16. Contessa
16
Contessa
Salvatore tries to cheer me up by keeping the promise that I can choose wherever we go next. He says I can go wherever and do whatever I want. That’s not entirely accurate, but it would be self-sabotage to point it out to him. I take us to the Lower East Side, down narrow one-way streets rife with scaffolding. A familiar diner comes into view. A homesick longing kicks up in my stomach. I have to suppress it, resisting the urge to run the moment we’re out of the car.
Frankie stays with the vehicles.
“This is where you wanted to go?” Salvatore asks dubiously, eyeing the exterior.
It’s a longstanding family-owned business. At least, I think that’s what the signage out front is trying to say. Most of the signs on the windows are so weather worn and sun-stripped, they aren’t legible. Like one of the countless cockroaches infesting New York City, I suspect the diner stubbornly survived long enough that its outdated style cycled back around, became “retro-trendy” through no business savvy of its own. Behind the glass, average Joes pick at their lunches.
“You said I could go anywhere. Does this or does this not qualify as anywhere ? Or are we only allowed to go places that don’t have too many witnesses?”
Salvatore holds his tongue at my scolding. We enter the diner without any further objections.
It’s just like I remember. A long bar and booths throughout, big windows looking out into the street. I have to admit, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in the daylight. It’s the sort of liminal place you simply end up at after a night out, a 24-hour oasis for drunk college students and after-hour clubbers. My heart pounds as I scan the room, picking out faces. Salvatore takes me by the arm and hauls me along to a corner booth, just short of the windows, where only the orange overhead lighting can reach. Leo doesn’t sit with us.
My stomach is starting to sink.
The woman at the register rubs a rag in the same circle on the bar top, eyes fixed on the TV crammed into the corner ceiling. Another is filling rapid-fire to-go orders over the phone. I don’t recognize either of them.
“How many exits?”
“What?” I ask, annoyed and only half-listening.
“How many exits does this place have?”
“How should I know? I lost the election for fire marshal.”
“Fire marshals aren’t elected. And you should know because you’re sitting in it. There’s three. Point them out to me.”
I realize I am being quizzed. I have no desire to play along with Salvatore’s paranoid games, desperately peeking toward the kitchen. A woman comes to take our orders. Salvatore orders coffee, black. I fiddle with the menu without opening it.
“Is Kay not working today?” I ask, deliberately avoiding Salvatore’s expression.
“No,” the waitress says flatly. “Kay doesn’t work here anymore.”
“She quit?”
“No called, no showed a week or so ago. Maybe two. You not ready to order?”
Two whole weeks. It’s not like Kay to up and quit without an explanation. With that girl, it’s a dramatic exit or nothing, and she’s worked here for as long as we’ve known each other.
Now, she conveniently stops showing up right after I go missing?
That’s not coincidence. It can’t be.
My head is a buzz of what-ifs , and every single ugly scenario starts with ‘What if Salvatore…’ My gaze snaps to him, dread chilling my stomach like I’ve swallowed an ice cube. I can no longer tell myself he wouldn’t. I don’t know if those words can apply to Salvatore.
“She’ll need a minute,” he tells the woman without breaking my stare.
“What did you do?” I ask, barely able to whisper the words. My fist closes uselessly around the butterknife sitting on top of my napkin.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me what you did,” I demand, loud enough for the woman at the bar to turn up her TV program.
“Keep your voice down,” Salvatore demands.
“She went to the police station. She filed the report. You knew about her, and you knew she was looking for me, and then she goes missing? What did you do? ”
“I didn’t touch her,” he says, utterly calm. “I haven’t so much as said her name since you and I discussed her.”
I don’t know if he’s lying or just doing that thing he does, where he talks around the truth and calls it honesty. The image of Salvatore with a switchblade in his hand is like an imprint on my psyche. The silence simmers as the waitress returns. She puts Salvatore’s coffee in front of him and waits for us to order. Neither of us do. Slowly, she takes the hint and leaves us alone.
