33. Chapter One—Carlotta
Chapter One—Carlotta
Rome raises a brow and stares at me. “Don’t you recall the sight of your betrothed?”
I jolt, making the wires travelling from my wrist to the saline bag, rattle and swing overhead.
A large, warm, calloused hand rests over mine—Cassiel’s. The pad of his thumb smooths over the peaks and valleys of my knuckles in a soothing manner, although it’s anything but.
I don’t rip my gaze from Rome, his tall, slender form tucked into the metal hospital chair, legs stretched out long, hands knotted together in his lap. It’s impossible to miss the slight tremor wracking his flesh, but I refuse to believe a world where Rome Folonari is afraid.
“You better start from the fucking beginning,” I say, proud of myself when my voice, although cracked and croaky with disuse, doesn’t wobble. “You’ve got five minutes or I’m going to scream.”
“Cristiano was my best friend,” he starts, voice pitched low, his eyes fixed on my hand formed into a fist, laying down by my hip. “I meet him before I even knew Cass existed.
“I was seven years old when my father told me I was to marry. ‘The Bellucci girl’ he called you.” Rome flicks his dark eyes to me, the lines decorating the soft skin of his flesh deeper than I’ve ever seen them. “Seven. You would have been four years old, a toddler, a mere child.”
He spits out his last word, seemingly as disgusted as I am at the sheer thought of marrying children off together, plotting out their future before their brains we’re even fully formed.
“That summer, I was escorted to the Bellucci estate. It was a sweltering season, some kind of heatwave and I was happy to stay in the chalet, reading my book, while father dealt with business, until a boy, the same age as I, climbed through the window. He told me his name was Cristiano, but his friends called him Cristi and that we we’re friends now because I was going to marry his younger sister when she came of age. ”
Swallowing thickly, ignoring the sea of goosebumps erupting over my skin, I stare at the small smile pinching the corner of Rome’s lips as he recalls the memory.
“From then on, we were the best of friends. I would stay at the Bellucci estate, in the chalet with my nanny every summer. Sometimes, if I we’re feeling particularly adventurous that day, I would sneak into Cristi’s room and sleep beside him.
I never… felt the way toward him as I feel for Cass.
It was never like that. Cristi was my brother in arms; he understood me, and I him, unlike the rest of my younger siblings. ”
It's on the tip of my tongue to ask Rome how I never saw him, but I swallow it back when I recall the number of hours I was made to spend inside—cooking, cleaning, learning how to sew and braid my hair correctly.
Rarely, was I allowed past the doors on a hot summer’s day. Mother always told me it was because I would burn, and I was needed inside.
I only thought her statements strange when I escaped and I was allowed to sit outside in the sun for hours, perched carefully on a rickety chair on my peeling apartment balcony, and not once did I burn but tanned perfectly until every inch of my skin was a gorgeous shade.
“Our parents didn’t want us bumping into one another,” Rome utters when I find my voice to tell him my thoughts. “We weren’t supposed to see each other until two weeks before the wedding as per custom.”
“Two weeks?” I croak.
Rome nods his head, his throat bobbing. “The courting period—in which you invite me to dinner, and I bring gifts to show my interest. Once you agree, we’d be husband and wife within two weeks.”
I scoff, feeling Cass’ hand tighten around mine. “Over my dead fucking body.”
“Regardless, I-I loved you before I’d even set eyes on you, Carlotta.
I would write you letters, as often I could, in the hopes I’d be able to give them to you as a wedding gift.
I spent my nights picturing what you’d look like, what you liked to do in your spare time, your hobbies and the foods you hated.
When you were eighteen, Cristi gave me a stack of photographs of you that he’d been saving.
They were the best gift he’d ever given me. ”
My throat thickens, my temples beginning to throb in time with my quick pulse as I listen to him. “Rome—”
“I didn’t know how our marriage was going to work. I’d been in love with Cassiel since I was fifteen and we were together and I was worried how we’d make it work. But I knew we would. Because I loved you both and—”
I turn to peer at Cass. “You knew me?”
He nods. “I’m sorry, Lottie, I—”
Pulling my hand from his, I shake my head. “This can’t be happening right now. Is this some sort of sick fucking joke because—”
“It’s not,” Rome promises, flattening his lips into a straight line.
