by CD Reiss
The night I was taken away, Santino and I walked around the block with two women following. It was romantic date and ancient superstition all wrapped into one, horrifying night.
“You didn’t miss that one,” I say.
He shrugs, but concedes. “When it comes to children, I won’t tempt fate.”
So he wants a family and will perform foolish rituals to increase his odds. All I can think is that the nonnas kissing chalices and fingering rosary beads must be on to something, because if I’m pregnant and my math is right, our first time was the charm.
“When will all this happen with them?” I ask.
“Why?”
“She’s excited. I can’t talk her—or you or anyone—out of anything. But I want her to have the things I missed.”
“Not to go against her father’s wishes or try to talk her into running from what she can’t avoid?”
“Like I said. I want it to be better for her. I want to talk about weddings. Dresses. Flowers. Let her get excited that maybe it’ll be fun and we can plan the thing.” I pick up the dishes. “That’s the deal. I don’t want her to miss what I missed.”
I bring the plates to the kitchen sink. He joins me there without a single glass or fork in his hand.
“You cannot make this go away, Violetta.”
“So you said,” I singsong to make the comment less cutting.
As I move to pass him, he grabs my arm and pulls me close.
“I remember those first days here, in my house. I wanted to kill the man who made you weep like that. Rip his guts out of him. Throw his body in the ditch where I left the boy who made Rosetta cry.”
When he admits to murder, a gallon of blood leaves my heart and flows to the surface of my skin. I’m hot everywhere, and his face is so close he must be able to feel the heat radiate.
“But,” he continues, locking our eyes, “the guts were mine, and suicide is a sin I’m too much of a coward to commit. So I let you cry, and I swore I’d never make you cry again. But the only thing worse than hearing you cry behind that door was when you held it all inside your silence.” He leans away from me a few inches—no more—and releases my arm. “I am sorry for what I stole from you. If I could give it back, I would.”
“Why would you let it happen to Gia?”
“There are things you don’t know.”
“What don’t I know?”
He opens his mouth to answer, then shuts it and takes two steps back.
“Così stanno le cose!” he cries instead. It is what it is.
Maybe he’s right, but it’s bullshit.
“Then what are you worried about?”
“That you’ll try, and I won’t be able to protect you. Violetta, my blood violet, you do not…” He puts his hands on my shoulders and meets my gaze. “You cannot understand what will happen if I stop this marriage for any reason.”
He’s right. I don’t understand anything except the raw panic and truth in his eyes.
“What if I told you”—I lay my hands on his arms—“I don’t want her to cry. Not like I did. And I know you want her to know she’s a debt bride.”
“That’s her father’s choice.”
“Damiano saw me in the hall. He knows I was listening. And I’m just a woman. A mouthy fishwife. If I see Gia tomorrow morning, and I slip and tell her… who’d be surprised?”
His features are utterly still. I can smell the wood burning. I might get this if I’m careful.
“I want Gia better prepared than I was,” I say. “Maybe she’ll like him. Maybe she’ll be thrilled.”
His nod is so slight it would be easily missed if he wasn’t so motionless otherwise. “Do you swear you won’t try to stop the marriage?”
The funny thing is, if you put a gun to my head, I’d say he knows damn well that I intend to throw my entire being into stopping Gia’s wedding to Damiano. His desire to believe me runs hotter than his actual belief.
“Santino,” I say, letting my hands drift to his chest, “how could I even try to pull a stunt like that without your blessing?”
His smile is just short of a laugh. “You want a blessing?”
“I’ll take one if you’re offering.”
“I bless this effort.” He anoints each of my palms with a kiss. “To help my cousin tomorrow. To be a friend to her always.” He presses my hands together. “This morning, you offered your mouth in exchange for a favor.”
“I did.” I move closer to him. He cups my cheek.
“You offered me what is already mine.” His hand slides back and tightens into a fist at the back of my head.
He and I have learned to speak each other’s language, so I know what’s coming when he yanks me to my knees on the hard marble floor. I have no words. My brain can’t make them. My body, however, is clear about what it needs. It’s in the heat of his gaze, the taut restraint in his arms, and the hunger curling his lips.
“This mouth belongs to my cock.” He uses his free hand to open his pants. “Show me what it does when you see it.”
When his dick is out, fisted in all its thick, hard glory, I open my mouth for him. He holds onto my head with terrifying strength and guides his erection along my tongue and back as far as I allow. He pulls halfway out. I breathe, close my lips, and suck on the sweet violence of his cock.
“My cock owns your throat,” he growls, yanking me off. My chin is wet with spit, and when he maneuvers my head by the hair, I am made of firing nerves and boiling blood. “Open up, so I can fuck it.”
He pushes back in. I am unmoving, open lips, tongue down, throat ready to receive as he pushes deeper with each stroke. Holding back a gag, I take all of him until his cock is buried in my face with my nose pressed against him. I can’t breathe, choking even as my clit throbs with want. My vision sparks to black. It’s only then he lets me breathe.
“Whose mouth is this?” He presses it open like he did at our wedding.
“Yours.”
“Don’t ever forget it.”
