“I think you must’ve been having a bad dream.”
“Yes.” He brought a trembling hand up to his face and rubbed a hand over the scruff of his short beard.
“Her name was Dahlia, right?” I asked, and he nodded, bringing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them. He squeezed his eyes shut and rested his forehead on his knees, rolling himself into a ball. It reminded me of something a child might do. I sat beside him on the bed, skimming one of my hands over his bare expanse of back. He froze when I touched him but didn’t flinch, so I continued my faint caresses. “What happened to her?”
Romeo remained silent for so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. Eventually he did, though he kept his face hidden. “Giving birth to Natalia.” My main memory of Romeo’s younger sister was when she’d cried over the body of his slain brother Gianni. “Something went wrong. Even though she was in the hospital. They saved my sister but…”
He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. “How old were you when this happened?”
“Six. She was… she was everything my father isn’t. Kind. Affectionate. Good. When she died, any decency my father had inside him died, too.” He spoke to his knees, keeping his voice soft and low.
I didn’t reply. As far as I was concerned, Angelo Cavetti was the devil incarnate.
“Do you remember when we met and I told you I’d become crueler, more malicious?”
“Yes.”
“I made you swear to stay with me anyway, no matter what I did, no matter how sadistic I became. And although I know you’ve hated me and even wished me dead at times, you have.”
It was true, even if it shouldn’t be. Being held captive as I’d been hadn’t exactly offered me much of a choice.
“I’m like him now,” Romeo went on. “My father. Ever since I followed his instructions and killed yours.”
I gaped at him then, despite the fact that he couldn’t see me staring. I’d always assumed Romeo had murdered my father out of rage and malice, as retribution for his brother. But to learn that it’d actually been because of Angelo… Maybe it shouldn’t make any difference to me one way or the other, but it did. As the children of patriarchs, we were duty bound to carry out their wishes. And as the male heir, Romeo in particular would have so many demands placed upon his shoulders. The weight of them must’ve been heavy, must still be heavy.
“I knew this would happen. That any light within me would become eclipsed by the darkness. That even though I hate Angelo, I’ve become more and more similar to him. My mother would be heartbroken if she were here to see it. She used to tell me that I was good, that she loved me. But there is nothing good inside me anymore. It’s all warped and ruined. Especially now. If there ever was any goodness there, it’s all gone.”
“It’s not,” I argued with him, without even understanding why. Instead of arguing back, he raised his head and looked at me. The lower half of his face remained shadowed, but the moonlight shined on his eyes, and I saw unshed tears in them.
“How can you believe that?” he asked next, his voice cracking. Maybe due to this, I felt brave enough to answer him with unflinching candor.
“Because of how much this is disturbing you. If you had become as evil as your father, you wouldn’t question your actions, you’d simply keep going forward with no remorse.”
Abruptly, he banded his arms around me and stationed me in his lap. While he held me close, for once, he didn’t hold me too tightly, didn’t bruise me with his grip. Instead, he buried his face in my neck and inhaled deeply as if breathing me in.
“I was wrong about you. The first day we met I thought you were this fragile creature I could possess who had no will of her own, but the opposite is true. You are strong and determined. Resilient. Even after what you’ve been through—what I put you through. If there is anything good within me, it’s because of you.” His words were so kind and so heartfelt that my own eyes began to sting.
For a long while, we sat there together, Romeo’s arms around me on his mattress. Then, he drew his lips along my collarbone and up the column of my throat. With leisurely deliberation, he removed my clothes and then his, and started to make love to me. It was unlike any sexual experience we’d had before. There was no rushing, no roughness, none of his characteristics needed to dominate me. Instead, his movements were tender and gentle, even reverent. And as he reached his peak of completion, he took me with him, both of us calling out the other’s name at the same time.
The next morning when I reached for him to find his side of the bed empty, I wondered if it’d all been a fantasy of mine, a figment of my imagination. Romeo stood by his dresser fully dressed in his typical finely tailored suit, and I threw on a robe, hurrying over to help him with his cufflinks as he’d always expected. When I straightened his tie for him, his eyes met mine and he smiled.
“Thank you, farfalla,” he said, and my jaw dropped in surprise. Somehow, I offered him a mumbled, “You’re welcome,” but this was the first time he’d ever shown me even a modicum of gratitude or appreciation since we’d met. I didn’t know what to make of it.
“Also, I’m sorry about yesterday. Something came up, and I had to postpone our plans.”
I peeked up at him blankly. “Plans?”
“To have Chiara and Alessandra over to visit you. I’ll remedy that today. In fact…” He glimpsed at his watch. “I’ll take care of that within the hour.” He brushed a quick peck of a kiss to my forehead. “See you soon.”
Once he’d departed, I went to sit on his enormous suede sectional lost in my thoughts. This sweeter version of Romeo was throwing me for a loop. Would he stay this way or revert back to the cold and much more vicious man I’d been dealing with since the beginning of our association? I wanted the sweeter version, but I didn’t trust things to stay the way I wanted them. The change could be some temporary fluke, then I’d feel crushed when everything went back to how it used to be.
Yet I felt hope rising within me, despite how dangerous I knew it to be.
16
Romeo
I felt a strange sensation when I stood off to the side and observed Lucia hugging her twin sisters. I didn’t know or really care about Chiara or Alessandra, and yet seeing the relief and joy Lucia expressed at the three of them being reunited made my chest burn. Part of it was jealousy of their closeness with my farfalla. That emotion, I was all too familiar with. But the feelings I experienced outside of that felt foreign and unknowable.
I left without drawing attention to myself.
After that, I made arrangements for the Bonifacio women to share time together more frequently. I’d asked my bride-to-be if she had any requests where our upcoming nuptials were involved, and when she told me her ideas, I promised to honor them as much as I could. I enjoyed seeing her smile at me, and lately, that smile had become not some plastered on caricature of a positive emotion, but the real thing.
I looked in on Giorgio, who was now gradually recovering back in Lucia’s original room. Though I didn’t care much about what happened to him myself, knowing how Lucia would react to seeing him in a less than healthy state spurred me to place myself between her brother and the inflicting of harm. So far, my father had fulfilled his promise, but I knew he would break it if the mood struck, if only to reassert his power.