I resented him so much, but I didn’t want to think that he would actually do something like that. It wasn’t a matter of respecting the marriage, it was a matter of respecting me. It wasn’t regular, but we had been having sex back then. What if he had put me in danger of catching something? Was Elissa even the only one? If he could cheat on me with her, he could do it with anyone.
Even if he didn't care about me, didn’t he care that I could have tried to use the incident against him and his family? Didn’t he care that I could present these in a court and have our marriage dissolved? It stopped being about my hurt feelings briefly and became about how careless Lorenzo apparently was with his extramarital sex life.
There had to be more than a single person involved in this. Maybe Lorenzo had even done this himself. Or better. He had sent them to me so he could get me to file for divorce first.
I got out and fled to our bedroom. I felt sick. I felt like there was somebody standing on my chest. I wanted answers. There was only one place that they were coming from. We had been calling each day that he had been gone so far. Today’s conversation was going to be one for the history books.
I held the phone to my ear listening to it ring. It kept ringing. It kept ringing and eventually stopped. Somewhere, Lorenzo was listening to his phone ring. It was in his pocket, and he had peeked at whom the call was from and decided against answering it. He was in conversation with someone, or at a meeting, so it had to be kept on silent. He would see later that I had tried to call him. He was with Elissa right then, and he and she were debating on whether they should answer the call just so I could hear them go at it. The perfect audio aide.
I ended the call.
I typed a text message.
“Get over here now.”
Marina was at work so she literally wouldn’t be able to come to me for hours. Not until the dinner service was over. Thinking dark, fucked up thoughts at this point was becoming something at which I was a professional. I was dwelling on everything negative that could happen with my husband and me so much that I could have spun them into movies and gotten someone to make films about them. They ran the gamut from just a little bit fucked up, to completely fucked up. For instance, in the newest state of my marriage where my husband’s ex was sending me images of the two of them naked, having sex, the least fucked up thought was that they were doctored and Lorenzo would be back any day now. He would kiss me, tell me Elissa was out of her mind, and sue her for defamation.
The most fucked up thought was that they must have been planning to use the images together, too. They had sent them to his isolated little wife over in Manhattan while they fucked their days away. With any luck, she had been really starting to fall for her husband, and the images would stress her out so much that she would end up losing the baby.
If that was his angle, then I hated him.
Marina and I sat on the bed, and she asked me what had happened. I watched her face as it broke in disbelief and she bloomed red in anger.
“Wait, wait, wait. You get this letter from someone you don’t know, and it’s addressed specifically to you, so they know who you are and the fact that you are married to Lorenzo.”
“Mm-hmm. The address is somewhere in Upstate New York. Never even been there before. None of my family or Lorenzo’s family live out there that I know of. Once I opened it, it was pretty obvious who they were from.”
“Who?”
“You’ve never met her. Her name is Elissa. Elissa Lazzerini—and she is Lorenzo’s ex.”
“And you’re sure it’s her?”
“I’ve only seen her a couple of times, but I’m sure. She’s got this very distinctive look. Thin and tall, a very plastic sort of pretty, but she’s gorgeous.”
“Ugh, I hate her already. How bad exactly are the photos?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Bad enough that I have now seen not one but two women that I hardly know completely naked.”
“Two?!”
“Let’s just say this. Lorenzo told me that he always used condoms in the past with other girls and that, I can say with confidence, is true.”
“Let me see one,” she said.
I had the envelope on the nightstand on my side of the bed, and when she asked to see a picture, I froze a little. They were obviously pictures of a private nature, but they had been taken in the first place. By sending them to me, Elissa was giving me the right to use them or not use them however I saw fit. Lorenzo was naked in them though, and I sort of didn’t want to expose him like that. I mean, there wasn’t absolute confirmation that this was what I thought it was.
“Isa? Let me see one.”
I sighed.
“It’s... I can’t.”
“Why not? Are they that bad?”
“No, well, yes they are but... I don’t want you to... I haven’t heard his side of the story yet.”
“Are you defending him, Isa?”
I shrugged.
“I mean, the envelope came from Elissa. For all I know, the bitch hates me and she was trying to get under my skin.”
“That may be the case, but it does not change the fact that he is in all those pictures fucking her.”
“I don’t want to believe he did that to me, Marina.”
I started welling up and something told me it was not the pregnancy hormones.
“All the evidence at this point is against him, Isa,” she said gently.
“It was finally starting to work. He left and I missed him. I would see one of his ties or smell his cologne and I would think about him. I wanted to know where he was and what he was doing, what he was thinking about. I wanted to call him just so I could hear him that day, Marina.”
“Isa... you’re falling in love with your husband.”
“And then this happens and I don’t know what the hell to do. It’s all ruined. I can’t unsee any of this stuff, Marina. We have a baby on the way. I don’t have anywhere to go if this falls through.”