“You don’t believe me,” he infers coldly.
I search his face.
I want to believe him. I ache to believe him. I want to see him the way I did just last night. I want to see the man who made me feel safe, who carried me completely unharmed through an emotional minefield. I search his face, too easily able to see both sides of him—like a rough gem, beautiful and faceted and sharp enough to cut myself on.
I can’t fuss at Salvatore for being overly paranoid, then throw my own paranoia right back at him. I swallow my pride.
“I believe you,” I agree, though it hurts to say, even if it makes me feel so stupid and gullible. “I shouldn’t have accused you. I’m sorry,” is what I say, though what I mean is, ‘ see how fucking painless it is to apologize for once in your stubborn life ?’ I don’t know if he gets the message. I have a feeling men pick and choose when they want to be fluent in subtext.
“But I am worried about her. I know Kay. She wouldn’t just drop a job, even if she could afford to, which she can’t.”
“Maybe she found a better opportunity.”
I shake my head.
“And left this place without a word? No. Not her.”
Salvatore turns to his phone.
“Is she the only woman your age who doesn’t have social media?”
“No, of course not. She’s just as terminally online as the rest of us.”
“And she wouldn’t have deleted it?”
“Only at gunpoint.”
Salvatore looks at me, as if I am accusing him of something again. Maybe that wasn’t the most elegant way to put it. Finally, the lightbulb goes off in my head.
“If you’re spelling it right, then you’re spelling it wrong.” I spell Kaydence out for him, every letter making Salvatore’s expression grow more and more incredulous, until he’s no longer typing and just staring at me, offended.
“What?” I ask. “I’m not her mother. I didn’t name her. Kay and I are proud founders of the Terrible Name Club, actually. We bonded over it.”
“Yours isn’t that bad.”
“One of the first things you ever said to me was how stupid my name is,” I remind him.
“Despite how hellbent you are on using it every chance you get.”
“Well, I take it back now.”
He flips the phone around and slides it across the table so I can see Kay’s socials pulled up.
Last updated a day ago, with the status: ‘hard times make you realize who’s really ride or die in life. #solo’
I scroll through the feed. My stomach drops.
Every single post is about me. The club where I was last seen. The birthday selfies that we took that morning showcasing what I was wearing. She photoshopped her own missing persons flyers, linked a handful of articles about police corruption and made call-out posts about them lying to her. Angry, raging posts in all caps trying to drum up urgency. My eyes skim the words mob interference in the title of one of the webpages. My blood runs cold.
Then nothing. A week of silence, before that vague #solo status.
“Salvatore. Are you sure your men didn’t do something?”
I slide the phone back to him, letting him read it. Concern darkens his face.
“Not on my orders,” he says. “Maybe they should have, but they still didn’t. I would have heard something about it.”
I stare at the page, at her smiling face in the tiny profile pic.
My heart hurts.
“She means a lot to you,” Salvatore observes.
“You call Marcel brother, right? Well, Kay is my sister. Or that’s what I would call her, if it wouldn’t associate her with my family’s bullshit. I guess that’s more of a curse than a compliment when it comes from me.”
My eyes roam the diner again.
“That was where we met,” I tell him, gesturing to a seat over the bar. “Right there. I’d just had another falling out with my father. I was going to clubs every other night, just for something to do that made me feel like I was actually free from him. And late one night, I wandered in here afterwards, a little drunk. One of my father’s goons was tailing me to keep an eye on me. Kay was waitressing, and of course, she misunderstood the situation. She thought I had a stalker. She didn’t even know me, but she acted like we’d known each other all our lives. When that didn’t scare him off, she threatened to call the police. He left once she threatened to throw hot coffee on him. At the time, I didn’t think she really would have, but—now that I know her, she was one hundred percent ready to give that man second degree burns.”
I shake my head, fondness bubbling up in me all over again, just like it did that first night. I force back the emotion, refusing to get teary-eyed in front of Salvatore.
