by CD Reiss
“A cappuccino for Mrs. DiLustro.”
He won’t even say my name. At least he didn’t call me his wife.
Santino shifts, returning to his paper. No words. No more glances.
“You might put your shirt on,” he says.
“Why?”
He turns the corner of the paper down, looks at the length of my body, then at my face.
“I have men in the house to protect us.” He goes back to hiding behind the paper. “If they see my wife’s body they’ll want to fuck it. Then I’ll have to kill them.”
A snappy retort dies on my tongue when I think of Fat Lip’s eyes on me, and I put the blouse back on, leaving only the top button open.
I load up a piece of crusty bread with ham and artichoke hearts. I’m starving. Sustenance and caffeine will get my brain moving. As if called by my thoughts, a cappuccino appears before me.
“Grazie, Celia. This is really good. The artichoke. Did you jar it?”
“I did!” She beams. “There’s a secret ingredient.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a secret,” Santino says as he flips a page.
“See how long that lasts,” I grumble, taking another bite.
Santino nods to Celia, and she leaves. Maybe she’s someone in the house I can befriend to learn more about the ins and outs—the quiet exits and safe shadows. She’ll know this house and the routines like the back of her hand.
“You have your cappuccino.” Santino folds the paper neatly and sets it down. He links his hands before him and stares right into my very soul. There is now no one else left in this room, in this world, worth his attention but myself.
I turn away to dump sugar into the coffee. After being mostly ignored, I feel uncomfortable. Itchy. Trapped under a glass vial and studied under a microscope.
“I do.” I stir. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me for giving you what you’re entitled to.”
“Fine.” I tap the spoon on the edge of the cup and put it down. I’m supposed to be learning his weaknesses, not the other way around. So I force up a tough composure and take a dainty sip.
“Is there something you need from your zio’s house?” Maybe I glance over at him with too much urgency, because he waves it away. “My men can pick up some…woman things.”
Oh, the things I could say.
Instead, I just answer the question, starting with something harmless.
“My school summer reading list.”
He almost smiles, but stops himself. I don’t like to see him acting as if he finds me adorable. I’m not a child.
“Anything else?”
“My phone.”
He scoffs, and I know why. Giving me access to the world outside Secondo Vasto is a massive risk, but like many risks, there’s a potential upside. If I had my phone, I could call any decent human on the planet and be set free, or I could use it to fortify his position.
“I have a friend waiting to hear from me.”
“Your friend Scarlett? She’s on vacation.” He shrugs. “In a different time zone.”
He knows things. He knows the identity and location of my best friend. My skin tingles with adrenaline, but I can neither run nor fight.
“I want to call my aunt and uncle,” I add. “To make sure they’re all right and that they know I’m still alive.”
“You can call from here.”
He’s got an answer for everything.
“And…” I raise my chin because I have a right to ask this. “I want to go back to school in September.”
“You want to go back?”
“Yes!” I can’t hide my offense at the question.
“All right.” He surprises me with the agreement. “If you’re good, you’ll go back.”
“What does good mean?”
“Have you not gone to church in your life? Did the nuns not explain it to you?”
“I want you to explain it.”
He sighs again.
“If you don’t disobey me or cause trouble for me, you go to school.”
He already said he wouldn’t demand sex, so rather than bring it up again to clarify, I assume obedience includes anything but that.
“Fine,” I say. “Deal.”
“This is all, then?”
“No.” I take a sip of coffee to prevent myself from saying thank you.
We hold each other’s gaze in a psychological game of chicken. I will not yield. I cannot yield.
Eventually, Santino nods, and taps his phone. “Make your summer reading list and deliver it to Armando.” He hands me the phone. Zio’s full name glows at the top with a green circle under it. “He’ll get you the books.”
“Thank you,” I manage, with a control I never knew I had. I don’t grit my teeth. I don’t spit at him. I don’t claw his eyeballs out, even though that’s all I want to do.
He gets up. We’re done here.
I’m about to tap the green circle to start the call, but I don’t. He might be done but I’m not.
“Why?” I’m whining. I sound weak and I don’t care. “Why me?”
“You’re not going to want that information once you have it. You’ll have to wait until I think you’re ready to know.”
He reaches over my shoulder and taps the green circle to connect me to my Z’s. I put the phone to my ear. It’s ringing. In the house where I grew up, the phone is ringing, and the feeling of connection overwhelms me. I never want them to pick up. I just want to hear a sound in that house from where I am.
Santino kisses the top of my head before he leaves.
I might be crazy, and after these last several days I very well might be, but that kiss on my head felt almost protective. Tender. I have to remind myself it’s a stinking lie.
Fuck Santino DiLustro for the rest of my fucking life. He’s made me happy with a soulless ring, and I want my zia. Maybe once she picks up, the spell will be broken and she’ll tell me this is all a bad dream. I want Zia to tut-tut at me and tell me I’ve been sleeping too long, and that it’s time to come downstairs.
Or, better yet, tell me they’ve found another way to settle the debt, and I’m free to go. They are coming to get me. One more minute and they’ll leave, they were just waiting to hear I was okay.