“Isa, if you need anything, you can come to me, okay. Fuck this guy. You don’t need him, all right. Your father needs him. This is not something he can come back from. If he is really out there with that woman, then let him stay there. You don’t have to take it.”
“I know. I’m just sad. I really wanted it to work between us. He was actually making an effort in the end.”
“But now he’s obviously shown you his true colors.”
“I need to talk to him first. I need to at least give him that, Marina.”
“Do you, though?”
“Yes. I don’t know what it is. I can’t just accept that he has had this one-hundred-eighty-degree shift in just a few days. I was crushed after he left the morning after I revealed the pregnancy, but he sent me flowers and said he really wanted to give us a shot. He wanted to be a good husband to me and father to our baby. Don’t you see it? Maybe this is all a setup and this crazy bitch is trying to make him leave me somehow.”
“All right. All right. There’s nothing worse than a jilted ex-lover.”
“I just want to talk to him first.”
“You do that then, but you need to stop obsessing. It’s just making you anxious. If not for you, then for that kid.”
I put a hand on my stomach. Of course. The baby.
“I’ll wait to hear what he has to say.”
Chapter 10
Lorenzo
There were two possibilities. The first was that Elissa was completely talking out of her ass and she was feeding me this information so that she would have an excuse to see me, or more accurately, stop me from seeing my wife. It had been days. This was bullshit. The second one was that everything she had told me was completely true, and there was something fiendish happening in my dad’s camp.
Elissa was a lot of things—and petty was definitely one of them—but completely disregarding what she said would be just plain irresponsible. Just because she wasn’t a reputable source didn’t mean that what she was saying was false. Maybe there was an
inside man with my dad’s guys. Whether or not Elissa was lying, it didn’t hurt to look into it. That was what I was doing over the extra day that I was away from home. Results had been unclear, but it was good to be careful.
Elissa had tried again, blowing my phone up like there was an emergency, trying to get me back out to her house outside the city. I was driving and my phone was ringing nonstop. It was her. I didn’t want to hear her, and I didn’t want the way that I died on the streets of New York City to be because I was distracted talking on the phone with her.
“Elissa, stop calling me.”
Her voice filled the car, and it made me uneasy because it felt like she was in there with me.
“Why don’t you believe me?”
“Elissa, you have never given me that good of a reason to trust you. You lied constantly during our relationship.”
“I’m not lying about this.”
“This is the last time I am going to ask you to stop calling and texting me, Elissa. I am going home to my wife and I want you to stop bothering me.”
“Have you spoken to her lately? Have you heard from each other?”
“I am going to ask politely, just this once. This is the last time. Stop contacting me. If you have some information about my dad’s men, take it to him. Not to me.”
I hung up before she had a chance to say anything back.
Fuck it. I was ready to see my wife. We had been in contact a little bit. Sex over the phone was nice... it was all we could manage being apart, but nothing beat the real thing. That soft, smooth skin. Her hair. The taste of her. Fuck, I was going to jump her when I got home.
I laughed a little thinking about her. I was excited. What had she been doing while I was gone? Had she missed me? I had missed her. Would I find her in the tub, naked and wet? Would she be in the restaurant with her friends? Maybe she had gone and seen my mother.
I didn’t know why, but I hoped she had. I loved my mother, and it was great to think that Isa would try and pursue a relationship with her. Yeah, I was looking forward to doing all the things that I had talked about doing to her on the phone, but I just wanted to see her. I wanted to see her face, her smile. I wanted to sleep in the same bed as her and wake up to find her cooking breakfast for me. I wanted to kiss her and asked her what she had gotten up to while I was away. I wanted to take her on another date. I missed the shit out of her. I really liked her. I had been subjected to too much of Elissa’s aggressive negativity. I needed to see someone who made me happy.
Finally, I hit traffic. It was good to be home. I took Fifth Avenue—even though it was a little out of the way. Isa deserved something nice. Something shiny and expensive to say I was sorry for staying away so long. She never really indicated what she liked and disliked from the things I got her, but a store assistant would help me out. As long as there were enough diamonds, she had to go for it, right?
She was so hard to impress. I had only ever bought diamonds for two other women. My mother and Elissa. My mom was something of a gemstone expert, so she was naturally hard to please, but Elissa had drooled over anything with a karat value over five.
Wasn’t it the thought that counted?
I drove up to Campania. It was still early and lunch service hadn’t begun yet. I walked through the doors and searched the front of the house for someone to talk to. I saw the guy that I had yelled at the last time I had come here looking for Isa spy me from across the floor.
“We aren’t open for service yet, please come back in an hour,” he said icily.
“I’m not here for the food. I just want to know where Isa is. Isa Montorini? My wife. She was executive chef here.”
“We are not yet open for lunch, sir. Please come back in one hour,” he replied.
“Hey, listen. I don’t want any trouble. Is Isa here or not?”