“She took me home after her shift. She was the most real person I’d ever met. Not privileged or rich or a ‘somebody,’ just…strong. Really strong, in her own way. We were inseparable after that. I just need to know she’s alright. I can’t not know.”
“I’ll find her for you.” I glance up into Salvatore’s face, trying to decide what that means. “Give me a day or so. I’ll make sure she’s safe,” he clarifies. “That much I can do.”
What a double-edged sword.
He reads the uncertainty in my eyes.
“I haven’t lied to you,” he reminds me.
He won’t apologize, but maybe Salvatore isn’t beyond making amends. Maybe this is the only olive branch he has to offer.
“Please be careful. I need her at the wedding. We promised each other that whenever we got married…” I cut myself short. It feels like a silly thing to admit to Salvatore, given the circumstances of the wedding. He must think my priorities are so ridiculous. “I just can’t imagine getting married without Kay there, but I don’t want the mob stomping around in her life, either, even with good intentions. She’s not wrapped up in this world at all. It feels unfair to drag her into this.”
“From the looks of those posts, she might be dragging herself into it.”
I sigh and rub my hands over my face. If Kay ends up in a mess, it’s going to be all my fault. But if there’s one person who can get her out of it, at least I might have him on my side.
“She’ll be alright. I’ll make sure of it.”
I glance up at how assuredly he says it, as if there is no other alternative now that he has decided it, as if the universe bends to his will.
“…Thank you,” I mumble, feeling bad for falling back on Salvatore’s generosity a mere half-hour after condemning him—and for not warning him about the coffee. This place has terrible coffee. But it’s too late.
One sip of the café’s signature lukewarm dirtwater, and we are out the door.
With my grand plan ruined, I’m starting to think that’s just how my luck is. That somehow, nothing can ever go quite right for me. But I still don’t want to squander this day of freedom.
Salvatore’s attempt to make me feel better and take my mind off Kay comes in the form of setting me loose on 5 th Avenue, where name brands and designer fashion fill up every other window display. I follow alongside him, trying to feign interest.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t need to wipe my tears on your credit card, Sal. It won’t do any good.”
“I doubt that.”
“Seriously?” I ask. “You really think enough zeroes is what magically makes women happy? I don’t think I’m that simple.”
He hands over a sleek black credit card as my weaponry.
“Let’s find out,” he says, meeting my gaze as if it’s a challenge.
“…It’s a little tone deaf.”
“Maybe gift giving is my love language,” he says, rife with sarcasm. I roll my eyes at him.
“Maybe you’re just illiterate.”
I swipe the card from him anyway and stomp into the nearest luxury store where I can prove him wrong. I set my sights on the big money—garish, limited edition luxury label handbags with price tags in the tens of thousands.
“What do you think?” I ask, holding one up. “Not that I have anything to put inside a handbag. No ID, no phone. It’s basically a lipstick holder. A $40,000 lipstick holder.”
“Why not get one in pink, too?”
I call his bluff.
“Good thinking. And maybe one of those in white, for Ava,” I suggest, eyeing his expression more than the bag I’m pointing at.
“And something for Kay,” he raises. “Have a gift for her when you next see her.”
…Is he fucking with me? When I don’t reach for any of the bags, Salvatore asks if I need him to hold something.
I come to two realizations at once. One, Salvatore really does mean it when he says I should buy these expensive, over-the-top bags both for myself and my girls. And two, this really is him trying—trying to meet me somewhere between my own concerns and what he feels capable of providing for me. This is what he can give me, what he can extend to the friends I care so deeply about: his protection and his money. If I want those things, I can take it all.
I have no idea how far his generosity or his credit limit goes. I am morbidly curious to find out, as if I’ve discovered a new superpower.
I put back one of my vengeful choices, if only to pick out something Ava will actually enjoy. I’ve sent her out to shop for me enough. Even if it was on Salvatore’s dime, she deserves something nice for everything she’s done for me.
The cute teal crossbody I find doesn’t come much cheaper than the clunky handbag.
