There are many things that are unusual about this month. I look forward to its end. To my reward – a lifetime of happiness with my well-trained bride.
We finish our breakfast in silence. Concetta takes little tiny bites and tries to eat quietly. Alonza scowls at her. Valentina’s face is solemn. She’s a sweet, tender-hearted girl, and she doesn’t like to see anyone suffer, but she has been brought up to know not to question the dictates of the men in the family.
Natasha’s stomach rumbles, and she blushes, hugging herself. She stares straight ahead, her face rigid with misery. I know she’s starving. I know that today will be long and difficult for her. But I also know that she’ll come through it just fine – my brave, strong little princess.
“You will clear the table,” I say to Natasha. “Of course,” she says quietly, and Alonza gets up to help her. She shows Natasha where to take the dishes.
Mischa arrives just as she’s finished loading all the dishes into the dishwasher, and I call Natasha out to meet him in the parlor.
Mischa’s a big, solid, square-faced man who easily outweighs me by fifty pounds. He’s surprisingly graceful for a man so bulky. Whenever he comes to visit people who are in “the life”, as we say, he wears his jacket in such a way that it always opens and casually exposes his knife. Rumor has it that he castrated his own father when he was a little boy in Russia, after his father gave him a particularly brutal beating. Of course, that’s the kind of Mischa would start whether it was true or not.
As usual, he’s accompanied by his son, Arkady. Arkady rarely speaks, just stands there behind his father, glowering. Arkady wears a jacket just like his father’s, and as soon as he walks into the house, he makes sure to shove his hands in his pants pockets so the jacket opens and the knife handle is exposed.
Mischa has a bouquet of flowers. He bows to Natasha and hands them to her, flashing his shark’s smile. “A dozen beautiful roses for the beautiful bride-to-be.”
As if I hadn’t noticed the number, he had to announce it and make it obvious. It’s Russian superstition that it’s unlucky to give someone an even number of flowers; you only take an even number of flowers to the cemetery.
“How kind of you,” she says with a polite and very convincing smile in return. The politician’s daughter. Thank God for that.
“Why don’t you run to the kitchen with Alonza and make some fresh coffee for us?” I turn to Alonza and switch to Italian. “Can you please show her where the coffee is and help her bring out a tray for us? Mischa takes pure cream with his, no sugar.”
Alonza nods abruptly, that sour look on her face. She hates the Russians.
“Concetta, sweetheart, why don’t you go with her instead,” Mischa says. “No need to bother the old lady.” It’s not a request.
Concetta doesn’t mind anyway; she’s delighted at the chance to be alone with Natasha.
“You don’t need to go,” I say to Alonza in Italian. She glowers at Mischa.
Concetta and Natasha have vanished into the kitchen.
“This isn’t going to work,” Mischa says to me coldly. “I can see the way she is looking at Concetta. She won’t follow the rules, she won’t accept her role, she will dishonor your family with disobedience and defiance.”
“I have twenty-nine days,” I remind him. “And nothing has changed. The Council’s decree still holds.”
He shakes his head. “What difference does it make to you if it’s her or someone else? You’ll have a Peredyshka either way. You still have the option of marrying Verushka.” Verushka is the girl who was chosen to replace Natasha, when Natasha’s mother vanished with her.
“I am happy to train Natasha to assume her duties, and I have the right to do so.” There’s a sharp bite to my voice. “I know that you went running to the Council last night after I rescued her from the clinic and complained, and I know that they supported my taking over her training.”
“We don’t run anywhere,” Arkady snarls, dull blue eyes cloudy with resentment. “But I can make you run, right now.”
I just glance at Mischa. “Really, Mischa?” I say mildly. “Your son wants to declare war? Have you decided that the truce is over, then? Because I’m ready when you are, but I will never be the one to make the first move. I respect the Council too much for that.”
