Given to the Groom

by Annabelle Winters

  “Then perhaps this is not real life,” he quips, his frown cutting deeper as he gets to the last page of the menu and then tosses it across the room. He’s on the phone now, and I watch in some combination of disbelief and amusement. “Hello? Yes. This is Brakos. What selection of caviars do you have in the hotel?” His thick black eyebrows move like snakes as I hear a hesitant reply from Room Service. “That is unacceptable! You call yourself the Grand Hotel? How can you say you are grand when you do not offer Beluga Caviar! Preposterous! Connect me to the CEO immediately, please. No, not the bloody hotel manager. I want to speak to the person who runs the company. This has already escalated beyond the scope of your little hotel manager. It is now a global issue, and Brakos will solve it for you so you can at least pretend to be a real hotel. Yes, I will hold. But hurry up or else Brakos will come down there himself, and trust me, you do not want Brakos in your bloody kitchen.”

  I giggle and shake my head as I imagine the poor Room Service operator scrambling for someone to take over so he won’t have to deal with some madman who refers to himself in the third person.

  “Um, you know this isn’t New York or London or Paris, right?” I say. “The Grand Hotel is pretty much the best this town has to offer. And I’d bet you’re the first person in twenty years to ask about their selection of freakin’ caviars!” I take a breath as I see Brakos’s heavy chest move up and down as he stays on hold. “Maybe they have some sushi. California rolls are fun!”

  “Fake crabmeat and rubbery cucumber? I would rather eat the fucking carpet,” he grunts, glaring at the phone and then tossing it across the room in generally the same direction as the room-service menu. “This is not a town. It is a bloody village. Why in Zeus’s name did Bernice Belitrios choose this place as headquarters of her empire?”

  I stare at Brakos, wondering if he’s still kidding. “Um, Bernice’s what?”

  “Empire,” Brakos grunts, clenching his jaw and looking up at the ceiling like he’s still thinking about how to get some Beluga Caviar for his refined palate. “Her operation. Her organization. The shell companies she used to launder the money. The network of underground businesses ranging from gambling to protection to hired hits to—”

  I burst into laughter, smacking Brakos on the chest. “Oh, my God! You totally had me going there. Hired hits? Grandma? That’s awesome. And the dead-pan delivery? Solid. Well done. And all this while I thought Brakos was a stone-cold killer without a funny-bone in his body.”

  But Brakos doesn’t laugh, and when I see the way he’s looking at me, I stop laughing too.

  “What?” I say. “Don’t tell me you’re pissed that I implied you aren’t a bad-ass killer mafia guy. I’m sure you’re very good at killing people.”

  I try to smile, but I can’t get myself to do it because a chill is running through my body, chasing away that wonderful warmth I felt just a moment ago. And then suddenly all those thoughts that I’d somehow pushed away come rushing back like a dam has broken, and I feel light-headed when I remember what got us here . . . what got Brakos here.

  “OK, maybe I do need to eat something,” I say. “I’m not thinking clearly.”

  Brakos slowly raises his head and looks for the phone, which is all the way across the room and in fact might be broken. “Yes, I will order food,” he says, frowning in a way that I can tell means the wheels are turning in his head too. What’s he thinking? Is he doubting the reality of what’s happening too? Shit, what is the reality of what’s happening?! What did Grandma tell this guy to drag his ass all the way from Greece to this town, to this moment, to . . . to me?!

  I watch as Brakos smoothly rises up off the bed, and I blink at the sight of his muscled body from behind. He kinda does look like a Greek god, it occurs to me as I cross my legs and stare at his glistening haunches as he stands naked in the sunlight streaming through the crack in the curtain.

  Somehow the phone still works, and he barks some orders into it and tosses it back down to the carpet. Then he turns to me and stands tall and broad, not a shred of self-consciousness as he faces me in all his naked glory.

  “Along with proof of her ancestry, Bernice Belitrios sent me a detailed outline of her operations in the United States,” he says.