I fall in love with several gorgeous dresses and a cashmere coat. In total, they cost Salvatore $25,000. He doesn’t blink, only comments, “We’ll see how long you fit in those.”
The words nearly take me out like a sniper shot.
“Aren’t you going to get anything?” I ask him, flustered. I’ve run up a $100,000 tab in a matter of minutes in the first store we entered, and I’m starting to feel self-conscious about it.
“I’ve got what I want,” Salvatore says, the words low and meaningful as he looks me over.
I want to personally shoot every single butterfly that springs up in my belly, feeling the heat in my cheeks. I flee across the store to distract myself before I turn into a blubbering idiot in front of him.
One sentence, and he nearly puts me on my knees for him again. Bastard.
Out of the corner of my eye, a gorgeous necklace draws my attention. I gaze at it before I can catch myself—a stunning, delicate collar of endless white diamonds glittering beneath a pane of protective glass.
Salvatore’s hand ghosts against the small of my back, making me jump.
“That’s the first thing you’ve looked at like that ,” he says, reading my expression.
It’s beyond beautiful, but I think I’ve hit my limit before I’ve managed to find Salvatore’s. I try to brush past it.
“It doesn’t have a price tag. You know it’s bad if you have to ask someone.”
Salvatore waves over an attendant. Alarm bells start going off in my head. I try to object, but the eager employee is already prattling off a few of the piece’s specifications. The number of natural diamonds, the white gold setting, the diamond carat weight. The only number in the list that catches my attention is the absurd price tag: $275,000. I nearly laugh.
Before I can even say, I told you so , Salvatore says, “We’ll take it.”
I’m stunned and speechless.
“Salvatore, that’s insane ,” I whisper. “You know the diamond industry is a total sham, right? They can print these things in labs now, and they have warehouses of them stacked up to avoid putting them on the market. It’s all artificial scarcity and advertising campaigns—”
“Is your enjoyment of it artificial?”
My words dry up on my tongue, Salvatore’s simple question knocking me off my soapbox.
“Well. No, but…”
He takes the credit card from me and hands it over without another word.
I feel an immense amount of guilt that I walked into this store trying to punish him.
Salvatore watches the purchase go through with indifference. The card reader beeps its approval.
“No box,” Salvatore says, when the attendant reaches for one. Instead, he takes the necklace and places it around my neck. Rows and rows of diamonds glitter against my collarbones. I stare up at him, reaching for words that I don’t have. Thank you doesn’t feel like a $275,000 dollar phrase.
“What do you think?” I ask instead, on the verge of laughing or crying—some tenuous emotion.
“It’s a little cheap,” he admits.
Laughter it is.
“Seems like you feel better…” he observes.
“ Don’t ,” I warn him, through my laughter.
He leans in, that little smirk insufferably attractive, his possessive touch tangling in the back of my hair.
“All I’m saying is—being right? Priceless .”
My cheeks burn softly, flattery and humiliation inextricable from each other.
“Come on, Salvatore. We should vacate the jewelry section before I make you eat those words.”
“By all means, you can keep trying. It’s amusing watching you fail. Did you buy Kay anything yet?” he reminds me.
“Well—no.”
I’m getting frantically overwhelmed. This is a losing game. Maybe there is no number. Maybe I could demand the entire store, and Salvatore would somehow buy it for me. I don’t dare speak that into reality. I go quietly to search for a pair of earrings that I think will suit Kay’s dramatic, colorful style, all the while pressing my fingers to my neck as though the necklace is a mirage, and I must feel it physically under my hands to believe that it’s real.
Salvatore’s phone buzzes in his pocket.
“Your credit card company?” I ask.
“You wish.”
As the speaker activates, I hear the automatic tones of a message asking him if he wants to accept the call—the kind of messages you get from prisoners. He leaves me to jewelry hunt as he takes the call.
I’m grateful for the few minutes alone to get a grip on my thoughts. Salvatore is a breed of his own. His bad is very bad, but his good…God, it almost makes up for it.
