The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) (63 page)

Made
—Being formally inducted into the mafia through a ceremony. You’re told the history. (Why do you think this dictionary is so fucking long? We have a thing about our history.) You’re told the rules. (Which takes a while, as you can see.) You’re told what happens if you break the rules. (Death, in varying horrific ways depending on the infraction.) Then you’re a man of honor, a wiseguy, a goodfella, more often than not like your father before you, and one day, if our lady is kind, you’ll have a bunch of mafiosi sons to share the tradition with. (Note, or if you’re my father, you have one daughter, a pissed-off wife who won’t fuck you, and a couple of bastard sons who are good enough for no other reason than one is pretty smart and the other makes a fantastic motivational tool.)

Madonn’
—Short for
Madonna
, or
Madonna mia
. The blessed mother. It expresses surprise in a slightly blasphemous way, something similar to
holy shit
. (Note, like others in this section, while technically Italian, it’s become New York slang enough that I moved it down.)

Make your bones
—In order to become a made man, you have to make your bones. What is it, you ask? You have to carry out a contract killing. This cannot be a personal vendetta. It can’t be the asshole who screwed over your friend. This has to be done exclusively for the organization. Meaning you have to kill, in cold blood, someone you don’t know who had the misfortune of making enough bad life choices that the mafia put out a hit on them. I mean, don’t get me wrong; whoever you have to kill to make your bones was probably gonna die anyway, but if the Borgata has someone up for being made, they take the job away from the enforcer and give it to the potential inductee. For a lot of made men, this is a grim part of being made. Not all mafia are killers, but this is insurance for the organization, and it’s currently an unbendable rule. It used to be, back in the day (like the early ’80s), you could become a made man without it. If you were a big earner like Nova, that’d be enough, but after the Donnie Brasco trials, it became an absolute must. Why? ’Cause undercover FBI agents aren’t going to go contract kill someone to get into our organization. They just aren’t. So, yeah, after it’s done, made men love to announce when they did it. “Yo, Tony, shut the fuck up. I made my bones back when Reagan was president.” Honestly, I usually want to punch motherfuckers when they do that shit. I never had to make my bones. I was contract killing for the mafia long before I got made. Lucky me.

Mattresses
—Going to the mattresses. Hitting the mattresses. It means preparing for mafia war. It is still a literal term too. When a war goes down, mattresses are involved. Soldiers sleeping on them, stuck in safe houses as they wait for orders. The administration and their families are also taken to safe houses, cooped up together, sleeping on the floor, and forsaking any other internal bullshit that is going on in order to protect what matters.

Muscle
—Underworld thugs. (Note, yes, I am considered muscle to the Borgata. I like to think I’m top-shelf muscle, but really, muscle is muscle. Do you really care if it’s top-shelf muscle kicking your face in?)

Omertá
—Omertá is more than a code of silence. It’s an attitude. It revolves around strict noncooperation with law enforcement and protecting the secrecy of the organization. Once you take the Omertá oath, you turn your back on the idea of any help outside the organization. Whatever problem you have has to be handled inside Cosa Nostra. You’re a citizen of Cosa Nostra and answer only to their laws. Forever. Endgame. (Do I believe in the oath? I fucking took it. Of course I believe in it. I don’t love the establishment, but fuck the government. Motherfuckers hound my brother every step he takes. I’d rot in federal forever before I’d flip on the Borgata.)

On the pad
—An officer of the law enforcement who is being paid to ignore certain criminal activity. I joked that Wyatt is on the pad, which, of course, he’d debate, but come on, Wyatt’s on the pad. Nova invests all his wife’s money. Wyatt is, without question, on the pad like a motherfucker. He ignores a fuckload of criminal activity. Either that or he goes to the Romeo Wellings’s School of Denial. (For the record, I don’t think Wyatt’s in denial. I think he knows we had that motherfucker Vaughn Davis offed, and I think he knows a lot more than that. Why he chooses to ignore it, I’m not sure, but I’m not complaining.)

Oobatz
—Crazy. (Note, this is another one of those Italian words that was latched on to by New York Italians. I mean, can’t really give anyone shit about it. I use it as much as the next wiseguy.)

Rolling
—
Rolling
is the term used for the high off ecstasy, also known as Molly. Which, in case you didn’t know, is absolutely Nova’s drug of choice. Molly was his girlfriend for a while, and I’m pretty sure he has days where he still misses her.

Smack
—Heroin. (Never used it. There are levels of drug use, and heroin, in my opinion, is extreme. It wrecks you like meth. A horrible, nasty drug, and my people don’t sell it because of that.)

Soldiers
—Entry-level position for made men in the mafia. Also known as button men, because if a capo presses a button, they better jump to do what he says.

Straight
—A term used for a gangster who decides to step away from crime and be law-abiding. This rarely works out. I went straight for three fucking years, but it just never lasts, for any of us.

War
—A mafia war. Never a good thing, but inevitable.

WASP princess
—This is sort of a snarky term.
WASP
stands for
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
. A WASP princess is one of those preppy, polished girls from high school you kinda wanted to fuck, even knowing they’d ignore you the next day rather than be seen in public with you. WASP princesses eventually grow up to drive BMWs and decorate their four-bedroom houses in the suburbs. Then they’ll have more little WASP princesses that they take to dance classes and groom to be the next generation of wine-drinking, pumpkin-candle-buying queens of suburbia. (Note, there’s not a fucking thing in the world wrong with that. You have to remember something. I’m not the only one from East Harlem. Nova lets his ghetto show sometimes. Not forgetting things means there’s always a part of him that’s the angry teenager from East Harlem who was forced to live in the suburbs when his brother went to prison. Nova will, on instinct, pick fights with a WASP. Male or female. Ask Jules about it sometime if you don’t believe me. He’ll come around, but his knee-jerk reaction is to lash out first.)

Whack
—To kill. (Note, we have a lot of words for this. The ones in this dictionary don’t even scratch the surface.)

Wiseguys
—Another term for a made man. If you’re made, you’re a wiseguy.

Loose Id Titles by Kele Moon

Starfish and Coffee

The Queen’s Consort

* * * *

The BATTERED HEARTS Series

Defying the Odds

Star-Crossed

Crossing the Line

* * * *

The UNTAMED HEARTS Series

The Viper

The Slayer

Kele Moon

A freckle-faced redhead born and raised in Hawaii, Kele Moon has always been a bit of a sore thumb and has come to enjoy the novelty of it. She thrives on pushing the envelope and finding ways to make the impossible work in her storytelling. With a mad passion for romance, she adores the art of falling in love. The only rule she believes in is that, in love, there are no rules and true love knows no bounds.

So obsessed is she with the beauty of romance and the novelty of creating it, she’s lost in her own wonder world most of the time. Thankfully she married her own dark, handsome, brooding hero who has infinite patience for her airy ways, and attempts to keep her grounded. When she leaves her keys in the refrigerator or her cell phone in the oven, he’s usually there to save her from herself. The two of them now reside in Florida with their three beautiful children, who make their lives both fun and challenging in equal parts—they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Read more about Kele and her books at
http://www.kelemoon.com
.