Mischa beams fondly at his son. “Settle down, Arkady. We are among friends.” Then he sits down on an overstuffed chair. I join him, and glance over at my great-aunt. Alonza is just standing there, arms folded, looking him over as if he were a squashed bug that should be swept up and discarded. Mischa finds this amusing.
“She doesn’t like me much,” he observes in English.
“She’s loyal to the family. How would your grandmother greet me if I came to your house?” His grandmother Devora is an alarming tank of a woman, as grim and joyless as Alonza. The two spit insults at each other when they run into each other downtown; they’ve got surprisingly colorful vocabularies for respectable old ladies. Sometimes they even slap and shove each other.
“She would put poison in your coffee.” He laughs at his joke, and Arkady throws back his head and howls his appreciation, and I smile coldly.
Alonza can get away with being openly rude to him because of her age. Young women in our traditionalist cultures are looked on as lust objects, always in danger of betraying and shaming their families and their men. I know that many of our harsh rules are in place because deep down we’re in terror of these women – of the power they have over us. They seem so weak and helpless, but they can unman us just by batting their eyes at a rival – or, God forbid, opening their legs.
Once a woman hits her fifties or sixties, though, she moves into a sort of different status. From then on, she is seen as sexless, and no longer a threat. And she is also revered because of the traditional respect for age.
So older women in our families actually enjoy enormous freedom – more than anybody else. Of course, they are still expected to be loyal to the family, but they can be rude, bossy, even completely eccentric, without facing any consequences. And most of them take advantage of this fact.
“Have you made any progress with our little problem?”
“Not yet.”
He shakes his head, scowling in disapproval, as if he’s had any more luck. Which he hasn’t.
“I’m working on it,” I tell him. “I’m sending out half a dozen decoy trucks over the next few days, and I’m sending the real shipment on Thursday.”
Alonza, bored, abruptly stands up and mutters an insult, then leaves the room.
A moment later there’s a crash from the hallway, and I hear Concetta scream. Mischa is smiling to himself as we hurry over to them. There’s a silver tray lying on the ground, the fine china broken and the hot coffee splattered everywhere.
“I’m sorry!” Concetta snivels. “She just went crazy! I was trying to tell her that I’m no threat to her, but she told me she’ll never share her husband with another woman!”
Fury crackles through my body. Does she know what she’s done? How could she know? Was it just a lucky guess?
Natasha is in tears. “That isn’t true!”
Alonza storms down the hallway, hurrying toward them. She yells at Concetta in Italian. “You clumsy whore! I saw you attack her! You ruined our fine china!”
I look at Mischa. Mischa speaks Italian; he knows what Alonza just said.
“Concetta just said that it was the other way around,” he says to me. “Why would she lie?”
“Why would a jealous mistress lie?” I echo, so he can hear how ridiculous his question is.
“She has never been jealous before, has she?”
“I’ve never been about to be married before.”
I’ve got him there. He frowns. “Still. Perhaps your great-aunt is…confused.”
“Mischa, I have nothing but the greatest respect for you” (lie) “but Alonza is my blood. She is of perfectly sound mind, which means the only other possibility here is that Conce
tta just lied. My great-aunt certainly did not lie. I cannot tolerate my family being insulted under my own roof. I hope you understand this.” Because if you don’t, I will be forced to challenge Mischa the Knife right now. And there is too much at stake on the outcome.
Natasha’s rigid where she stands, her eyes bouncing back and forth between us.
Mischa glances at Concetta. He scowls.
“I am sure it was a misunderstanding,” he says. He has to at least pretend to play nice, to keep the Council happy. It wouldn’t look good for him to come to my home and insult an elder member of my family, no matter how much he’d like to get away with it. He’s giving me an out, but he’s also giving Concetta an out by saying that he does not believe she was actually lying. Which means he expects me not to punish her.
And I can’t argue with him.
“I will clean up,” Concetta says quickly. She flashes a brilliant smile at Natasha. “I am so sorry for misunderstanding you.”