Am I crazy for thinking a bad man can be a good husband?
Within a few minutes, I have my eye on a gorgeous pair of multi-stone drop earrings. They’re a little under 10 grand, so I guess in Salvatore’s world, they may as well be free.
I’m surprised to find a new attendant seems to be watching me, eager to sweep in and help.
“I’d like these earrings, please.”
“For a smile from you, they come at a discount.”
I hesitate, caught off guard by the pointless flattery, but I do smile without meaning to. A reflex of my nerves and surprise. I hate that it happens so easily.
“There it is,” he smiles in return, as if I have played along. “Gorgeous. Would you trade?” he continues, stepping closer. “I’ll give you the discount number, you give me your number?” He laughs richly, as if it’s a joke. I know that it isn’t.
I glance over my shoulder to see Salvatore still on the phone. Of course. The one time he isn’t looming over me, watching me like a hawk.
“You must use that line on all the girls you want to get commission from.”
“Commission? I’m the owner. Though, if I were on commission, I’d still risk any job for a dinner with you.”
“My fiancé is here,” I say, the words leaving my lips for the first time. It has a certain power to it, invoking Salvatore like a demon I can summon to ward off unwanted attention. “And you’d be risking more than just a job with him. I’m sure you have plenty of other customers you can flirt with.”
The man lowers his voice, stepping in too close.
“But I only want to flirt with you.”
“I’m engaged ,” I tell him again, in no uncertain terms.
He glances down to my hand.
“Are you sure about that?” he asks. “You can just tell me you’re out of my league. I already know it. But a woman like you should have a man who’ll put the moon on her finger.”
He reaches out, as if to touch my bare hand. “Of course, I would help with that.”
I take a sharp step back, running into something solid behind me. I know who it is without turning around. The percussion of my heart thumps like a horror soundtrack. When I glance up into Salvatore’s face, he has a certain look in his eye. I could almost mistake it for calmness, but I know better. This isn’t calm. It’s resolve .
The man takes one look at Salvatore’s towering figure and goes ashen.
His hand is outstretched toward mine still, frozen in the moment as if someone had snapped an incriminating picture.
“Your lovely fiancé and I were just discussing ring sizes,” he says, a hasty lie, but he delivers it smoothly, like a used car salesman, the grease dripping in his voice. His eyes land on me, silently begging me to back him in his lie. To spare him.
“We were,” I agree, to his visible relief. “He was discussing what size ring he’d like to put on my finger,” I elaborate coldly, “Even though I told him multiple times, I was engaged.”
The man’s confidence withers now that he is alone, his hand creeping back across the counter. I pull my hand back to myself, wrapping it instead around Salvatore’s arm—hoping it’s enough to keep him from jumping the counter and beating the man to death in broad daylight.
But I don’t have any pity for him.
“Take your eyes off my wife,” Salvatore says, so softly and calmly, it makes the hair on the back of my neck bristle, “or she will be the last thing you ever see.”
The man laughs, a nervous reflex, his eyes skittering down across the jewelry between us.
The word wife, the way Salvatore says it—it wraps itself around my heart and squeezes tight.
“I apologize,” he tries to smooth over. “It was a misunderstanding—”
Salvatore’s arm drapes around my shoulders, possessive and commanding.
“And when my wife tried to clarify—did you deliberately ignore her, or are you so stupid, you couldn’t comprehend what she was telling you?”
The man’s mouth works, his anger and stress a red, throbbing knot in his purpling forehead. Salvatore waits and waits, letting the awkward silence do its work.
“I suppose I’m just that stupid,” he finally says through his teeth, as Salvatore forces him to humiliate himself. “Please. Take the earrings as a gift. An apology.”
When Salvatore does not look appeased, the man finds the right words in a rush, “A wedding present.”
“He gets the point,” I say quietly. Salvatore glances at me. Though I don’t think he’s taken his pound of flesh, he won’t openly ignore me after threatening another man for disrespecting him. I take the earrings without paying, surprised by how little guilt I feel about it.
