Ruthless Mafia 37

Zorah did not like takeoffs. It was as clear as the nose on her face as she gripped the leather armrest, with her nails
digging in. Sidonia was looking out the window with awe as they reached the sky, but Zorah kept her eyes squeezed shut
tight.
Icaro was holding the hand closest to him and if there were complaints from him about the way her nails were embedded
deep in the flesh of his hand, he didn’t utter a word. She could feel the tension from him. Barely a word spoken from him
since he took his seat and yet his anger vibrated from him.
She was too scared however of meeting God this high in the clouds to deal with whatever punishment Icaro was ready to
exact onto her and so she kept her eyes firmly closed and her hands holding tight whatever she could grasp.
Chattering around them from the group of men they were flying with were all in good spirits. It seemed everyone was far more relaxed than she was. Then the sound of a bell overhead and a collective tinging of safety belts coming undone
reverberated around her. She clutched for hers as Icaro undid her belt.
“No!” she tried to put it back on.
“Seriously, it’s only good to keep you from jostling around. It’s not going to save your life,” he pulled her out of the seat
and dragged her through the aisle. “Come on. We need to talk.”
“About what? What did I do?”
He pushed her through a door and then slammed it behind him.
She immediately felt her legs were wobbly and she moved to sit on the queen-sized bed in the middle of the room and
sat down nervously. “I don’t like flying,” she admitted as she crawled into the middle of the bed.
Icaro appeared unphased by the movement of the aircraft and he paced in circles at the end of the bed. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“About your uncle and your mother and those fucking nuns!”
“I don’t know what I was supposed to tell you.” She was indeed perplexed by his questions.
“The choir director? He was given permission to punish you as well?”
Understanding flickered in her mind. He’d found out about her family’s version of discipline. “Yes. Though he preferred
to make me tidy up the practice room and he was not a neat man. He would throw paper on the floor and make me pick
it up with my hands.”
“Probably to watch your ass!” he threw his hands up in the air.
“No! He was married.”
“Married men can be pigs too. Sidonia said he was always watching you.”
“Sidonia has an overactive imagination. Wait, when did she tell you this?”
“She didn’t. This morning Vodingo asked her about a scar. She made a comment. Then when he was telling her about the woman in our room and how you reacted to the violence, and she said it made sense considering how much violence
you endured in your life.”
She grimaced, “Sidonia exaggerates.”
“Your mother used weapons on you. She told Vod your mother used weapons.”
“She kept a paddle she would strike my palms with.”
“And a belt? Tell me, did she truly put you over her knee with a belt on your bare buttocks?”
“Yes.”
“When did she stop? The beatings on your bottom. When did she stop those?”
“When I moved out. I was twenty.”
He rubbed his mouth as if he was struggling to keep words inside rather than out. “She said you were still getting
punished even now. What was she using if not putting you over her knee?”
She looked away, “she’s my mother, Icaro. I was raised to honor and obey her.”
“She’s an abusive bitch using the bible to excuse her abuse.” Icaro stared at her. “Tell me what Vodingo told me wasn’t
truth. Tell me your mother didn’t use acupuncture needles between your toes and fingers to punish you as recently as
this week and the way she subdues you for this is with a taser.”
She looked away, feeling far more trapped now she was in this room on this plane, thirty thousand feet in the air. “Icaro.
She is my mother and if God has ordained her to keep me in line.”
“She tased you,” his voice was hoarse as he ruffled his hair. “She tased you this week?”
She nodded. “Yes. If I tried to leave too quickly to avoid whatever punishment she thought was appropriate she would
tase me.”
“And you would piss yourself?”
“My gosh, Sidonia,” she gritted through her teeth. “Is nothing sacred?”
“Your mother made you piss yourself.”
“Not every time. This week she was particularly upset because I said outright, I wouldn’t marry you because of the
pornographic video. My mother was called in to deal with my defiance. I tried to leave, and she hit me with the taser on
the low back.”
“And then she stuck pins in your feet?”
“Yes.”
“Between your toes?”
“Yes, and sometimes in my Achilles heel. She said like David slayed the giant by keeping him from running amuck, she
needed to keep my feet,” she jumped as Icaro punched a hole into a glass cabinet. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered and drew
her feet under her and wrapped her arms around her shins.
“She had no right,” he growled furiously.
“I was disobedient.” She defended unsure as to why.
“She tortured you. This was torture, Zorah.” He moved to the bed, “putting pins in your toes was torture. We do less to men in our warehouses to make them talk. What else did she do? The paddle, the pins, the taser, what else?”
“Um,” she shrugged, “If she felt I was not repentant enough, I would have to stay in church and pray on my knees all
night. The sisters would take turns to make sure I did not sleep and waver in my penance to God. If there was nobody to watch me, then Mom would make the penance shorter, and I would need only kneel six hours, but it would be on grains
of rice on a metal sheet pan. The rice would need to be my meal.”
“What was Sidonia telling Vodingo about singing?”
She looked to him and her nose crunched up, irritated at her best friend for spilling these secrets. Damn it Sidonia.