“What a good girl she is. Someday, perhaps she’ll settle down and get married. She knows exactly how a wife should behave,” Mischa says, with a significant glance at Natasha. “I am sure you recognize the worth of a woman who knows her place in our world.” This time he’s smiling at Concetta. “And now, I must be going.”
Chapter 10
Natasha
I feel more and more wretched as the day drags on. I had Italian lessons right after breakfast, and I could barely concentrate. When you know you can’t eat, it’s all you can think about. My tutor, a fifty-something woman with a severe scowl and a faint mustache, is angry and impatient with me.
We’re there for two hours. We start with the alphabet. There are 21 letters – the same letters as in the English alphabet but with different pronunciations. J, K, W, X, and Y are the letters that are missing from the Italian alphabet. She has me recite the alphabet multiple times and makes me count to twenty a bunch of times after that, then she teaches me some common words and phrases so we can work on my pronunciation.
I have to learn how to say “I love you,” and “Good morning, my heart,” and “Good evening, my love,” and “How may I please you today?”
Every time my stomach growls, she looks at me in annoyance and sniffs contemptuously. How dare she? I want to scream with rage, throw things at her, storm out of the room – but the thought of another punishment session saps my will.
I can’t believe that things that I’ve always taken for granted – food, the right to breathe air – can now be snatched from me at someone else’s whim.
After I finish my lesson, I move through the house, from room to room, with Alonza and a female maid. They are showing me how everything needs to be cleaned. The two of them are angry and impatient, just like the tutor. I want to cry. I am trying to obey the new rules until I can figure out a way to escape – but the rules are impossible!
I’m dizzy with hunger, and my butt is so sore it hurts to walk. Of course I’m not doing a good job. Would Matteo really punish me for a stray fingerprint on a window? Surely even he can’t be that unreasonable, if he sees that I’m trying.
We’re pushing around a cart of cleaning supplies from room to room. The chemical smell curdles my empty stomach. I drink lots of water, but it doesn’t help. I should be thinking about trying to escape, but all I can think about is making it through this day. It’s late afternoon now, I’ve only cleaned about a quarter of the house, I’m so weak I’m in serious danger of passing out, and I’m starting to panic.
Alonza and the maid don’t help me at all, they just supervise. And then Alonza leaves, and a little while later the maid leaves.
My arms are shaking as I drag the cart into a bedroom on the first floor. This house has ten bedrooms and eight bathrooms, to say nothing of the media room, the parlor, the foyer, the library… I can’t even keep track of them all. I am apparently not required to clean Concetta’s room or Matteo’s office. Other than that, I have to clean everything. Now I’m really afraid. I’m moving as fast as I can, and no matter how hard I try, it won’t be good enough.
The door opens, and I start in terror, but it’s just Valentina. She hurries into the room and holds out a roast beef sandwich. “Here. Eat it, quick.”
I shake my head, and I can’t hold back the tears in my eyes. I don’t want to cry in front of her, I just can’t help myself. “Thank you, Valentina, but I’m not allowed to eat today.”
She glances around. “This room doesn’t have cameras because it’s Nico’s bedroom and he doesn’t want them in here. Nico is Matteo’s head of security. Eat fast.”
I shouldn’t risk it, but I can’t help myself. I grab it and take an enormous bite, then another. The tangy mustard and salty mayonnaise mingle on my tongue, and I moan in relief. I inhale it in less than a minute, eating so fast I almost choke. Then she holds out a bottle of water. “Drink this so it’s not on your breath.”
I do so, quickly. I drink half the bottle, then I hurry into Nico’s bathroom and swish the rest of the water in my mouth and spit it out. I’m already starting to feel better as I emerge from the bathroom.
“You’re very smart,” I say. “Thank you so much. I hope I don’t end up getting you in trouble.”
She snorts. “Matteo would never do more than send me to my room without supper. He never gets mad at me – I’m his favorite.” Her beautiful face creases in a smile and she pats my arm. “I know it seems like there’s a lot of rules around here, but as my mother says, you just have to learn to ‘work the system’.”
