. This food looks good and filling and I can feel my stomach growl loudly in response. Thank god he’s deaf too or else he’d wear a smirk that tells him he’s won.

Either way, he wins. I sit in front of the tray and begin to scarf the food down. I’m fairly certain I moan a few times as the delicious food causes my tastes buds to set off fireworks. My stomach has never been more happy to have food in my stomach.

My whole life I’ve been on a diet, lots of calcium to keep my bones strong. Lots of protein and vegetables. I never got to enjoy much of seasoned chicken-plain chicken yes-seasoned, no. Nor have I enjoyed buttery mashed potatoes and a buttery carb-filled biscuit. I guess this is the only upside to not training anymore. If I ate like this everyday, eating fatty foods, I’d be sure to put on weight more rapidly.

A skinny, slender body was mandatory at the Ballet company. Frequently they did weight checks and if you were over by a little, they put you on a strict diet. Girls have passed out at practice because of those diets. If they were more than five pounds over the limit, they were cut from the program.

I finish the tray, not an ounce of food left over. Who knows, this might be my last meal until tomorrow.

“Do you want more?’ Angelo asks.

I pause for a moment before finally deciding to answer him, “No,’ even though I do want more.

Angelo not believing me, gives me wary look but shrugs his shoulders anyways taking my answer as final. I try to hide the disappointment in my face. It’d be easier if he brought me seconds, no way am I going to ask my captor for more.

I fear he may want something in return for feeding me.

I advise myself against talking with him. I feel we’ve already grown some type of attachment toward each other through our ability to sign to one another. The more I keep my distance and keep my hands quiet, the better it’ll be to keep him out of my mind and remember him as the villain in this story.

“Are you cold?” He signs. I don’t answer. He signs again more slowly and I roll my eyes.”Why do you care?”

“I want you to be comfortable.”

I almost laugh. “Please. Don’t act you care.”

Angelo frowns. “Just because you’re my prisoner doesn’t mean you have to be uncomfortable and doesn’t mean I don’t care about your well-being.”

“My well-being?” I sign frantically. “That is the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. You kidnap me, throw me in the cell, leave me here hungry and cold, and now you care? I am your enemies daughter. You don’t care about me.”Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

His eyebrows furrow. “I hate your father, yes. But you’re innocent and you don’t deserve to be treated like a criminal.”

“But I deserve to be kidnapped and locked in a cell. For what? For being someone’s daughter?” I start to pace.

Angelo waves his hands trying to grab my attention. Relecuntely I look at him. “I know it’s unfortunate, but it’s our lifestyle. Innocent or not just being associated-”

I turn away from him. I can’t believe this guy. He kidnaps me and has the nerve to care about my comfort? I turn around and sign with aggression, “If you care about my comfort you’ll let me go!”

“I can’t do that,” he shakes his head.”Then leave me alone,” I turn around again and this time I don’t turn back. Not even when I feel his presence is gone and I’m alone in this dungeon once more.

Sighing, I lay on the floor holding back tears and trying to ignore how much I’m shivering. I close my eyes hoping sleep will whisk me away to a better place, to a fantasy world where I’m free.

A world where I’m back on stage, dancing.

I’m abruptly woken up with a hand covering my mouth. Strong arms are around me, carrying me away from the cell. I can’t see my new captor, but for a moment my heart skips at the thought that this is my savior.

Did my father figure a way to rescue me?

I look around the club which seems to have broken out into a massive fight. Half naked girls are running for cover and ducking their heads. I can only imagine there must be gunshots going off. I spot one of my fathers men, his eyes widen and his lips call for me.

My new captor takes me into the back occasionally stopping-probably to shoot behind him-he enters a code on a hidden door which tells me that my new captor is not one of my fathers men. Still in the man’s arms, he leads me down a tunnel that exits out of the back of the club. He throws me in a black car with black tinted windows.

My captor walks around to the driver’s side to reveal its Angelo. I tap on his shoulder hard, “What is going on?”

He shakes his head and ignores me?

I climb into the passenger seat from the back. I turn to face him trying to grab his attention, “Where are you taking me?”

He reads my sign but still doesn’t answer. He grips the wheel tight, his jaw ticks as he focuses all his attention on the road. I look over at the speedometer, he’s going nearly eight miles an hour down back roads I never even know Boston had. He drives us in circles, he drives North only to turn and drive South and North again. I realize then that he’s trying to lose whomever may be following us.

“Where are we going?” I sign again.

After asking close to ten times, I give up. I slump in the seat and wait until the car finally comes to stop in what looks to be a private, heavily secured, parking lot.

Angelo leads me toward a door that leads to a hallway-a luxury hallway. A crystal chandelier overhead, expensive exported rug, old paintings over eloquently designed wallpaper. The elevator in the hallway opens and Angelo puts in another code. After that, the elevator goes up… or down, I can’t tell which. The tension between Angelo and I in the unclosed and suffocating elevator is unbearable.

I shift from foot to foot. Where the hell is he taking me? I’m still in my now stained and putrid smelling nightgown. The material is ripped in all the wrong places and soon I won’t have anything to cover myself. Angelo would probably like that, I think. Me, naked.

Men are pigs, I mentally scoff.

The elevator door opens and leads to one of the largest penthouses I’ve ever seen. There’s no way this is a hotel room. A foyer, a large living room is windows completely filling one wall from floor to ceiling. The windows out looking Boston. It looks beautiful.

My eyes wander over to the staircase, a two story penthouse. My attention also catches the kitchen on the other side. Even though my meal earlier was filling, I’m starving once again.

The elevator door closes behind us and Angelo walks over to his couch, pinching the bridge of his nose, which he always seems to do when he’s frustrated. He sits down, tilts his head back, and from the looks of it, let’s out a deep exhale.

I stand in front of him. “Where are we?”

“My home,” he finally responds.

“What happened?”