He takes my throat again and stays there. I am utterly powerless. Completely thoughtless. Lost to his command. Nothing but a vessel, an orifice, for his regal dick to receive pleasure.
He lets me breathe again, and I look up at him in surrender and open my mouth—his mouth—for his indulgence, forgetting everything I intend to do with or without his permission.
“That’s my good wife.” Santino fucks my face in quick thrusts.
His grunts and moans fill the room. I squeeze my eyes tight and focus on flattening my tongue so I can be open for him. A vessel of warm, wet skin.
“Take what I give you. I will paint the back of your throat and you will swallow every drop.”
I take the hammer of his dick and the sticky warmth of his orgasm. My clit engorges so fast it hurts, and he comes inside me. I accept every bit of him. When he pulls out, a line of come drips out from my lips. With his thumb, he brushes it back in, and I suck his thumb while looking up at him from my knees.
“Let the date happen tonight.” He pulls back and puts his dick away. “Go tomorrow. Talk to Gia like a woman, exactly as you say. No more.”
“This is strictly girl stuff.”
He meets my gaze, holds it, and finally puts his hand out to help me up. “Leave Armando home then.”
From his pocket, he produces a ring of keys. He unwinds a black fob with the Mercedes logo and tosses it onto the table. It bounces and stops at the edge as if it would never think to defy him by landing on the floor.
Did I just win?
Is this a false victory?
It has to be, but I dig myself deeper anyway.
“Grazie,” I say, then add the last lie of the conversation. “I won’t let you down.”
“Bene. Allora.” He kisses my cheeks. “I will take a swim, and after that, if you’re naked, I’ll paint your cunt the same color as your throat.”
Together, we laugh at his silly analogy, then he kisses my lips quickly. Without another word, he goes out back,
leaving me alone to slide the fob from the table, wondering why he gave me the car now for a drive tomorrow.
He must trust me.
Poor guy.
12
VIOLETTA
I haven’t driven a car in ages, but the smooth satisfaction of controlling such a powerful object is a fast reminder of how it felt to be free.
Not free enough to stop for a pregnancy test. Or not sneaky enough. Maybe I’m just not brave enough.
There’s nothing to beat myself up about. My period’s late from stress. By the time I get the test, the sheets will be a mess.
“With your parents here, Zio Angelo’s house is too crowded,” I say to myself in the rearview mirror, testing out a cheerful tone for the duration of a red light. “And Santino’s house is too empty with just the two of us.”
At every intersection, I change it up, testing casual distressed, and with a conspiratorial wink. They all sound like baloney, so I give up and figure I’ll let it come to me as it comes. I’ll go with the flow, the way I used to do in nursing school.
I pull up to the house as the sun is getting low in the sky, but the Virgin Mary grotto in Angelo and Anette’s front yard is lit as if it’s the dead of night. At her feet sits a vase of two dozen white roses.
First, Damiano will put the debt money into escrow as an act of good faith, then send flowers. When her father confirms the escrow, he’ll give them to the Virgin.
Shit. This is the Virgin getting white flowers. Not the church. The front yard grotto.
The money is in escrow.
Am I too late? Has the date begun? Does it matter? Once the money is moved, dinner’s just to grease the wheels of the system before it’s time to crush someone.
The minutes that ticked away with Santino’s dick in my mouth could have been used to save Gia. My fingers tighten around the wheel. I push the brake pedal hard at the thought that he did it on purpose—as if I’m within my rights to betray his trust by coming here when I’m not supposed to, but he can’t do the same for his own purposes.
But he could have held on to the car keys.
He could have kept me home by fucking me for hours.
No, Santino did not keep me home an extra ten minutes to sabotage me, but idling in front of the house is self-sabotage at its finest.
Parking the car across the street, I firm my resolve.
I couldn’t protect Rosetta. I won’t lose Gia.
Breathing in a little more courage and out a little more fear, I approach the gate, stopping at the shrine to the Virgin for a word.
“I’m getting you out,” I say, then hop up the stoop to knock with confidence and determination, as if the glue that keeps my insides together isn’t failing.
“Violetta!” Gia throws open the door and smushes herself onto me. We double-kiss cheeks and she beams like one of the Virgin’s new flowers, unaware that she’s getting creamed in a game of bullshitball. “What a great surprise!”
She lets me in and closes the door. Though she’s in heather gray lounge pants and a matching hoodie with a bubblegum pink crown on the left breast, her face is made and her hair has recently experienced the attention of a curling iron.
“I needed to make sure you’re perfect for your date.” I wrangle the most genuine smile I can fake. “And Santino was like…” I mimic his voice and accent, pantomiming him flipping me the keys. “‘Take the car to her, eh?’”
She laughs.
“Tell me!” I demand. “Where are you going? What are you wearing?”
“Come!” She grabs my hand and pulls me past the kitchen.
I wave to Paola and Anette, peek into Tavie’s room to see he’s not there, and let her take me up the narrow, carpeted stairway.
The word QUEEN is stamped across her butt cheeks in pink rhinestones.
“I know you said pants,” she says as we enter her room, which appears to have been a cyclone’s second stop after H&M, “but isn’t this so cute?”