I laugh out loud at that; I can’t help myself. My headache is gone and I’m not dizzy anymore. With renewed energy, I quickly run my duster over the windowsills. “Your mother is smart too, then.”
“She is. You know, you can be happy here. I know that Matteo said you might not want to be here at first, but he’s really nice most of the time. If I do my lessons, he lets me have two desserts.”
“How wonderful! What kind of lessons do you do?”
“Piano, and Italian literature and Renaissance art studies and painting. I got to pick my summer classes.” She smiles at me winningly. “See, it’s not so bad here.”
What a lovely child she is. And I’m so happy for her that she can study whatever she wants and her parents are encouraging her education. I had this image of women locked up in chastity belts, allowed to read only the Bible and recipe books. It’s good to know I was wrong about that. I’d feel a little better about all this…if I had any choice about being here.
“I should go,” she adds regretfully. “Tomorrow will be better, I promise.”
“You’re wonderful, Valentina, you saved my life!” I call after her as she skips out of the room.
And it’s true. I feel so much better with that single sandwich in my stomach, it’s unbelievable. The phrase “an army marches on its stomach” flashes through my mind.
I am at war. I will win this war whatever it costs me. Winning means escape. I will not surrender my life to these people.
I wonder if, when Valentina grows up and is married off, her daughter will be a Peredyshka. What a horrible thought.
I can’t think about that now. I have to escape. With food in my stomach, I feel stronger. I know Matteo told me what I was up against yesterday, but I refuse to give up.
And the idea of me someday being a Peredyshka? Having my baby ripped from my arms and sent off to be brainwashed? The hell with that. I’d throw myself off a building first.
If I can escape – no, when I escape – I will go home and tell my parents everything, and I will go to the press and social media. Maybe that will change things for Valentina, too – maybe the family will stop taking babies away from mothers.
Worst case scenario – I have to accept the fact that I might have to stay here for a month and act my heart out. I might even have to go through with the wedding. I hate that idea, but there’s so much security here, it’s going to take me a while to figure out how to get past it.
Unless I can get to a pho
ne. If I could just call someone, I could tell them the name of the man who’s holding me prisoner and my approximate location. I’d tell them about all the threats he’s made. They wouldn’t dare attack my family once the information was out, would they?
I wonder where the real Bailey Millhouse is. I wonder if she’s alive, if she’s happy. How would she like my parents? I can’t stop thinking of them as my parents, even if they’re not related to me by blood. I wonder what they’re doing to find me. They’ll have gone on TV, they’ll be hiring a private investigator… Is there any possibility they could track me down here?
The door opens again, and Matteo walks in. I set my duster down and grab the broom. He runs his finger along a windowsill before he acknowledges me.
“Mrs. DeMitri said you weren’t very attentive to your lessons today,” he says, his tone cool.
Resentment churns in my stomach. “I’m sorry. I tried very hard. I had a difficult time concentrating because I’m dizzy with hunger and I didn’t sleep at all last night. And I’m in a lot of pain.” I struggle very hard to keep my voice neutral, even though I’m furious.
“I would love to hear what you learned today.” His smile looks hopeful, and I really want to please him at that moment, so badly.
Dutifully, I recite the phrases that I learned, and I think I’m doing pretty well, but his smile fades. He shakes his head, his thick black brows drawn together in a scowl. “I’ve heard better accents from kindergartners. It’s like you’re trying to be terrible at it.”
With the exception of Valentina, I’m starting to feel like everyone in this house hates me. Why in God’s name won’t they just let me leave? Tears fill my eyes and run down my cheeks. I swallow my sobs and resume sweeping the floor, crying quietly, and he walks around the room, inspecting it with a critical eye.
Finally he stops and looks at me again.
“My niece told me she likes you,” he says, almost grudgingly. “I value Valentina’s opinion highly.”
Matteo: A Dark Mafia Hate Story Page 8
