He puts the rings in his pocket. “I took her to the other side to get things for the wedding. Lace and almond confetti. Please sit.”
I can’t even believe what a different world she lived in with him.
“So she knew?” I decide to go for his jugular without thinking too long about it. “Or did you just rape her outright?”
“Shut your mouth.” He bolts to standing as if ejected from his seat.
“You did,” I say with one finger up in his face.
“Never. And don’t you ever even say it again.”
“Then you killed her, and took me to get your debt paid.”
“You do not know!” He leaves the sentence without specifics, as if to say it’s not that I’m missing any particular knowledge, but that I—Violetta Moretti—just don’t know.
“You do not know, Santino.” My voice hits the ceiling and bounces back twice as strong. “You do not talk. You do not explain. I don’t want to hear it.” I jut my arms forward and push him. He barely moves, as if he knows I’m lying. I need to hear it. “You can justify yourself to God.”
“I will.” He takes my wrists in a tight grip. “I will be judged by God and sent to hell by Him. Not by you.”
“Fuck you.”
I try to knee him in the balls, fail, twist, and wind up on my back on the floor with him straddling me at the hips and pinning my wrists above my head. His chest heaves. His eyes are feral. I can hear his pulse roar in his veins.
I am an animal under him, freeing my left wrist for a moment, but he catches it and stops trying to restrain me while his attention is on my clenched fist. He lets my right arm go and reaches into his pocket to retrieve my rings.
“You took these off.”
I say nothing. I have nothing new to add.
“Open.” He shakes my wrist, but I don’t obey. “Violetta.” My name is a warning.
“You stole my sister from me.” The words come out in a spitty, hissy mess. Angry, hot tears well up in my eyes. “You stole my family from me. You stole my life. And you had the audacity to act like your hands were clean this whole time. Fuck. You.”
I spit in his face with the same strength I used to spit on the picture of him and my father, leaving a stringy K from his eyebrow to his upper lip.
He looks as if he’s going to send me to meet my sister.
Instead, he growls one word through clenched teeth. The line of spit moves with his lips. “Open.”
My defiance is used up, and I open my left hand so he can jam the rings onto the fourth finger.
“The only way these rings come off is if someone cuts off the finger. Do you understand?” He leans down so close to me that, if I wanted to, I could lick my spit off his face.
“I’ll keep Rosetta’s ring to remember her.”
With a jerk, he stands over me—one foot on either side of my chest like a highway viaduct over a barren field of rage—slips a handkerchief out of his pocket, and wipes his face.
“You were not the only one on this planet to experience grief.”
Lying on the dining room floor with throbbing wrists and heavy breaths, I stare at the flat white ceiling with the unlit, dripping-crystal chandelier in the center. Sunlight creeps in through from the south, where the glass patio doors face onto the pool.
“But it’s mine,” I say. “She was my sister, and it’s my grief.”
“It’s mine too.”
This truth colors him like a dye that seeps from the inside out. His grief is mine, but it’s not just for Rosetta. It’s for the father he never knew and the mother who abandoned him, for his own disappointments and brokenness.
“I am sorry for your loss, Violetta. I am truly sorry.” He reaches down to help me up.
I don’t want any part of this anymore. How did I even get trapped here? I don’t want grief. I want to be as mad as I deserve to be.
I take his hand and let him help me stand. He leans his face close to my head. My scalp tingles at the closeness of his lips, but I remain ramrod-straight, my own lips tight and my body unyielding. I expect a kiss, but it never lands.
Instead, he whispers, “Forzetta.”
He pulls something out of his pocket and lays it next to my plate. Its glass is a shimmering mirage—a portal back into my old life.
My phone.
“I know you’ve been lonely,” he says. “This house isn’t meant to be a prison for you. But make sure Armando is with you.”
“For my protection.” I touch the hard glass. It responds by lighting up. The wallpaper is of me and a stranger I once knew named Scarlett. He’s kept it charged.
I look up at him. He seems hopeful, like a dog offering a thrown stick and expecting pats on the head or a big sloppy kiss. But he’s just returning what’s rightfully mine. I cannot arrange my features into the look of gratitude he’s hoping for. I can’t even thank him.
A few months ago, I would have already been texting Scarlett and calling the Zs, eagerly scrolling through Instagram to see what everyone had been up to in my absence. Now the phone feels as though it belongs to someone else—the carefree American girl I was at the beginning of the summer. She’s gone. But I’m not the fulfilled Italian wife either. I’m stuck somewhere between, and this phone won’t do a damn thing but remind me of who I’m not, and never will be again.
There’s a long, awkward pause as all my apps glow under my fingertips, crying to be the first one open. I can’t bear it.
Santino rakes his gaze over me, and for an instant, the heat between us returns. I remember with aching clarity why I gave myself to him, and the tidal force with which he took that gift. Will I ever be strong enough to withstand the riptide of his eyes?
He did a decent thing, but that does not mean he is decent. A kind gesture does not make him good. A kiss from him does not mean he is loving.
Just because he is Santino does not mean I have to revere him.
No matter how badly my body wants him. How badly it wants to rip him out of that fancy suit and beg him to pleasure me as punishment for the horrible things he’s done.
I turn the phone glass-side down, tap it, then push it away a few inches. “Anything else?”
“Celia will be out tonight,” he says. “So you will make dinner.”
Was this supposed to be the bargain? Giving me my phone so I’d cook for him, like this marriage is something other than blasphemy and parody?
He doesn’t wait for me to agree, because I don’t have a choice.
Every step he takes to the foyer is a poem to grace, power, and desire.
I hate him and I want him, because I am a profoundly fucked-up woman.
3
VIOLETTA
The phone gives me no joy. The emails are all business, internships I can’t apply for and opportunities for other students. Social media makes me sad. Scarlett and the few other friends I have are far away. None would understand.
If this were a different marriage, preparing a traditional dinner for my husband would be one of my great joys. But how can I square that with my desire to never give Santino pleasure of any kind, ever again?
My zia taught me how to stem herbs, string braciole, and balance a sauce. On our last day together in the basement kitchen, surrounded by friends and family, the comfort of our hearts, she knew she was about to lose me. She made a feast anyway.