  “Operations?! Brakos, Grandma barely left her home! Barely left her spot in front of the freakin’ TV? Trust me, she was not running some nationwide criminal enterprise! I mean, you said it yourself: If she was some secret gangster-bitch, why the hell would she choose a no-name town like this for her headquarters?”

  “Precisely because it is a no-name town in Middle America,” Brakos says, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down at me like I’m a schoolgirl. “I run my own organization from a small town a hundred miles away from Athens. Our business is all about keeping a low profile. Flying under the radar. That’s why all the shell businesses, the need to launder money through legitimate businesses. Remember, Al Capone was finally brought down not by the FBI but by the IRS.”

  I rub my eyes and shake my head. I don’t even know where to start. I don’t know if I’m the fool or if he’s the fool or if Grandma’s somehow managed to make fools of everyone—maybe even herself! Hell, maybe she was senile in some strange way that expressed itself like this. Maybe she created this world in her own head and then produced all kinds of documents and whatnot in some obsession to make it real.

  Or maybe . . .

  Maybe it is real.

  And I just hug myself and curl up into a ball on the big, empty bed, not sure if I want to laugh or cry or just scream. I mean, there’s no way in hell Grandma was running some mafia empire from her freakin’ attic! But at the same time, clearly she managed to convince Brakos she was doing exactly that! So what’s the truth? I mean, Grandma was smart as hell, a determined, strong-ass woman. She saw her parents and siblings murdered, according to Brakos. She got on a freakin’ ship and sailed her teenage butt across the world and started a life in America. She married, lost her husband early, supported her family, and then even supported me after Mom and Dad died! Shit, maybe she was what Brakos thinks she was! I mean, there are all sorts of unbelievable stories of people living double lives, secret lives. What if it is true?

  And then suddenly the opposite fear rips through me as I see a shadow pass across Brakos’s dark face. The face of the man who just took me as his. The face of the man I just gave myself to, the man Grandma gave me to!

  Yes, suddenly I’m scared of the exact opposite . . .

  What if Grandma did make it all up?

  What if she did somehow manage to trick Brakos into thinking she was running some secret Greek Mafia empire in America, that I was the heir to some underground throne that would be handed over to him in this arranged marriage?!

  And if she did make it all up, what happens when Brakos figures that out?!

  What happens to the “wedding” that happened just a day ago?

  What happens to what just happened between us?

  What happens to us?

  I feel that light-headedness return with such force I almost throw up. I’m looking right into Brakos’s devilishly green eyes, and I know—I just know—he’s thinking the same thing! Ohmygod, what next? What do I do? What if this is a mistake, but a totally different sort of mistake than I thought it was!

  I blink three times as I try to think my way through this. There are so many unanswered questions—so many questions that are probably unanswerable since Grandma’s dead. But the one that’s really bothering me is why . . .

  Why didn’t she tell me?

  If she’d taken this to the point where she’d arranged a fucking wedding for me, why the hell wouldn’t she tell me?! That just doesn’t fit!

  There’s a knock at the door, and I’m startled out of my thoughts as I frantically grab my dress and pull it on. Brakos makes no move, but then I can see he realizes it must be Room Service, and he sighs an
d heads toward the bathroom.

  “You can let them in when you’re dressed,” he says. “My wallet is on the table for a tip.”

  I watch as Brakos slams the bathroom door shut, and then I’m alone. Absentmindedly I reach for his wallet, my eyes going wide when I see that it’s stacked with hundreds. Hundreds of hundreds, it seems.

  My vision goes blurry as the stacked wallet reminds me that Brakos didn’t want this marriage for money.

  He wanted it for power.

  I hear it in the words he uses . . .

  Empire.

  Kingdom.

  Conquest.

  I hear it in the way he talks about himself in third person like he is somehow larger than his own life, more than just a man . . .

  And how can I give him that kind of power?! What does he want from me?! From this marriage?!

