Page 19 of Mafia Bride
Santino knew I was coming. He’d prepared.
Fuck.
A loud splash echoes from below, and I run to the window to look down at the pool. In a tight black bathing suit, my captor slices through the water like a javelin. His body is long and lean, tightly coiled under the shimmering surface. He’s a missile of speed and grace, underwater for the entire length of the pool.
My palms press against the glass, blocking him out, erasing him so I can imagine a world without his brutality in it.
It’s useless. He has to know I’m up here, but he doesn’t even glance up at the woman whose life he just ruined.
That is perhaps his deepest cruelty.
After a few laps, he springs to the surface of the opposite side, shakes his hair out, and pulls himself out of the water. He takes a towel from a smooth wooden trunk, dries off, and walks back inside without looking up once.
No reassurance. No apology for his staff manhandling me like a criminal. No acknowledgement whatsoever. As if I’m nothing to him but the repayment of my uncle’s debts.
He had no right to take me, even by our rules, yet he did.
I’m a prisoner of a man too beautiful for human eyes and more evil than I can comprehend.
My eyelids droop and my limbs lose strength. I’m sapped of every bit of energy so quickly I can barely keep myself upright.
I know trauma shock when I see it, and right now, my body’s shutting down for its own survival. I can’t fight it, but I don’t want to get into the bed he prepared for me. Under his covers, his tacky damask sheets. I’m not going to wear the nightgowns he imagined for me or bathe in the water pushed through his pipes. When I pee, I don’t let my ass touch his toilet and my teeth won’t fall out if I skip a night brushing.
Exhausted, traumatized, and deep in shock, I drag myself to the corner and fall asleep with my back to the wall and my ass on the floor. I’m unconscious before I can even get uncomfortable.
6
VIOLETTA
“Hi,” the moon says in the voice of Elettra. “Hey, Violetta?”
Am I even sleeping? Of course I am. I was up all night in some traumatized fugue, and it was all a dream and now I have to get up and make a big dinner. Zio will tell me to study and Zia will demand my help in the kitchen. Then Santino will show up and take me away.
“Come on,” Elettra says, but not from the moon this time. “You have to get up.”
Opening my eyes is the biggest mistake of my life, because the first thing I see is the damask on the queen-size bed. I had no color in the moonlight, but the day illuminates the red and gold the night hid.
“I have your dress,” the voice says. It’s not Elettra, and she’s not speaking English. It’s Italian. I translated it in my sleep.
She’s about seventeen with curly brown hair and big brown eyes. Her brows are trimmed and her lips are full and lined. She seems fucking delighted to be here. Great. Another psychopath.
“Who are you?” I ask in English. She takes a moment to understand me and answers haltingly in my language.
“I am Gia.” She presses her hand to her chest.
“Go away, Gia.” I try to crawl into the corner, but all that does is make me realize how much my body aches. She turns to the open closet door, the top of which I can see over the ridge of the bed, then back to me.
“Re Santino said I have to…nnn.” She shakes her hands as if they’re wet and she can’t find the towel. “How do you say…?” Her face twists in distress.
“You can speak Italian. I understand.Io capire.” I don’t bother to conjugate the verb, but I know she gets it when her hands go still, and she looks relieved.
“Allora,” she stands. “I understand if you talk slow. And anyway, I have to practice.”
“Fine.”
“I picked a dress. I hope you like it!”
“What dress?” I stretch my legs, but I’m not ready to get up. If I stand, I’ll have to leave the hope that this is all a dream.
