Chapter 32
Chapter thirty-two
Ginni
The voice cuts through my consciousness like a blade through silk, sharp and disapproving and utterly unwelcome.
“Giovanni!”
I surface slowly from what feels like the deepest sleep of my life, my head pounding with each syllable of my name.
Everything feels heavy and wrong, like I’m swimming up through honey.
My mouth tastes like metal and bitter almonds, and there’s something scratching at the edges of my memory that I can’t quite grasp.
“Giovanni Torrini, wake up this instant!”
Mama’s voice. Oh God, Mama is here, and she’s using that tone that means I’m in trouble. Deep, terrible trouble that will require groveling and apologies and promises to be better that we both know I’ll break.
I force my eyes open, immediately regretting it as the artificial light from the projector stabs into my brain.
The ceiling above me shows a perfect tropical afternoon, all azure skies and swaying palms, but the beauty feels mocking now.
Fraudulent. Like everything else in my carefully constructed paradise.
“There you are,” Mama says, her voice dripping with disapproval. “Sleeping in the middle of the day like some common layabout. What time did you go to bed last night? And why are you still in your pajamas?”
I try to sit up and immediately regret it. The world spins violently around me, nausea rising in my throat like a tide.
“I don’t feel very well, Mama,” I manage, my voice coming out as a croak.
“Of course you don’t feel well. Look at the state of you.
” She’s standing beside the bed now, immaculate in her Chanel suit, every hair in place despite the long flight from Italy.
Her dark eyes take in my appearance with the kind of clinical disgust usually reserved for something unpleasant she’s found on her shoe.
“When did you last shower? Eat a proper meal? This place smells like...” She pauses, nostrils flaring delicately.
“Like candles and wine and God knows what else.”
The candles. The romantic dinner I prepared. The drugged wine that was supposed to solve everything but somehow solved nothing at all. The memories start trickling back, each one more painful than the last.
I look around the room desperately, searching for any sign of Carlo, but there’s nothing. No warmth beside me in the bed, no indication that anyone else has been here at all. Just me, alone and sick and facing my mother’s disappointment like every other morning of my adult life.
Where is he? Where is my handsome husband? Did our plan work after all? Are we together somewhere else, somewhere better, while this is all just some terrible nightmare my dying brain is conjuring?
“What are these?” Mama’s voice goes up an octave, sharp with shock.
I follow her gaze and feel my blood turn to ice. She’s staring at the handcuffs, still attached to the headboard where Carlo should be but isn’t. The chains gleam in the artificial sunlight, impossible to ignore or explain away.
“They’re...” I start, then stop. What can I possibly say? How do I explain restraints attached to my bed to a woman who already thinks I’m twisted and abhorrent?
“They’re for art. An art installation. Very avant-garde. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Art?” The word comes out like she’s tasting something rotten. “Giovanni, these are restraints. Actual restraints. What on earth have you been doing down here?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly, too quickly. “Just experimenting with different mediums. Exploring themes of captivity and freedom. Very conceptual. Very modern.”
Mama’s face goes through several expressions in rapid succession. Confusion, horror, disgust, and finally that particular brand of resigned disappointment that I know so well. The look that says I’ve once again confirmed every terrible thing she’s ever thought about me.
“Art,” she repeats flatly. “You’re calling this art.”
“Conceptual art,” I insist, struggling to sit up properly while the room keeps tilting around me. “The kind that challenges conventional thinking. The kind that makes people uncomfortable because it forces them to confront difficult truths.”
“The only truth this confronts is that you’ve completely lost your mind.” Mama’s voice is getting shriller, more panicked. “Giovanni, this is... this is not normal behavior. Even for you.”
Even for you. As if my ingrained wrongness is so established that she has to qualify which particular variety of madness this represents.
“Where have you been?” she continues, beginning to pace at the foot of the bed in that agitated way she does when she’s building up to a real tirade.
“We’ve been calling and calling. Papa tried to reach you three times yesterday.
We were worried you’d done something...” She pauses, her gaze flicking meaningfully to the restraints. “Something foolish.”
Yesterday. She’s talking about yesterday like it was recent, but yesterday feels like a lifetime ago. Yesterday Carlo was here, warm and solid and real. Yesterday we had our beautiful romantic dinner, our perfect last evening together. Yesterday I thought I’d found the solution to all our problems.
