8. Contessa
8
Contessa
Even kidnapping can become routine.
I pass the days with Ava, who helps me spend Salvatore’s money on expensive shoes and luxury makeup and other bullshit I try to use to ruin his credit score. No matter what I’ve asked for, she’s yet to turn down a single request. Apparently, Salvatore really does mean it: as long as it doesn’t violate his rules, I can have whatever I want. If only I knew what to ask for.
I have a growing collection of books to pass the time, and they even give us a squat, old-school TV with a thick body and round screen that sometimes gives a static shock if you touch it.
Ava and I fondly name it The Beast. It gets only a handful of channels and is mostly good for filling the silence with background noise.
Out of all the things Ava brings me, the most important one—besides panties—is art supplies.
If I have to pass the endless hours, I may as well pass them by doing something I’m passionate about. I’m allowed paint and soft pencils, though Ava has to sharpen them for me each night. My art makes me feel like myself, even if it doesn’t make the hours any shorter.
At night, Salvatore and I have dinner.
For dessert, Salvatore has me.
Routine.
Until today, at 3:00 PM, several hours before he’s supposed to arrive, Salvatore opens my door and informs me that there’s going to be a family dinner, and that I need to be dressed for the occasion.
He adds, “wear this,” and leaves a small box on the dresser.
The door closes before I have time to question or argue.
In the box, I find an engagement ring. The sheer size of it stuns me before the implication can, my eyes blowing wide—as if that is the only way to see all of it at once. I can’t imagine the cost, the pristine, thick diamond set against simple, delicate coils of white gold.
And Salvatore has left it here, with me.
It burns in my hands. I know it’s a prop, just a message. Something to appease the family.
No matter how beautiful it is, I don’t want to play along and act complicit in any of this. I put it back in the box. The shine catches my eye even from across the room, so I go back and snap the lid shut for good measure.
I’m stunned that Salvatore thinks any of this is a good idea, ring or no ring. Parading me around on his arm already, in front of his family. I could say anything to them. I could do anything. I could humiliate him, or scream at them all, or act like an absolute animal while eating dinner with my bare hands and gargling my drink.
…but I know, deep down, I will do none of that.
I will be good.
Maybe if I pretend it’s self-preservation instead of perversion, I’ll even feel better about it.
I dress early. Salvatore is lucky that Ava is perceptive and knows just what I need—otherwise, I’d be without jewelry or a tasteful perfume, none of which his own men had been insightful enough to get me.
As I double-check my appearance in the full-length mirror, a commotion outside draws my attention to the window. I open up the glass and lean out, looking down in the front yard where a rowdy little boy comes barreling up the driveway. A girl, maybe an older sister, wanders behind.
The boy yells again.
A pitched, “Uncle Sal!” rings out across the estate, his little legs pumping as hard as they can carry him.
It doesn’t register who the boy could possibly be talking about until he tackles himself, full speed, into the dark figure just on the edge of where I can see. I’m floored as I watch Salvatore—‘ Uncle Sal’ —lift up the boy and spin him around with a roar.
“I got a scar like yours now,” I hear the boy boast, pointing somewhere near his chin.
“He ran into a table,” the sister drawls.
“No, I didn’t!”
“That’s how I got mine, too,” the man says, wheeling the boy around.
It’s Salvatore’s face, his voice, but it can’t be him. My brain can’t process it, can’t make the puzzle pieces fit together. They’re not just the wrong shape, I’m not even sure they fit the same picture.
Whoever that man is—Salvatore or not—I’ve never met him before in my life.
So stunned, I almost don’t notice the third figure that comes walking up the driveway with angry, quick steps. The woman is escorted by two men carrying the family’s luggage from the car. Her dark jacket sways with every step, tall boots marching without pause. Sunglasses hide her face beneath dyed, blonde fringe. Salvatore says something to her, something I can’t hear through the distance and the boy yelling about getting to leave school—but the woman does not look at him, does not speak to him.
In the floors below, the front door slams so hard, it rattles the floorboards beneath my feet.
The muffled sound of children fills the house after that. I hear the occasional yell or little feet running up and down distant hallways. Another hour or so passes before I hear a different tread of footsteps in the hall—for my own sanity, I’ve hidden all the clocks in the room. Time and I are not on speaking terms.
I’ve spent my endless afternoon looking into the mirror more than Narcissus himself; I’ve gone back and forth between dresses, twisted my hair into different styles, and recolored my nails twice over. I’ve pulled my hair up, allowing only a few strands to hang loose around my visible collarbones.
I am finally forced to go back and confront the ring.