“You know, we were all excited when we heard Isa had gotten married to you, but if the last time you were here is any indication of the kind of man you are, I hope she gets out while she still can.”
I took a deep breath. Either I socked this guy in the nose, or I went to the kitchen to look for her myself. Beating this dude up would have felt good, but I still wouldn’t know whether Isa was here or not.
“Are you going to tell me whether she is back there, or do I have to go and check myself?”
“She isn’t here. Has she hit the road already? Good for her.”
I ignored that.
“What about Maria?”
“Marina? Our hostess? She’s in the back.”
I pushed past him and walked into the kitchen. The conversation and laughter in the kitchen as the chefs prepared for the lunch service immediately stopped as I walked through. Being intimidating was useful, but I knew what they thought of me. They thought I was a monster. I walked into the locker area and found Marina fixing her uniform. She looked up at me and I swear to God the temperature in the room dropped about eighty degrees.
“What are you doing here?”
“Where is Isa?”
“She’s your wife. Why are you asking me?”
“Marina... can you put aside whatever you think about me for a second and just tell me whether you have seen Isa today?”
“Why was this the first place you checked? Don’t you think you would have found her in the same place that you left her?”
I called on a patience I didn’t have but desperately needed in order to continue the conversation.
“I told her to do whatever she wanted to while I was away. I figured she would have come here because she loves this place and she loves to cook. Have you seen her or not?”
“I haven’t. If you had been here the past few days, you would know she hasn’t left the house at all.”
“Is there something wrong with her?”
She slammed her locker shut.
“Why don’t you go home and ask her that yourself.”
People had been telling me that a lot lately. Nobody at Campania had any reason to really like me, but what was with the hostility. It didn’t piss me off, it made me worried. Was there something wrong with Isa? Was there something that had happened when I was away? Was I in trouble?
I GOT TO THE HOUSE and I walked through the door and called to her. Silence. I checked the kitchen and she wasn’t there either. I climbed up the stairs and saw the master bedroom door open. I walked in and saw, well, nothing. She wasn’t there either. I entered the room, hearing activity in the closet. There she was, standing over an open suitcase. She was packing.
Chapter 11
Isa
All of it had to stay. I couldn't take any of the stuff he had gotten me. I looked at my side of the closet. The things he had gotten me were mixed in with the things I had moved in with. I couldn’t take anything. There were several pieces that I hadn’t worn, but that was just too bad.
I couldn’t stay here, and I wasn’t going to keep anything that he had gotten for me.
I knew that he deserved to be able to tell his version of the story, but hell, who said I had to listen to it in person. Being in the house, sleeping in our bed, was beginning to feel unbearable. I couldn't help thinking that he was out with her. That he was out with her when he was supposed to be here with me. That was rotten. Why would he do that?
It wasn’t as if I was leaving forever. I sort of had nowhere else to go, but I couldn’t stay here. Once he got here, he would call me, and then I could listen to whatever it was he wanted to say. However, until that time, I didn’t want to be in the house. It felt too disrespectful. I had been waiting for him. Sure, I was doing other things and preparing for the baby, but I had been waiting for him.
How pathetic was it to be the wife waiting at home for her husband to return while the man was out, for all I knew, fucking Elissa Lazzerini? I prayed that there was some way it wasn’t true. There had to be some sort of explanation. I was hard pressed to think of what that explanation might be, but I just really wanted something that both maintained my positive assessment of Lorenz
o and my pride.
I stopped, hearing him call to me from downstairs. He was here.
I looked into my suitcase and wondered for a split second whether I would be able to fit in it in order to hide. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want him to come up here and find me. I didn’t want to think that when I asked him to his face about the pictures that he would lie and cover his ass because he had been doing something he wasn’t supposed to do.
Marina had a couch. She wouldn’t be mad if I asked her to crash there. There was my parents’ house, but showing up there would have potentially been disastrous. They would know that something was wrong if I showed up with a suitcase. I could hear him coming into the room and making his way to the closet.
“Isa? Why didn’t you say anything? I was calling you,” he said. He walked over and tried to kiss me, but I turned my face so it landed off center, on my cheek. “Is everything all right? Are you packing?”
“I am,” I said simply.
“Why? Where are you going?”
As far away as I can get from you.
“Nowhere special,” I said. I was purposefully leaving the clothes that he had gotten me on the hangers and inside the drawers. He must have noticed.
“Isa, stop, could you look at me, please? I haven’t seen you in days, and now you’re leaving. What’s going on?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” It was catty. I’ll admit it...but I was hurt.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll tell you where I am going if you tell me where you have been.”
He sighed. His face looked pained, as if he knew that there was something he had done wrong.
“I was working, babe,” he said wearily.
“Were you with her?” I demanded.
“With who?”
“Don’t play dumb with me Lorenzo. Elissa. Were you with her?”
“Yeah, I was. She said she had something on my dad, and I had to go ask her what it was.”
My eyes narrowed.
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