We put the store behind us, but the strange interaction swirls in my thoughts. A $275,000 necklace around my throat, and it doesn’t mean anything because it’s not a band on my finger. It doesn’t say I’m his.
When I was a very cynical teenager, full of feminist rage that I didn’t really understand but knew I was supposed to feel, I equated wedding rings to putting a collar on a dog or scrawling your name on the lunch bag in the office fridge. I softened up to the idea over time, but now, its meaning is painfully clear.
A part of me doesn’t want this kind of attention from anyone else. I want people to see from a mile away that I am taken. Off-limits. Others need not apply.
Salvatore has staked his claim, and everyone else needs to know it. I can even pretend it’s for their own sake.
For the first time, I regret leaving the engagement ring on the dresser.
“I should have torn him apart,” Salvatore says, voicing regrets of his own as I fall into step with him. He moves quick, putting distance between us and the store, as if he needs to get away before he changes his mind.
“He’s not worth it,” I say.
“You are,” he says, just as quick. His single-minded devotion hits me right in the belly.
“He disrespected you. If you weren’t so allergic to confrontation, I would have at least taken him out back and—” He cuts himself off as he realizes that saying it paints just as much of a picture as doing it.
“It doesn’t matter,” he mutters. “There are smarter ways to draw blood with a man like that,” he continues, as if convincing himself of it more than me.
“But it’s not your preferred way,” I infer, softly.
“…No,” he admits, tension radiating and posture rigid. “That’s just the type you attract, I guess.”
“…The type I attract?”
“What you said last night. About your ex. Some monster.”
I barely remember saying it at all. On principle, I don’t talk about James. I’m surprised I said even that little to Salvatore.
“You aren’t like him,” I say, instantly. “He did everything just right. He was sweet, caring, attentive. He never showed me a single bad side of him—because that was who my father was paying him to be behind my back.”
Salvatore’s gaze lingers on me, trying to understand.
“In a way, you aren’t even my first forced marriage,” I smile tightly, my voice low as people. “I thought he and I met...well, like fate.” It sounds stupid when I say it out loud. “He approached me and I was flattered and na?ve. I was finally brave enough and far enough away from my father, I thought maybe it was worth the risk. I fell right for it. For months, and months, I kept falling for it. I didn’t see it for what it was until it was too late.”
Until I had fallen in love with someone who didn’t really exist.
My throat closes on the words. I can’t talk about it for too long without shutting down. Mentally, physically. On every level, I instinctively block James out as if he never happened, but I push through.
“My father had decided we would be a good match, one he approved of, and so he sent him to try and woo me, I guess. But of course, my father had his one stipulation…”
I glance to Salvatore, letting him guess.
“You couldn’t sleep together.”
I nod.
“In case the relationship fell apart, I guess. I kept trying, and he kept turning me down. In the end, that was how it all unraveled. It just wore him down over time. He started losing his temper and going out a lot. He came back late from some strip club one night, and I finally confronted him. I didn’t understand—why would he go see those women, when I was right there, begging him to be with me? He got violent enough that I went running to my father for help.”
I feel the dark tension ripple through Salvatore at the thought of someone laying a hand on me in genuine anger. That reaction tells the truth more than anything I could say myself.
“And he took care of it?”
My smile hurts.
“Oh, no. He made excuses for him. That was when everything clicked. When I knew they were in it together. That was my last falling out with my father. The final straw. Maybe you’re a monster, maybe you aren’t. But you aren’t like him at all.”
To my surprise, Salvatore gently links his arm around my waist and says nothing, just holds me close to him as we walk along together. A silent vow of protection that doesn’t need words.
I touch the necklace again.
I am slowly starting to understand him, one piece at a time. Every bold declaration, gentle promise, and expensive gift tells me the truth about him, lets me map him out. He has a heart in there. After last night, I’m sure of it. Even the parts of him that scare me—he uses them to protect me, to defend me.
My wife.
Maybe those words don’t sound so bad when he says them.