  “I can’t,” I stammer, straightening my hastily pulled-on dress and grabbing my stuff, stepping into my shoes, reaching for the door and managing to pull it open just in time so I don’t hit my own freakin’ face on it. “I just . . . can’t!”

  Somehow I stuff a couple of hundreds in the bewildered waiter’s hand, and then I’m running down the carpeted hallways, tears streaming down my face, tears of pure confusion, pure panic, pure madness.

  I stumble out the side door, squinting in the sunlight as I take gulping breaths of fresh air. I wish I could convince myself I was still dreaming, but this is fucking real. Real and terrifying.

  Terrifying because at the bottom of the confusion and panic I feel something rock steady, a part of me that’s completely calm, supremely stable, perfectly poised. It’s almost like there’s a part of me that’s just watching in amusement as I thrash about trying to make sense of the facts, put the pieces together, solve the puzzle just so my brain doesn’t explode.

  And as I hail a taxi and slide into the backseat, I glance at my finger and see that diamond staring back at me with the same certainty I feel deep inside my soul. And I remember what Brakos said to me when he decided to take me as his, to claim me as his woman, his wife, his forever:

  “To hell with the facts,” he’d growled in his thick accent. “The facts do not matter, Bellanca. Not when it feels like this.”

  “Not when it feels like this,” I whisper, touching that ring and exhaling slowly. “Not when it feels like this.”

  8

  BELL

  “It feels like no one’s been in here since she died,” I say out loud as I step through the front door of Grandma’s house.

  Well, my house now, I suppose. Grandma left it to me in her will. It’s not worth much—real estate prices in this town aren’t that hot, and this isn’t a great part of town. Part of me wants to hold onto it, maybe live here. But it’s not in great shape, and I’d have to put a lot of money into getting things fixed up. I knew it made sense to clean it out and then sell. I needed the money anyway, and I was happy in my little one-bedroom apartment.

  “Well, of course no one’s been in here,” I say, once again talking out loud like I’m hoping it’ll scare the ghosts away. I pop open a couple of windows to air out the place, and then I take a breath and look around.

  It looks the way it did after I cleaned up following the small post-funeral reception. I haven’t been back here since then—mostly because I was busy, but also because I didn’t want to deal with cleaning all the crap out of the basement and attic. Maybe I was afraid of what I’d find in there?

  But now I’m not afraid. Now I’m praying I’ll find something—anything—that brings me some peace, some clarity, maybe even closure. Was Grandma who Brakos thinks she is? Am I who Brakos thinks I am?

  And maybe at the end of it I’ll know if we are what I think we are.

  Before I know it I’m in the attic, which is where Grandma spent most of her final months, it seemed. I wasn’t around that much. I was busy, yeah, but that wasn’t the only reason, it occurs to me as I think back. There were times I’d call and say I’d come over and we could order food and watch a movie. But then she’d decline, saying stuff like she was tired or whatever. I wasn't too worried—after all, the woman seemed healthy until that sudden heart attack. Of course, that made it all the more shocking when she died, but Grandma had always said she wanted to go quickly.

  “If I end up in a hospital bed, pissing in a bag, I want you to put a bullet right here,” she’d said to me once, tapping her forehead and looking at me with unflinching seriousness. “Two bullets, actually. Just to make sure. You never know. They say the spirit lingers around for a while if there’s unfinished business.”

  “Um, and finishing you off with an execution-style double-tap in Our Lord of Eternal Mercy Hospital is gonna take care of what unfinished business, exactly?” I’d said, snorting at Grandma’s humor, which could sometimes get weirdly dark.

  “That’s my business, not yours,” she’d told me. “You just go about your life. Don’t worry about me. How’s that boyfriend, by the way?” she’d added with a gleam in her eyes since she knew full well that finding a decent guy in this town was a futile, frustrating task.

  “Bye, Grandma,” I’d said with an eye-roll as she cackled and clapped her hands.

