Page 12 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"I know."
"Bella, listen." She stopped mid-drag. "You can't hit back."
"What do you mean, I can't hit back?"
"If you hit back, you confirm exactly what she wants to confirm—that you're an insecure girl. You don't hit back, you answer. There's a big difference."
"Fra…"
"You're Valentina Rossi. You spent five years in a convent listening to the Mother Superior tell you that a good woman doesn't answer back. You can answer in your sleep."
I laughed.
"You should write a book."
"I should've been a lawyer. Third: Luca."
"No..."
"Bella."
"No."
"Bella." She paused. "Did you feel something when he took your elbow?"
I stayed quiet, staring at the ceiling.
"Fra..."
"No. Listen," she said slowly. "You don't have to suppress it, amore. You just have to hold off on deciding. Feeling something isn't the same as being something. You feel it, you note it, and you move on."
"Okay."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"And open my letter before Friday."
"Why?"
"Because I said so, and because I know you."
Friday, seven in the evening.
I came down the marble staircase in a wine-red dress Lina had finished altering two hours earlier—long, bare shoulders, low back, a slit up the side of the skirt that stopped a millimeter short of indecent. Because if Bianca was coming dressed for war, I wasn't going to show up in a school uniform.
The Morettis' dining room stood open—a forty-foot table set for sixteen, crystal candelabra with the candles already lit, antique silver, crystal glasses in four sizes per guest, white flowers with a scent that filled the room. Two soldiers at the door, black suits, hands folded. A white-gloved maître d'.
I stopped in the doorway and looked in.
Salvatore Rossi, my father, stood talking with an older man—bald, short, round glasses—who had to be the consigliere Acquaviva. My father turned when I came in, and his eyes traveled down the dress. His mouth didn't move; he didn't even greet me.
Raffaele came toward me first.
"Cognatina." He kissed my hand. "You're dangerous tonight."
"That was the plan."