It feels heavy and awkward on my finger, as though it doesn’t belong there. I debated wearing it but eventually, I gave in. It’s just a meaningless, expensive rock, and it’s not worth making waves over. Not when I have a chance to prove that I can be compliant even when outside of these four walls.
Salvatore enters the room. The time for second-guessing is up. I stand, braced for his judgment. His eyes sweep over the evening gown I’ve chosen—my biggest uncertainty. All those dark, sensual pieces that his men picked out hang ignored in the wardrobe. Instead, I’ve chosen one of the gowns that Ava bought at my request: simple and champagne colored, its nearly sheer material weightless, with a subtle beading running through the design.
If I’m going to present myself before his family, I am not going to do it in a dark, bold piece that makes Salvatore and I look like a packaged deal. Instead, I hope the dress sets me apart from these people, from this life—I want it to say I’m innocent in all of this .
I watch his face, my breath held, uncertain if he will approve.
He slams the door shut with one hand without ever taking his eyes off me.
I jump at the sudden noise, Salvatore prowling further into the room. My silver stilettos wobble uncertainly beneath me. I beg them not to give up on me now.
“What?” I ask, my heart pounding from the look on his face.
“You’re really going to test me tonight, aren’t you?” he growls lowly. I still can’t decide if he’s upset or not, my pulse rocketing as I try to read him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You want me to sit next to you in this all evening and still keep my hands off you?” His huge hands wrap around my waist, pulling us body to body. “Dolled up like a fucking princess tempting the dragon.”
Shit . I didn’t consider that angle. I always ignored the silly title that some people call the daughters of a don— princesses . But Salvatore is right, I am one tiara away from a subtle princess aesthetic.
His hand finds the slit in the dress that shows my thigh, and for the first time, I notice his black leather gloves. The cold touch travels up until his fingers hit the barrier of my panties.
“What are you doing?” I ask him in a hot breath, pushing his hands away. “Aren’t you supposed to be dragging me to some dinner?”
“I don’t want anything between me and your cunt.” He tugs at them again.
“Don’t,” I whisper, my hands wrapping around his huge wrists and thick watch. We lean into the moment, our heads bowed together, foreheads almost touching. The negotiation wavers between us, silent and heavy. I know he wants me like this, and I feel like I’m crashing into his gravity, drawn into the black hole of his full suit and subtle cologne.
I can’t go without panties. Especially if he’s going to start dirty talking me before we even sit down for the appetizers, though I keep that criticism to myself. I linger in the moment, trying to think—though he makes that frustratingly difficult. What would Salvatore do? How do I give him what he wants in order to get my way?
“If I don’t wear panties to dinner, how will you take them off me with your teeth afterwards?” I ask softly. The vanilla-flavored question is the closest thing to dirty talking I’ve ever managed.
Salvatore’s gaze meets mine. I can see the judgment passing—the consideration working beneath that dark stare. I catch the glint of his teeth as he finally steps back.
“What?” I’m instantly defensive. Embarrassment runs hot up my neck. I don’t know how to talk like him, how to just drop the word pussy and cunt in every other sentence like they’re a part of polite, everyday conversation.
“I’m starting to think they were right all along—I am a bad influence.”
“So, I can keep them on…?”
He nods.
He offers me his arm. “Let’s go, princess. You and your panties are required downstairs.”
A rowdy conversation arises in the dining hall as we approach. It pinches my heart with nostalgia, the raucous sound of a family seated around a table, arguing, laughing, swapping stories. It brings memories I thought I felt indifferent about. Nostalgia casts so much history in a soft, rosy light.
Salvatore’s labyrinth house opens up into a wide room with crystalline light dancing on the walls. The massive chandeliers seem merely average in a room of this size.
The family is already seated. If I look too quickly, just out of the corner of my eye, this could be my own family. It is, at its heart, the reason none of this mafia business has ever made sense to me. People who share the same features, the same ancestry, the same desires and struggles—all determined to kill each other over the insignificant details that set them apart.
How can you war with another family when it’s just a mirror of your own? Your own children? Your own parents?
No matter how much my father tried to show me, I couldn’t see it the way he did.
The men seated around the tables have all dressed similarly, dark suit jackets and white undershirts, with black gloves and dress shoes. The women have no set dress code, but I notice a couple in gangster attire, wearing suspenders and gloves alongside the men.
When Salvatore and I enter, the boisterous conversation dies. The talking dries up into a yawning silence. Like something out of a bad dream, every person in the room turns to stare at me.
My eyes sweep across the faces of strangers. I see the truth written in their stunned reactions, their utter disbelief: Salvatore didn’t warn them I would be attending the family dinner. I am a surprise.