Hopes and wishes are the sole cause of disappointment.
“Violetta?” Zia Madeline answers the phone like I’m calling from the dead. Her voice is exactly how I feel. “Is that you?”
“Zia.” Immediately, my face runs hot and a lump forms in my throat. “It’s me.”
“Oh, my sweet Violetta. I was worried we wouldn’t hear from you for a long time. I am so happy to hear your voice! How are you?”
“I’m...fine.” I can’t help it. Her voice ruins me, and I’m nothing but tears and hot breath.
I feel Santino’s presence in the house. I swore I’d never cry again, especially not in front of him, but now I won’t even do it when he’s in another room, because he can walk in any second and see me fall apart.
Zia hollers for Zio. Behind me is the kitchen, and behind the counter is a hidden pantry. I can get some privacy.
I slide into the pantry and shut the door quietly behind me.
“I miss you so much, Zia.” I crouch in the darkness. “I want to come home.”
“I know, my baby. I know.” Her voice soothes the burning ache in my gut and now I’m crying. “Is he taking care of you?”
“I’m fine. He hasn’t hurt me or anything.” I manage to tell a technical truth. I neglect to tell her about his constant threats upon my arrival.
“Of course not. He’d cause a war if he did.”
“A war?” I ask.
“Do you want to talk to your zio?”
Is she saying they’d protect me? That if this man harmed me, they would harm him? Zio Guglielmo from on his knees and Zia Madeline from the kitchen? Impossible.
They have no power over this man.
“Is he there, my zio?”
>
“Violetta!” He is loud, jolly. Like I remember him. Like I want to remember him always. “How is the house? Is it beautiful?”
“It’s cold.”
“Turn on the heat.”
Tears slide down my cheeks like rain on a windshield. This is not the phone call I hoped for. I was mad before but now I want them to rescue me. “Please save me, Zio. Please. Please come take me home.”
“I...” There’s a long pause. I can hear some sniffling. Is he crying? “Violetta, my sweet girl, you must see by now that is impossible. If we had the power to take you home, we would have had the power to keep you here.”
“But—”
“I love you so much, principessa. Never forget that. Never doubt that. I love you like you are my own and always have.”
“Zio,” I beg. I plead. I cry. There is no answer.
“Please don’t hate us,” Zia begs, back on the phone. “Please. We love you so much, Violetta.”
“Why? Why did you let him take me?” My voice cracks in the dark closet. I can’t keep it together. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“We wanted to. We did, Violetta. But it was the only way to keep you safe.”
“Safe? From what? Safe from him?”
“Violetta. You are Emilio Moretti’s daughter. Never forget that.”
Anger swells in me, and my tears turn hotter. My blood thrums like lava. With a deadly calm, I say, “Emilio Moretti is dead. They shot him in the street before I had a chance to remember.”
All of this talk about my father. A simple grocer who I hardly remember. A man who never raised me. What misgivings he had in life has nothing to do with me. Not now, not ever.
Except I knew, deep down I knew, that this is not how things work in our family. In the old world. In Napoli, and in the places that are not Napoli but still hold our mobsters.
This is exactly how things work and it enrages me.
“They’ll shoot you, too, tesoro. We hoped it would all go away. We wanted everything for you. Freedom. A life of your own. Everything you could dream of. But now, you have to let him give it to you.”
“I’ll get it myself.”
I hang up before Zia can tell me what she always does—that a woman’s life is hard and out of her control. That men rule the world and we are merely visitors in it. It’s the same story I’ve always been told, ever since Napoli and the first time the men didn’t allow the women to eat with them.
Outdated, archaic bullshit.
But why, then, did they let me go to school? Why buy me a ticket abroad, with a train pass and a credit card with a high limit? Why let me live under the dream that my life was mine, that I was going to be the exception to the rule governing the families?
I don’t want to hear that my life is only coming to me through the permission of the man who forced my hand in marriage. I don’t want to hear that my life will be the same as theirs—baking bread in a kitchen while men drink wine in the dining room.
My zia didn’t even adhere to these rules most of the time, only when the mob was involved. Only when old families came barreling down the door. They set me up for a life of freedom my entire life.
I wipe away the tears and set my jaw. A woman’s life may be hard, but I’m going to take control. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but I will own my body and my will again.
10
VIOLETTA
We’ve been married a week and nothing has changed. He spends most of his time ignoring me, issuing commands, and showing random tiny acts of kindness that make me resent him all the more.
In my childish dreams, the first week of marriage was something worth celebrating. “Look, we did it!” Champagne toasts and looking at photos and eating cake. Celebrating the first week, the first month, the first six months. Enjoying each other’s company.
Instead, I jumpy-clapped when my books arrived, because it’s the first thing that’s made me happy since I was shoved into a car.
My marriage, though I cringe to use the word, is anything but the fantasies I’ve been dreaming up since being trapped in this house like a listless lab rat. Celia won’t even let me cook. She doesn’t say “no” exactly. She just gets this disappointed curl in her voice whenever I tell her I want to.