Poker hot anger courses through me, rushing beside the confusion and exhaustion running along my nervous system.
Maybe I’m acting irrational, my emotions flittering from one to the other, but this is all too much—the shootings, the drugs I’m on, the layers of truth pouring from Rome’s mouth as if he’s ripped off the Band-Aid and is unable to stop the blood flow.
The mistruth, the secrets these men have kept from me…
“All along you’ve both known who I am and neither of you told me the truth. Neither of you pulled me aside and thought to say, ‘hey—’”
“I wanted too—we wanted too,” Cass utters, sounding utterly broken. “But—”
“But nothing! It’s too fucking late!”
My throat feels as if it’s full of nails, my entire body aching, but I manage to swing my gaze back to Rome.
“So then, what?” I spit, full of vitriol, confusion and hurt. “You thought you could just—”
“Cristi came to visit me—us.” Rome flicks his gaze to Cass and then back to me.
“I knew something was wrong. We never met at the Folonari home. It was always at the Bellucci estates or somewhere on the outskirts of town where we knew we wouldn’t be overhead.
He told me that you were leaving, and he was helping you.
I didn’t understand at first, we fought, Cristi and me.
I told him to get out, that he couldn’t just take the woman I loved away from me.
We were to begin courting in a matter of months and then we’d be man and wife.
All he said was you needed to get out. Out of the marriage, out of the family, out of everything we’d ever known.
He-he wouldn’t tell me why. The only thing he’d tell me was that you were unhappy and how could I live with myself making the woman I loved do something she didn’t want to do.
“It nearly crushed me, Carlotta. I was losing you before I’d even had the chance to meet you, to kiss you, to hold you. The woman I loved. But I didn’t want you to be sad and unhappy and a shell of yourself the way Cristi said you were. So… we hatched a plan. He and I.”
Bending at his knees, Rome rests his long forearms on his thighs, hands gripping at his hair, making the strands even more of a mess than before.
When he finally does look back up at me, it’s with devastation written across his face.
He looks fucking wrecked, just as ill and as tired and as scare as I feel.
“We secured you an apartment, a shit hole really, but Cristi said we had to make it look believable. Otherwise, you would think it too good to be true. After that, we threatened the owner of the café to give you a job. We told him your name and gave him your description, so when the time was right and you walked into his café looking for a job, he’d know to give you one without issue. ”
I blink in sheer disbelief.
“There’s no way—”
“There is, Carlotta. I fucking swear to you. Cass knew but he… he didn’t play a part in this mess. Blame me all you want, but don’t blame him. Don’t break his heart. Don’t—”
Wiping my running nose with the back of my hand, I ignore the sting of tears building in my waterline making my vision become distorted.
“For years, Cristi and I kept tabs on you. We knew where you we’re, who you we’re with… everything. Cristi never let you out of his sight, even from afar. But then he…”
“He what?”
“He got involved with drugs,” Rome mutters, fixing his gaze on his shoes as if he can’t bear to look at me.
“I tried to get him out of it, to get him clean and he would be, for a short while, but then he’d fall back into the habit.
For about a year or so, he was acting extremely weird, dodging my calls, my texts, my visits to his place.
When I did get a hold of him, he’d say he’d been busy with the diamond fortune and practicing his shooting skills, but I knew it was all a lie.
A cover up. I just didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until I had Cass hack into his credit cards.
I was fucking worried for him and the debt he was racking up was…
I don’t know how the hell he was going to pay it all back. ”
Burning hot tears stream down my face as they always do when I talk or think about my deceased brother.
“What was he—” I sniff wetly, noticing Cassiel bury his head in hands, palms wrapped around the nape of his neck. “What was he hiding?”
“His drug habit, for sure.” Rome shifts, creating a squeak from the metal chair. “I don’t know if there was anything else. For the last year, I felt like I’d lost my oldest friend, as if I didn’t even know who Cristi was anymore.”
“That makes two of us,” I reply, staring at the neat stitching of the standard blue hospital blanket.
All this time I’d believed that Cristiano never cared for me, I was simply his annoying little sister. We’d cut ties after I ‘escaped,’ but our relationship had been strained for years before then.
