Julian #3
“All right. Gabriel feels no loyalty toward you, Cecilia. I’m not convinced he feels loyalty for anyone but he definitely has no use for you when you’re not needed to save his spineless ass. He’s so full of self-loathing he can hardly fucking breathe.”
“You’re wrong,” she whispers. “And you’re cruel.”
“Lying to you would be much crueler. And I’m rarely wrong, Cecilia. I’m not wrong now.”
“For your information, Gabe didn’t order me to come here and marry you. He didn’t even beg to be saved. This was entirely my decision.”
“Sure it was. But I doubt you’d feel so forgiving if your brothers and your grandfather had carried through with their original plan.”
DON’T! shrieks an inner voice.
Too late.
Cecilia freezes. “What original plan?”
I don’t answer. If I could rewind time and incinerate those words then I would.
“What plan, Julian?” she insists.
Protect her from this. She doesn’t need to know.
“You brought it up,” she presses. “Now tell me exactly what you meant or I’ll have to go ask your father. Maybe he’ll be honest.”
This is my fault. I was careless and I lashed out. But I’m not one to retreat from a mess of my own making.
“Gabriel killed a Made man in Junior Mancini’s crew,” I say.
“I’m sure you’ve never even met Mancini.
Consider yourself lucky. He’s twice your age and the rumors say his treatment of women is repulsive.
His price for allowing your brother to live was you.
The Grimaldis had already agreed to these terms. All Mancini needed was our permission. We said no.”
Cecilia, wide-eyed, covers her mouth while I’m talking. This is too much for her to handle. She’s avoided thinking about how readily she was used as a pawn by people who are supposed to love her.
Now I’ve presented her with a hideous fact she can’t escape from. Her family thought nothing of sending her here. They wouldn’t have balked at a far worse fate for her.
“Cecilia.” I reach for her and silently curse myself for this unforgivable revelation.
She drops her hand from her mouth but refuses to let me hold her and turns to the window instead. The wind is blowing harder, lifting the dry dirt where my mother’s greenhouse once stood.
“So you made me an offer instead,” she says softly. Her forehead touches the cold windowpane. “I suppose you did me a favor, although I’m sure that wasn’t your intention.”
The pain in her voice is unmistakable. I’m going to crumble where I stand. No certainty has ever been more agonizing than the one that I absolutely do not fucking deserve my own wife.
At least there is no need for me to worry about becoming a ruthless monster. I’m already one, cultivated since birth. I murder men for a variety of reasons that would horrify normal people. I’m never sorry.
Cecilia is right. My motivations for marrying her were far from noble. I had the power to excuse Gabriel’s offense and forbid retribution. But I saw Cecilia and I wanted her. I schemed to make it happen.
Now she’s mine and for most of our marriage I’ve left her here alone. An endangered princess locked in a heavily guarded tower while our babies grow in her belly.
She doesn’t need to show tears in order for me to see that I’ve hurt her, however unintentionally. I know how much she hates to cry.
We’re alike in so many ways. Cecilia uses her endless lists to keep order. She regulates her emotions with caution.
My tactics for sorting out my world are different. I’m expected to maintain control and I do. I didn’t choose this assignment. I was born to the role. Tragedy cemented it.
This isn’t the kind of life I want us to have together. Distant. Sensible. Polite.
We share plenty of passion but passion isn’t just sex.
Passion is offering the rawest, most vulnerable version of yourself and giving it willingly.
It’s handing over your heart and trusting she will guard its fragile condition just as you guard hers.
And I’ve failed at this. I’ve failed her. Fuck. How I’ve failed.
Cecilia turns from the window. Her eyes are clear, her grief stifled, her strength on display. I’ll likely collapse into a weeping puddle before she does.
“You told me how it would be from the beginning,” she says. “I understand everything now, Julian. There’s no need to discuss it anymore.”
NO! She doesn’t understand at all.
But before I can relax the anguish squeezing my lungs and cobble together the right words, my father appears in the doorway.
He hesitates when he senses the tension and his brow furrows. “Cecilia,” he says, “your brothers are almost here. Sonny says to expect them to drive through the gates in about fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you,” she replies, completely calm. She pulls the edges of the sweater over her belly and my father makes way as she walks out of the room. Her cat trails after her.
When she’s gone, my father lingers and studies me with curiosity.
If my face looks half as tormented as I feel then I’m sure to be quite the fucking sight.
However, I don’t say a word. I keep my thoughts to myself and follow my wife so we can await the arrival of the Grimaldi brothers.