Prologue
SANTINO
When I lay eyes on Violetta in her uncle’s hallway, it’s not a woman I see. She is a child clawing her way up the far side of the cliff to adulthood, like the sun just cresting the horizon line, casting a new glow on the world.
She is an unfinished transformation. I’m aware of the pressure of her adolescence pushing against the child hard enough to break it, but in that moment, the change setting upon her is not what moves me.
On that day, in the hallway, she is not a human with a body rushing through the stages of life, rising sun after rising sun, changing with the persistence of a ticking clock. She is something more.
I’m at that house to bind myself to a treasure I promised to secure and protect. Every black-veiled nonna and hot-barreled soldier will murder and die for it. It is our power, and it’s been left to me. I’ve come for what’s mine.
But when I see Violetta, the womanchild with more power and darkness in her eyes than I’ve seen in assassin or priest, I know she is eternal darkness and everlasting light.
Fate has sent me there to protect a treasure, and it is not hard stones or cold metal.
It is Violetta Moretti.
1
SANTINO
Under the cluster of three pines, right after the hard left, the tree’s roots have broken free of the cliff and reach for passing cars. Even if you get around them without getting the driver’s side door ripped off, you still have to be alert, especially at sunset, because that’s where the hill turns into a mountain. You have to change gears, get the fuck out of the way of the roots, and avoid oncoming cars silently hurtling down an extreme grade, in neutral, with their headlights still off.
I’ve driven this road unscathed many times at every time of day, but for no good reason at all, its treachery has never felt more dangerous than this evening. Bringing the car to a full stop—at the risk of getting rear-ended—to peer around the corner like a student driver seems like the only way to reach the top.
As the bumps under the tires thp-thp-thp and my mind molds three words into them, I realize why I took such care. I don’t want to die with the words la tua bella in my thoughts, sounding like Violetta’s acid-laced voice.
They’re the only words she’s spoken to me in five days.
We eat dinner at the same table. I compliment her dress or hair, and she replies with la tua bella. When I say good night, she says la tua bella. When I tell her to look at me, she whispers la tua bella. The only time she’s said anything different was when I asked her if she wanted me to tell her about Rosetta.
She said yes.
But I couldn’t give up my position. I demanded she speak to me in full sentences first. She cast her eyes down and repeated the same three words, and I walked away rather than give more than I was taking.
Even then, I knew it wasn’t a good decision, but I was unable to change it. I’m a car with broken brakes, speeding ahead in the half hour between day and night when you can get away without headlights, whipping around curves on blind faith.
La tua bella la tua bella la tua bella.
My job is to protect her. All she has to do is obey me.
But what’s driving me to madness is wanting what I was never entitled to and never expected.
Her love.
I need her to love me but, because of how I took her and what I’ve hidden, she’s incapable of opening her heart.
I slow down and drop into a familiar driveway on the side of the hill, pulling up to the house I signed over the day after I bought it. All the lights are on and Loretta’s already waiting for me in a jacket, slacks, and bare feet.
“Ciao.” I kiss her cheeks. “Your shoes.”
“I just got home from work.” She goes inside. Once I close the door, we fall into speaking Italian. “You still have perfect timing.”
“I won’t keep you long.”
“Too bad. Will you take an espresso?”
“Si, grazie.”
We are in the kitchen now. She’s put on slippers. Our habits together are the same. I’m leaning against the counter and she’s filling the Moka with water, not looking at me, as if my presence functions as audience to her femininity, not a participant in the scene.
“You know where the sambuca is,” she says with a jerk of her chin toward a familiar cabinet. “If you want to correct it.”
“No.” I tsk, softening the refusal. It’s one of the ticks I never thought about until Violetta.
“You’re such a good boy now.” She scoops dark brown powder into the Moka pot, baiting me, then glances over with a shrug. “So what brings you, at this hour, to my house on the hill?”
“A favor.”
“Of course. What is it this time? More clothes to burn in the fireplace?”
“Easier.”
“How exciting.” She’s droll, turning the knob on the stove. It clicks, but no flame appears. She sighs, tries again.
“I have it,” I say, getting the stainless steel Zippo from my breast pocket. I turn on the gas and flick it. The burner flame appears with a whoosh and I step out of her way.
She doesn’t move though. She just stands there, looking at me.
“I heard what happened in Amalfi,” she says. “With Siena.”
“Women gossip too much.”
“I heard it from a man.” She adjusts the pot on the burner. “You should have told her, you know.”
La tua bella
“Why should wives know everything?”
Her scoff is so slight, I would have missed it if I didn’t know her so well.
“What good would it do?” I add when she takes down two cups instead of answering.
“What’s the favor?” She places the cups on a tray.
“I want you to talk to Violetta. Woman to woman.”
“About?” She grabs a lemon from the fruit bowl. “Limone?”
“Si.” Telling her seems redundant, and the request itself is humiliating. She can’t refuse me, but the danger is Loretta will tell one too many people he has no control over his wife. The Moka spits steam. “She needs to know why.”
“Why her sister was first? Why she was in Italy? Why she died there?” She peels a curl of skin from the lemon. “Because no one knows the real answers to these questions.”
“She needs to…” I clench my jaw so hard against the list of humiliating answers, I can’t finish.
Talk to me? Listen to me? Love me?
Did I come all the way up this mountain to ask this shameful favor? I’m not going to beg any woman or man to help with my own house.
“She wasn’t raised right,” I say, forcing my jaw loose. “She doesn’t know the way things are.”
“Does she not know? Or not accept?”
Loretta picks up the tray and takes it outside without another word. I grab the full bottle of sambuca and follow. Despite my earlier refusal, I’m going to need to correct the espresso.
When I get outside into the humid night air, I smell the roses around the patio and the rosemary from the herb garden. I hear crickets calling to get laid. All of it is to be expected, but knowing the smells and sounds of the place makes the difference more clear.