My heart leaps into my throat.
There are so many of them that two long tables are necessary to fit everyone. Only a handful of chairs sit empty, set with plates but no one to fill them. Salvatore guides my numb feet to his place at the head of the table. I pass Ava—the only person who smiles at me. She’s painfully far from where I’m seated.
On this end of the table, the age range skews upwards. Seamlessly, a young man in fashionable glasses and a model’s face rises from his adjacent seat and pulls it out for me.
Anticipating the need for me to sit next to Salvatore, he gives up his seat graciously.
Though the chair beside me is empty, the man doesn’t take it. There’s a shuffle of commotion and confusion as the seating arrangement shifts. A place is made for him, a chair plucked out of the ether.
My seat faces an older woman in a wheelchair. She looks at me like she’s smelled something particularly foul.
Salvatore takes his seat at the head of the table.
Silence wavers.
I glance down the long line of faces, trying to make sense of the people staring back at me. To my right, beyond the empty seat, is the woman from the driveway. She’s still in those dark shades despite being indoors. The little boy is seated next to her, his face lit up by a phone screen.
No one has dared to touch the food or drinks. The woman sighs loudly and reaches over the table to take a bottle of wine. The entire room fills with nothing but the soft glug of alcohol pouring into her glass, the minute stretching on and on. She doesn’t stop until it’s dangerously filled to the brim.
I am suddenly grateful for the empty seat between me and her.
“If you’re all this silent, someone better be saying grace,” Salvatore says, his strong voice filling up the room.
The mood shifts tentatively. Talking erupts at the other table. Low whispers run through the end of ours. But the head of the table, the people gathered around me and Salvatore, remain silent and still.
“If we get the introductions out of the way, maybe you can all close your mouths long enough to chew your food,” Salvatore says, and begins to motion around the table. “Contessa, this is Cecilia, my great-aunt,” he says of the ancient woman in the wheelchair. I smile at her.
She does not smile back.
“Next to you is my charming sister, Vera.”
Vera doesn’t acknowledge him.
“And those are her children—Nate and Lana.” The little boy waves at me, sweetly oblivious to the tension radiating around the room. Lana is older, sharper, and she simply looks at me with the same distrustful look everyone else is wearing.
“That’s Marcel, whose seat you took. My consigliere. ”
Ava’s brother, I realize. At second glance, I can see the relation, though their age difference is obvious. Marcel is tall and strong compared to his sister’s short, mousey stature, but they share a similar warm complexion, the same high cheekbones and hazel eyes. Marcel lifts his drink in acknowledgment,
“The pleasure’s mine,” he says, the greeting warm amidst everyone else’s cold attitudes.
Like Salvatore, the tense atmosphere doesn’t seem to touch him, his smile professionally pleasant. “My sister talks highly of you. Thank you for keeping her in good company these past few days.”
It seems Marcel got all the confidence between the siblings.
“She’s wonderful,” I agree. “We always find some way to pass the time.”
I wish he was sitting closer, another barrier between me and all these hateful stares.
Further down the table, I spy Ava again, and even Noctus, wrapped up in conversation with a bunch of rowdy men. His little brother is nowhere to be seen.
“A Lovera at my dinner table,” Cecilia finally says, as if she’s been fighting the urge to speak for the last several minutes. The ridicule wavers in her high, posh voice. She reminds me of a buzzard, in those dark feathery clothes, her throat wobbling with every word. “We may as well open up the kennels and let the dogs have a chair as well.”
“ Can we ?” Salvatore’s nephew asks eagerly, the insult flying over his little head. Vera shushes him sharply.
“Mrs. Cecilia,” Marcel interrupts quickly, “I think you’re confused. Would you like to get some air?” He pushes out his chair, but Cecilia digs her bony fingers around the wheels of her chair, holding it firmly.
“Absolutely not,” she snaps. “I won’t be taken away from my own family table, so some Lovera brat can sit at it instead.”
I stare at my plate, trying desperately not to snap at this woman. It’s not as though I chose to be here! I didn’t want this! What right does she have to hate for me a decision that wasn’t even mine to make?
Before I can defend myself, Salvatore calmly puts down his cutlery.
It is the only motion necessary to make the table descend into a low hush again. Those in the middle fall silent, straining to hear the drama unfolding.
“Cecilia,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “You’ve always said I should rely more on the elders of the family for advice, that I would benefit if I went to them for direction. I’ll be honest, I haven’t done that as often as I should. So, what would be your advised punishment, for someone who directly and publicly insults the don’s fiancé?”