  I’m smiling now as I absentmindedly start opening white file-boxes that are neatly stacked in clearly separated rows, each row labeled with topics ranging from “Bills” to “Photographs” to “Clothes” to . . .

  I blink as I stare at the last row of boxes, the memory of that final interchange with Grandma still lingering as I stare at the label and wonder if I’m hallucinating.

  Yes, that last interchange, when Grandma almost seemed pleased that I was still single . . .

  Like me being single fit perfectly into her plans . . .

  Into her . . . unfinished business?

  “Unfinished Business,” I say out loud, raising my eyebrows and shaking my head as I read the words off the label. “Seriously, Grandma? You have a box labeled Unfinished Business?’”

  I’m about to laugh, but I’m startled by a weird feeling of movement. It’s like a breeze, but this is a closed attic, and I can’t help but think back to that odd sense I got when I walked down the aisle . . . walked down the aisle alone but maybe not quite alone.

  “Grandma?” I say out loud, more for my own benefit, to remind myself that honey, you’re now seeing ghosts and hearing spirits. Could this get any more ridiculous. I cock my head and wait for a response, almost hoping there’s a whisper from the afterlife or some shit. Then Grandma could just explain what the hell she was thinking, what she was planning before the heart attack, why she didn’t tell me what she was planning?!

  Was she gonna just spring it on me the day before the arranged marriage?

  Was she gonna just ask me to meet her for coffee and then say, hey, I just gave you to this Greek mafia guy. Seeya! Send me a postcard from Mykonos!

  Was she waiting till the last moment because she was afraid I’d say no?

  I mean, of course I’d have said no, right?

  Right?

  “Right,” I say, answering myself while trying to ignore that diamond ring on my finger, trying to ignore the unmistakably filthy feeling of Brakos’s semen making its way out of me as I squat there on Grandma’s floorboards and dig through a box that’s labeled “Unfinished Business” like this is a fucking play being staged by those Greek gods that Brakos the Bold and Magnificent keeps going on about.

  “The gods brought us together,” Brakos had said. “”But now not even the gods can tear us apart.”

  His words send a wave of heat through me as I look through Grandma’s box, and I almost sigh out loud as I’m aware once more of that steady, solid part of me that’s somehow sure this is real, that’s somehow certain Brakos and I are forever, that somehow understands what he meant when he said the facts don’t matter when it feels like this . . .

 
“You were given to me, Bellanca,” he’d said. “A gift for me. A gift. A gift.”

  “A gift,” I say out loud as I look through what’s in Grandma’s box. At first it seems kinda what I expected: Copies of old Greek newspapers she must have gotten from some online library, printouts from random websites and even old magazines that she must have been collecting for years.

  And notes. Lots of notes. All in her handwriting. Small and neat and kinda pointy, like her handwriting had the same edge Grandma did. Slowly I settle down and start to read her notes, read her mind, the mind of a scared young girl whose world had been destroyed.

  A scared, angry young girl, I think as I read on, read faster, my eyes burning as I see what Grandma had been piecing together over years, decades, her entire life perhaps.

  “Oh, Grandma,” I say, clutching my heart as I feel that little girl’s desolation, her anger, her rage.

  Her need to know who killed her family.

  And her need for revenge.

  For justice.

  Fucking payback.

  “Oh, my God,” I think, dropping the last page of notes and laying flat on my back as I gasp for air, struggle to come to terms with what Grandma had finally figured out after years of searching, decades of digging, back-and-forth between old libraries and convoluted red-tape and bureaucrats in Greece. “That’s why you didn’t tell me, Grandma. That’s why you didn’t tell me what you were planning! It’s because you never intended the wedding to happen! You never planned to actually marry me off against my will! I wasn’t a gift for Brakos! I was . . .”

  And then slowly I sit up as I feel that spirit stir in the air even though I know it’s just my imagination.

  “No,” I say, my eyes narrowing as if after reading Grandma’s notes I’ve internalized her feelings, understood the kind of woman she was, understood the blood that ran in her veins, runs through my veins . . .