The bed is piled with outfits on hangers. She plucks up a white cotton knee-length dress with an elastic neck that can be pushed over the shoulders and puts it against herself.
“Where are you going to eat?”
“Aldo’s.” She snaps up a yellow bolero jacket and places it on top, twirling in front of the closet mirror.
“What can you eat there that won’t make a mess on white?”
She looks at me, dead serious. “I can handle my sauce.”
I make a doubtful hm and pick up a blue maxi skirt. Maybe she can handle her sauce and maybe skirts are better than pants, but I don’t care what she wears.
“This date,” I say, handing her the skirt and a white jacket so she knows I trust her with tomato sauce, “happened pretty quick. I mean, did he ask you out today for tonight?”
“We’ve been talking all week.” She poses with the maxi and jacket, then tosses the skirt and picks a pink minidress from inside her closet.
“Really?” Not good. If she’s decided she likes him, she’s going to get sucked in no matter what the terms of her father’s deal are.
“He had to talk to my mom and dad before he asked me.” The white jacket gets flung onto the bed, leaving the pink dress alone. “Make sure there were chaperones and… you know how it is.”
“I do know how it is.” I sift through the hangers, using them to divert my attention from my panic, and her attention from my intentions.
She rushes into the half-bathroom with the pink dress and strips with the door open.
“So you like him?” I say, putting things back into the closet.
“He’s so nice. He said I was beautiful, like, a hundred times. And smart. And he speaks to me in, like, this way… like he appreciates me even talking to him. He sent me the most beautiful flowers.”
“The ones out front?”
“Aren’t they gorgeous? And not just one dozen, but two!” She comes out barefooted, wearing pink, and turns to look at her backside in the mirror. “This needs to be, like, two inches shorter.”
“I think if you dress it up with accessories and something over your shoulders, it’ll be good.”
“You’re right!” She rushes back into the bathroom. “You have such good taste!”
She’s about to dive into shark-infested waters. I couldn’t care less what bathing suit she wears when she does it.
Giving up on rehanging everything, I stand in the bathroom doorway as she slides chunky bracelets around her wrist. “Gia, listen, he’s not what you think.”
In the mirror, I see her get immediately defensive. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m sure he likes you, because who wouldn’t?” I try to soften the blow. “But… remember me? My situation?”
“That worked out okay.”
This sucks. I am absolutely, horribly, terrible at subtlety. I have to spit the toad, as Santino would say.
“I overheard something on Sunday.”
She spins to face me, eyes wide. “Was it that he’s Cosimo Orolio’s son?” Before I can deny that’s what I heard, but confirm the truth of it, she spins back to the mirror and continues. “They’re not speaking, and Dami’s so, so sad about it. He wants to get back in his father’s graces and I’m like… can you imagine it, Violetta?” She fluffs her hair and puckers to herself. “If it works out and he gets to be boss of his father’s business, I’ll be just like you!”
“Don’t you remember what it was like for me?”
“I do! But it happened so fast for you. We’ll take our time. Have a real… aahh…” Her face goes blank as she looks for the word. “What’s the word for corteggiamento?”
“Courtship.”
“Right. We’ll go to the other side and get all the things we need for the wedding, like people do and…” Her face goes sympathetic. “Oh, I know what this is about.” She faces me and takes my hands. “I know you didn’t get a real corteggiamento, Violetta. Or the wedding, or the shopping. Please don’t feel jealous. I’d die if you resented me.”
>
I can’t help but be a little resentful that she thinks I’m jealous. “It’s just a date.”
She looks as if I slapped her. I’m not supposed to be pushing her into a corner. I’m supposed to be getting her out of the room she’s trapped in, and I’m about to backtrack and say it could be something. Anything. If she wants the wedding, she should have it…but if she doesn’t?
“Violetta!” Paola stands in the doorway wearing a dress that could have come out of my closet the day after my wedding.
“Mammà!” Gia cries. “Do you like it?” She indicates her outfit, but Paola’s already pecking each of my cheeks.
“Where did you go on Sunday?” she asks. “You didn’t stay for cards.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t feel great.”
She takes a quick glance down—at my belly—and I freeze. Does she see something? Am I carrying Santino’s baby?
Stop it.
Anette, the woman of the house, greets me as family even though we’ve only met once, then she rushes downstairs to put on a pot of water. We all follow.
“So, feeling better?” Paola asks in the stairwell, managing to look at my face, not at my midsection even though she’s a few steps below me. I decide her last meaningful glance wasn’t meaningful at all.
“I think it’s the vacation-itis. Now that I’m back in that big house, it gets a little lonely sometimes. You know Santino… always so busy.”
“He’s a workaholic,” Gia commiserates kindly. “You should come over more.”
“I might come over here and kidnap you to keep me company,” I say when we’re all in the kitchen.
Paola stiffens at the word kidnap. Our eyes meet. She must know how it went for me, and I can only attribute her reaction to concern for her own daughter.
“He’s good to you though?” Paola asks.
The wrong answer will have repercussions. If it’s great with him, then Gia will take that as a sign that forced marriage turns out okay. If it’s terrible, I’ll insult my husband and become the object of pity and possibly scorn for my inability to manage being his wife.