I thought he didn’t care about me anymore, but obviously that assumption couldn’t be any further from the truth.
“Just this past year or so?”
“Mhm.”
“He never tried to contact me in the entire time I… left,” I say, unsure what word to use anymore.
Does it really count as leaving on my own, if I had help along the way?
“But he texted me a couple of times this past year, he kept asking me to call him. I—” I lick my dry, cracked lips. “I never did and now I wonder…”
“What?”
I raise my eyes to meet Rome’s. “If he needed me… if he needed my help just as I needed his.”
A sob bubbles up my throat and bursts, ricocheting off the four sterile, white-washed walls.
Without hesitation, strong arms scoop me up, banding around my lower back and urging me to bury my face into his neck. In between jagged breaths, I inhale the familiar scent of his clove aftershave staining his skin, and his dark grey shirt with my overflow of tears.
I’m still angry and upset and hurt by Cassiel. All along he has known who I was, but I’m glad for the safety of his arms, of his body. For his protection and his love.
I hiccup when my body is finally dry of tears, leaving nothing but a husk of a shell behind.
Pulling back, my eyes swollen and painful, I accept the small paper cup of water pushed into my palm, swallowing it down in three gulps.
Rome’s red rimmed eyes peer me at me, his lower lip wobbling slightly until he brushes his palm along his jaw and around to the base of his head.
“Why?” I rasp.
“Why what?”
“Why did you do it? Why did you help Cristi to get me… out of there? It meant you were never going to see me again and I—”
“Because it’s always been you, Carlotta. Always. I didn’t want to see you upset or unhappy. I didn’t want to make you into a shell of a person the way… the way my father made me.”
Closing my eyes, I shake my head slowly.
This can’t be real. Are the meds I’m on making me fucking hallucinate?
“No, princess,” Cass replies. “It’s the fucking truth. The only thing the meds should do is make you drowsy.”
“What about the club?”
“The club?” Rome repeats, his entire voice sounds wrecked.
“You knew who I was when I walked through the doors, didn’t you?”
He nods shortly. “Yes, but I didn’t rig the system, Carlotta. I swear to you. We were matched together through the census based on our… similar preferences.”
My face heats, crawling down to my neck and chest at his innuendo, but I don’t look away. I can’t. “It still doesn’t make it okay. All the time we were sleeping and… playing together… you knew who I was.”
“It was wrong of me.” Rome’s lips flatten into a thin line, the flesh of his cupid’s bow mottled white.
“No shit…”
“But I couldn’t stop. I knew one day this would all blow up in my face, but I couldn’t fucking stop myself. It was the only time I knew I was going to be able to hold you and touch you and kiss you and I knew, as soon as you found out, you’d want nothing to fucking do with me.”
I find a spot on the wall and bore my watering eyes into it.
The heart monitor rigged up to my chest beeps steadily, creating a myriad of up and down spikes on the paper chart streaming from the slot and onto the sterile floor in a heap.
A second, louder, beep sounds through the deathly silence surrounding Rome, Cass and I, signaling the administration of my night meds.
I feel it hit my veins in an instant, slowing down my reactions and making my eyes flutter closed with a tidal wave of pure exhaustion.
“You should get some more sleep,” Cassiel whispers, his concerned looking face swimming in and out of my vision with each heavy blink.
I have so much more I want to say, so many questions to ask, to demand answers to.
I’m a jumbled mess of unprocessed emotions, all tangled together, entwined, like a bunch of live wires sparking. I wish I wasn’t so tired so that I could figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the sheer amount of information Rome has dumped upon me tonight.
But keeping my eyes open feels like a mammoth task.
Wordlessly, I rest my cheek against the scratchy pillow, allowing my eyes to finally drift closed.
Thick fingers wind through mine, soft lips pressing to the back of my hand. I don’t bother fighting it or pulling away; it would take too much energy.
I sink further and further into slumber, the annoying monotonous sounds of the monitors beeping and whirring, becoming quieter and quieter until they’re almost silent.
The last thing I hear before I finally succumb, is a throat clearing and then a deep voice, cracked and warped with despair.
“I’m fucking sorry, Carlotta. I’m really fucking sorry, baby.”