The air in the room is so thick, I could choke on it.
The old woman’s ruby red lips work around words that don’t come, so Salvatore continues.
“Contessa is, as you know, going to be my wife. An insult to her is an insult to me. How should I deal with someone who sits at my table in open disrespect for both me and our family?
Let’s hear it from the old ways.”
Cecilia’s teeth grind silently in her mouth, her face furious—but there is a fear there in those cold, blurry eyes.
“No?” Salvatore presses, “Nothing? That’s disappointing. You usually have so much to say. Maybe you’ve dispensed all your wisdom for the day. Nate, Lana, go out and get the dogs for us. Your Aunt Cici wants them brought in here.”
The boy goes running in excitement, his feet pitter-pattering as he rushes out toward the back of the house.
I have a terrible feeling, the kind of anxiety that wells up inside like dark water, threatening to get in my lungs and silently drown me. I want to make it all stop somehow, want to get out of this terrible room with countless eyes on me. I glance at Salvatore, wishing I could tell him to just let it go. When he meets my gaze, I see the cold fury there, that wild protective streak I glimpsed that first night.
I’m not sure it would matter what I said to him when he’s like this. I don’t know that he would hear me.
The commotion from the back of the house comes blessedly quick, the scrape of nails on hardwood floor tearing through silence. Two huge Tibetan Mastiffs amble into the room, all muscle. I gawk at the sheer size of them, wondering how anyone could be so comfortable sending children to fetch those two animals, who look more like bears than dogs. The beasts excitedly move around the tables, sniffing curiously at all the people seated. Salvatore whistles for them. They respond instantly to his call, lumbering up beside him.
Salvatore stands. He towers over the shriveled woman. My heart is a frantic pulse in my throat, muscles tense as if I might have to leap out and stop him from doing something violent.
I’m almost out of my seat when he takes Cecilia’s plate and dumps her dinner onto the floor at their feet.
I hear the dogs devouring it instantly, growling and licking their chops. Cecilia is as still as a statue, the sound of noisy chewing filling the hall.
I sink down slowly into my chair again, listening to the animals eat their fill.
“It hurts me too much to think that someone of your rank and standing within the family would actively oppose me, Cecilia, so I’ll attribute this to senility. Tomorrow, we can start looking into other accommodations for you. A care home in the city may be better suited if you’re declining this rapidly.”
The woman looks stricken. Her outrage withers into horror.
“You—” she whispers, fighting to keep her composure. “I was there when you were born, for God’s sake. When your mother screamed you into this world. You can’t —”
My heart catches in my throat. Of all the things for the daft woman to say. No matter her hatred, I can’t sit by as an elderly woman is cast out from her own home. Not because of me.
Maybe some of my father’s teachings fell flat, but Loveras take care of their children, their elderly, their widowed. That lesson stuck. I don’t want anyone, Mori or not, rotting away in one of those awful places.
She’s not wrong, anyway. She has more right to this table than I do.
I frantically cut Salvatore off before he has to prove that he absolutely can .
“I think Marcel was right,” I say. My hand closes over Salvatore’s, the intimate gesture stopping him in place. His sharp glance turns to me, eyebrows furrowed as I curl my fingers into his. I’ve managed to surprise him, this man who seems to be able to interpret my every move. “I think Cecilia is just a little confused, but nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix.”
The woman and I lock eyes, my tense words not at all subtle as they beg her to play along. “I’m sure she’ll feel differently in the morning.”
Cecilia and I are in a breath holding competition, waiting for the pressure in the room to either lessen or detonate like a landmine.
Salvatore weighs my words, settling back in his chair. His thumb scrubs over my fingers, thinking. His glower toward Cecilia is fierce, but finally, he nods.
“You’re lucky my wife-to-be is charitable, Cecilia,” he relents. “Marcel.”
“Sir,” Marcel stands, even his eyes downcast, his expression carefully neutral as he awaits his orders.
“There’s one too many bitches at this table now. See that you have the worst of them removed.”
Cecilia’s heavy-handed make-up runs in blue streaks down her face. She shakes with the effort of holding back her tears. The entire family watches as Marcel wheels the disgraced woman out. Cecilia may hate me, but it’s not in me to feel the same way for a stranger.
Before she is quite past the doorway, I hear her strangled sob. Even that sound plucks at my heart.
I slip my hand away from his.
For the first time all dinner, Vera turns to me, with those dark, expressionless shades. She reaches over, pats a hand on my leg, and says in a voice thick with smoke and wine,
“Welcome to the fucking family, princess.”
She refills her glass.