I can’t even be domesticated properly.
“Let’s go for a swim,” Santino says one evening when he gets back from whatever he does all day. I’m instantly wary. He’s rarely home, and when he is, he barely grunts at me. Even when we eat together he ignores me.
“Why?” I ask, thinking maybe he’s bored already and wants to drown me.
“It’s hot out.” He says it like it’s obvious, and if anything about our situation was normal, it would be.
He holds his hand to the pool I’ve yearned to splash in but have refused to touch. He swims every night. It’s like his private chambers, despite being out in the open. I’m so taken aback that he’s offered it up, I seriously wonder if he intends to use the pool as a murder weapon.
“There should be a swimsuit in the closet,” he says over his shoulder, walking out—as if he’s done stating the obvious and needs action, immediately.
Oh, there is a swimsuit in the closet all right, and it’s as outdated and terrible as everything else in it. I put it on anyway. It’s an old lady suit, designed to hide in.
Maybe that’s for the best. I don’t want him to kill a lustful security guy, and I don’t know what I’ll do if he suddenly rakes his demonic eyes across my body, the way he did when I was on my knees with my breasts exposed.
The suit has blue flowers all over it, like a couch. I’m wearing upholstery.
Still, it is hot, and I’m tired of the house. A dip in the pool, even with the devil himself, sounds refreshing. I could use the fresh air and the sun. Maybe work on a tan. Pretend I’m in Greece instead of prison.
Standing by the diving board, fully dressed, Santino laughs as soon as he catches sight of me walking onto the concrete patio. His face splits open, like another face taking over. Gone is the asshole, and in his place, a beautiful charmer.
I’m not supposed to like my captor.
“This is what you left for me up there.”
“Get in.”
“Not yet.”
Not ever, is what I want to say. The water is his, but he can’t keep the sun from me. He doesn’t own the afternoon sun, the breeze, the cloudless blue sky. Those I can keep. Those I enjoy.
“You women and your tans,” Santino scoffs, but it almost sounds playful.
He sheds his shirt, revealing a light line of hair in the center of his chest that continues between tight, beautiful abs where it disappears under his waistband. He slides out of his pants to reveal the same tight suit I see from my room, and dives into the water like a knife gutting a fish.
As I do upstairs, I hold my hands out to try to block him out, erase him, imagine a world without him in it. But my hands are the wrong proportion this close. Santino is too big, too powerful, too enigmatic to hide behind such small palms.
My world is too full of Santino DiLustro and I hate it.
He does a few laps, and I would rather stare directly into the sun than continue watching him. He moves like a shark—silent, deadly, efficient.
I was never much of a swimmer—never had lessons. Rosetta joined the swim team when we were kids and encouraged me to do it with her, but I would rather read poetry than feel like I’m fighting against the water in a gross community pool.
The heat of the day pushes me closer to the immaculately cared for pool with a very well-washed owner.
Or so I assume. His hair usually has a nice just-been-washed quality, and he always smells of soap and cologne. Not that I’ve noticed. Often.
I dip my legs in and my body relaxes. All the tension from being held here for the longest week of my life fades a little.
Santino never forbade the pool. I should come out here more often.
“You are deep in thought.” Santino swims up to me, water glistenin
g off his skin, droplets clinging to his hair and eyelashes.
I look back up at the sky.
“I am enjoying the weather.”
“Very studiously.” He splashes some water at me. “Come in. It’s hot out.”
“No.” I shake my head and refuse to look at him.
“No?” He sounds playful and dangerous all the same. “Are you afraid of the water?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
I take too long to answer. “No.”
The silence between us grows heavy. I don’t want him to know I’m afraid of him, even if all signs say I am. I want to stand up to him. I want to feel powerful. Admitting fear is not the way to go about it.
“We didn’t swim much in Napoli.” I change the subject. “Our apartment complex didn’t have a pool. Instead, there was a fountain in the courtyard where all the kids would play. I remember it being huge, the courtyard and the fountain too, I guess…but I was like five, so maybe I’m not remembering right.”
“To your very small eyes, it would seem enormous.”
“Maybe.” It annoys me that he’s probably right. “We used to play ball and tag and hide-and-seek. There were so many of us. It was like having twenty brothers and sisters. We would run and play until nightfall. There’d be a chorus of moms calling for their kids in the middle of the courtyard every night. Like music.”
I have no idea what I’m doing right now, other than trying to make him forget about my fear. But the way he’s nodding in agreement, like he’s been there. It almost feels nice. If I drop everything else away and focus on just this moment, here’s another person, who I’m not related to, that I can talk to about the old country, and they’ll understand.
My American friends don’t and never will.
“Dinner was always the best time, anyway,” I continue. “There was so much bustle and activity. Singing. Always singing. I wanted to help my mom so much, but I was too little to do anything other than stir the sauce. My mom always made that feel like such a big job.”
“A good mom does that.”
It’s very weird, having a conversation with this man. One where he isn’t ordering me around, threatening my family, or ignoring my existence.