But where is he now? If the pills worked, if we both took the journey into eternal sleep together, why am I here alone? Why is Mama yelling at me instead of mourning my beautiful, tragic death?
“You look terrible,” she continues, settling into the chair beside the bed like she’s preparing for a long conversation. “Pale and thin and...” Her nose wrinkles in distaste. “When did you last change these sheets? This whole place reeks of... I don’t even know what. Desperation? Madness?”
The words hit like physical blows, each one confirming what I already know. I am terrible. I am pale and thin and desperate and mad. I am everything disappointing about the Torrini family legacy rolled into one shameful package.
“I’ve been fine, Mama,” I lie, pulling the silk sheet up to my chest like armor. “Just working on my art. Exploring new themes. You’ve always said I should find productive outlets for my creativity.”
“Not this kind of creativity.” Her voice drops to the particular tone she uses when she’s about to deliver devastating truths. “Giovanni, look at yourself. Really look. This isn’t art, it’s a cry for help. And frankly, I’m not sure we can keep helping you if you insist on...”
She gestures vaguely at the room, at me, at the general disaster of my existence. The gesture encompasses everything from the candle wax on the nightstand to the restraints on the bed to my too-long hair and sick complexion.
“If I insist on what?” I ask, though I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.
“On being this way,” she says simply. “On refusing to get better. On wallowing in whatever this is.” Another vague gesture. “We’ve tried therapy, medication, institutions, everything. But you just keep getting worse.”
The words settle over me like a shroud. Getting worse.
Yes, I suppose I am getting worse, aren’t I?
Normal people don’t kidnap the men they love.
Normal people don’t drug their perfect romantic dinners with sleeping pills.
Normal people don’t wake up alone and confused, wondering if they’ve died and gone to hell.
Maybe that’s what this is. Maybe everyone was right about me ending up in hell.
Maybe the sulfur smell they always talked about isn’t literal fire and brimstone, but the stench of my own disappointment.
Maybe hell is just this. Waking up to your mother’s disapproval for eternity, alone in a basement that used to feel like paradise.
“Where is Papa?” I ask, desperate to change the subject from my obvious moral failings.
“Upstairs, checking the house. Making sure you haven’t destroyed anything else.” Mama’s mouth forms a thin, disapproving line. “He’s very disappointed, Giovanni. We both are. We left you here trusting that you could manage on your own for two weeks. Clearly, that was a mistake.”
Two weeks. Has it really been two weeks?
Time moved so differently when Carlo was here.
Days flowed into nights in a seamless rhythm of meals and conversations and perfect domestic bliss.
But now, trying to count backwards, I realize she might be right.
Two weeks of the most beautiful happiness I’ve ever known, and it’s all gone like it never existed at all.
“I haven’t destroyed anything,” I protest weakly.
“Haven’t you?” Mama’s eyebrows climb toward her hairline.
“Those restraints didn’t install themselves.
And this place...” She looks around with visible disgust. “It looks like a brothel. Candles everywhere, wine glasses on every surface, the smell of...” She pauses, trying to identify something that clearly disturbs her. “The smell of sex and desperation.”
Heat floods my cheeks. Can she really smell that? Can she tell what Carlo and I shared in this room? The thought that our beautiful intimacy has been reduced to something sordid and embarrassing makes my chest ache with fresh grief.
“It’s not what you think,” I say quietly.
“Then what is it, Giovanni? Explain it to me. Make me understand why my youngest son has turned his bedroom into some kind of... of dungeon.”
Dungeon. The word hits like a slap. Our love nest, our sanctuary, our perfect underground paradise, reduced to a dungeon in her eyes. Everything beautiful Carlo and I built together, dismissed as evidence of my sickness.
“There was someone...” I start, then stop. How can I explain Carlo to someone who’s never understood love? How do I describe perfect happiness to someone who thinks emotion is weakness?
“Someone?” Mama’s voice goes very quiet, very dangerous. “What someone?”
“A friend,” I lie, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. “Someone who needed help. I was helping them.”
“With restraints?”
“They were... struggling. With personal demons. I was providing support.”