Page 38 of Mafia Bride
10
VIOLETTA
We’ve been married a week and nothing has changed. He spends most of his time ignoring me, issuing commands, and showing random tiny acts of kindness that make me resent him all the more.
In my childish dreams, the first week of marriage was something worth celebrating. “Look, we did it!” Champagne toasts and looking at photos and eating cake. Celebrating the first week, the first month, the first six months. Enjoying each other’s company.
Instead, I jumpy-clapped when my books arrived, because it’s the first thing that’s made me happy since I was shoved into a car.
My marriage, though I cringe to use the word, is anything but the fantasies I’ve been dreaming up since being trapped in this house like a listless lab rat. Celia won’t even let me cook. She doesn’t say “no” exactly. She just gets this disappointed curl in her voice whenever I tell her I want to.
I can’t even be domesticated properly.
“Let’s go for a swim,” Santino says one evening when he gets back from whatever he does all day. I’m instantly wary. He’s rarely home, and when he is, he barely grunts at me. Even when we eat together he ignores me.
“Why?” I ask, thinking maybe he’s bored already and wants to drown me.
“It’s hot out.” He says it like it’s obvious, and if anything about our situation was normal, it would be.
He holds his hand to the pool I’ve yearned to splash in but have refused to touch. He swims every night. It’s like his private chambers, despite being out in the open. I’m so taken aback that he’s offered it up, I seriously wonder if he intends to use the pool as a murder weapon.
“There should be a swimsuit in the closet,” he says over his shoulder, walking out—as if he’s done stating the obvious and needs action, immediately.
Oh, there is a swimsuit in the closet all right, and it’s as outdated and terrible as everything else in it. I put it on anyway. It’s an old lady suit, designed to hide in.
Maybe that’s for the best. I don’t want him to kill a lustful security guy, and I don’t know what I’ll do if he suddenly rakes his demonic eyes across my body, the way he did when I was on my knees with my breasts exposed.
The suit has blue flowers all over it, like a couch. I’m wearing upholstery.
Still, it is hot, and I’m tired of the house. A dip in the pool, even with the devil himself, sounds refreshing. I could use the fresh air and the sun. Maybe work on a tan. Pretend I’m in Greece instead of prison.
Standing by the diving board, fully dressed, Santino laughs as soon as he catches sight of me walking onto the concrete patio. His face splits open, like another face taking over. Gone is the asshole, and in his place, a beautiful charmer.
I’m not supposed to like my captor.
“This is what you left for me up there.”
“Get in.”
“Not yet.”
Not ever, is what I want to say. The water is his, but he can’t keep the sun from me. He doesn’t own the afternoon sun, the breeze, the cloudless blue sky. Those I can keep. Those I enjoy.
“You women and your tans,” Santino scoffs, but it almost sounds playful.
He sheds his shirt, revealing a light line of hair in the center of his chest that continues between tight, beautiful abs where it disappears under his waistband. He slides out of his pants to reveal the same tight suit I see from my room, and dives into the water like a knife gutting a fish.
As I do upstairs, I hold my hands out to try to block him out, erase him, imagine a world without him in it. But my hands are the wrong proportion this close. Santino is too big, too powerful, too enigmatic to hide behind such small palms.
My world is too full of Santino DiLustro and I hate it.
He does a few laps, and I would rather stare directly into the sun than continue watching him. He moves like a shark—silent, deadly, efficient.
I was never much of a swimmer—never had lessons. Rosetta joined the swim team when we were kids and encouraged me to do it with her, but I would rather read poetry than feel like I’m fighting against the water in a gross community pool.
The heat of the day pushes me closer to the immaculately cared for pool with a very well-washed owner.
Or so I assume. His hair usually has a nice just-been-washed quality, and he always smells of soap and cologne. Not that I’ve noticed. Often.
