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> 2007
> November/December
Mafia Princess
As a mobster's wife I had wealth, prestige, and power. But it took God's healing to bring me true happiness.
By Barbara Cueto
 1 of 2
Tony and I took exotic vacations and rarely ate at home. In fact, as in any good mobster story, there was a typical Italian restaurant where we dined several times a week. The owners were Italian immigrants filled with their homeland's deference for La Cosa Nostra (the Mafia). It didn't matter what time of day or night we came in, they were always eager to serve, with a table available. We were privileged and pampered to a disgusting degree.
No Marlon Brando
Deep down I knew Tony was capable of doing unspeakable things, yet somehow I separated the doting husband from the cold deviant. I deluded myself into believing that all the stories of Mob brutality and killings were just myth, telling myself that Tony was like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, a loveable patriarch whose cruel acts were ultimately just. That brand of justice, however, can only be reconciled by ignoring God's command to leave vengeance in His hands. By refusing to face this truth, I drifted further and further away from the God I had learned about as a child.
Faithfulness and honesty are not Mafia ethics, so it shouldn't have surprised me that Tony had affairs. To his peers, monogamy would have been viewed not as a virtue, but a weakness. According to the Italian Old-World influence, wives are highly regarded and usually isolated. But girlfriends, it's understood, are an important mark of gangster virility. Still, I was hurt every time I knew he'd been with another woman.
"B.J.," he'd say with his most charming smile, "you know I can't be with just you, but I do love only you."
I tried to convince myself that frequent champagne lunches with the girls, frenetic shopping sprees, exorbitant gifts from my husband, and other consolation prizes, were enough. They weren't. I wanted and needed love, not accoutrements. I'd thought I'd found that with Tony; realizing I'd been mistaken was a bitter pill to swallow.
The last straw
The more I pressured Tony to become the faithful husband, the more he pulled away. Finally I gave him an ultimatum—me, or those other girls. I was certain if forced to make a choice, he would pick me. But I was deluded.
"Please Tony," I begged, "Can't we try to make it work?"
There are two things that neither Tony nor his type could ever stomach—vulnerability and humility. My pleading proved to be the last straw in our troubled relationship.
I'll never forget that day and the look in Tony's eyes when he told me it would never, could never work. It was the first time I'd seen that steely coldness, always directed toward others, trained on me. It seemed as if he'd turned off a switch inside, then walked away without a shred of remorse.
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