Chapter 33 Contessa
Contessa
A knock at the door makes my lids pop open. “Who is it?”
“It’s me.” Bambi.
I push myself up to my elbows and try to ignore the crap scattered all over my bedroom floor. “Come in.”
The door opens and her brows shoot up. “You’re not packed yet?”
“We’re not leaving for a couple of hours,” I say with a sigh.
Her eyes are wide as they roam the dumping ground that is the floor. “I fear you might need longer than that. Do you want some help?”
I lay back down with a thump and close my eyes. How has it come to this? My little sister offering to help me get my act together for a stay in a luxury hotel in the Hamptons? I should have been ready hours ago but all I’ve managed to do is shower.
I know what’s putting me off—it’s the thought of seeing Bernadi when I get there. Unfortunately, it’s inevitable—he’s Cristiano’s best man.
Shame floods through my ribcage at the thought I’ve worked hard every day to banish, though it still creeps back beneath my skin when I drop my guard.
I haven’t told a soul about the day in the nightclub basement, because I’m so ashamed at how I feel about it.
Despite the terror his cold gaze and sharp tone provoked in me, I knew deep down he wouldn’t truly hurt me.
But the most shameful thing about it was, Benito was right.
I liked it. I liked being tied up and at his mercy.
I liked him ‘punishing’ me with his tongue.
I loved his dirty words and the way insanity seemed to infuse his conviction and blind him to everything but my body, my pleas.
The only truth either of us were able to confront in that deep dark room was the undeniable chemistry that crackled and combusted beneath every touch.
The sound of his murmurs still fills my ears, the vibration of his anger as his fingers coasted up my skin still touches my nerves. My helplessness as I trembled beneath them still empties my lungs.
Even as I lie here on my bed, delaying the inevitable, I’m short of breath.
Then the sound of a suitcase being slid out of the closet makes me jump. “Do you know when Trilby’s getting there?” Bambi asks.
My throat is dry and scratchy when I swallow. “No idea. I haven’t seen her in a while.” Three weeks to be exact.
“Aren’t you guys pretty close now? At one point I thought you’d actually moved into the Di Santo residence.” I hear a zipper and the suitcase cover hits my leg.
I huff out a sigh and sit up. There’s no getting away from it. I have to pack. “Yeah, I guess. I’ve just been busy.”
“When’s the recital? It’s got to be soon. Feels like you’ve been rehearsing for years.”
Just the thought of my upcoming show fills me with the kind of dread that stops someone eating for several days.
And that’s without the underlying anxiety I’m experiencing because my dancing has taken a total nosedive since Benito had me tied up in the basement of his club. “A week after the wedding.”
“So this should be the perfect distraction,” Bambi says, with a happy lilt.
I reply with a faint smile that fades the second she looks away.
Since I fled Arena three weeks ago, my life has become unrecognizably dull. I go to the studio. I don’t hang around. I come straight home. I eat. I stare at the ceiling. I sleep.
I haven’t looked out of the studio window once; I haven’t glanced up the stairs to the apartment above; I’ve avoided Cristiano’s house completely.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen anything of Bernadi.
He’s there, on the back of my lids, when I go to sleep, when I dream at night, when I wake up, when I dance.
His jet black hair, his scarred left cheek and those dark bronze eyes that glisten when I come undone.
He’s there in all of it, making me warm and weak.
Embodying the beautiful things he said to me while I curled around his body in the hotel bed.
But he’s nothing but an empty promise wrapped in a dark suit.
All it took was one unvalidated suggestion I might have corresponded with my old best friend and he jumped to the conclusion I was betraying him.
He didn’t give me any benefit of the doubt—he immediately accused me of lying, and no declarations of truth would change his assumption.
It wasn’t even me who got him to see sense—it was Cristiano.
The hurt in his eyes when I ran away tugs at my weakened bones, but I can’t return to a man who doesn’t trust me. And Benito doesn’t trust me as far as he can spit. And after the way he treated me, as though I was heartless betrayal personified, I don’t trust him—with my body, my mind, or my heart.
I wished I still hated him—things were much easier then—but in the last few weeks he’s molded me into someone I barely recognize.
I was closer than I’ve ever been with my older sister; I was dancing better than I’d ever done before.
I’d begun to feel more comfortable in my own skin—at ease with my wildness. And my darkness—or so I thought.
I’ve never felt more dark than I did when Benito had my wrists and ankles bound together as he slid his full length into me on the cold concrete floor. I loved it.
I hate that I loved it.
It scares me that I loved it.
“Are you even listening?”
I blink back to my youngest sister who’s neatly folding clothes and placing them in my suitcase.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Thinking about the recital. What were you saying?”
“Did you reply to Federico?”
The temperature in the room seems to drop at the mention of his name.
“No. I’m not sure I will.”
Bambi folds a short black bandage dress over her arm and scrunches her nose. “I thought he was your best friend?”
“Three years ago,” I say, lying back down on the bed and covering my eyes with the palms of both hands. “Not anymore. This was the first I’d heard from him in all that time. He could’ve been dead for all I knew.”
“What did he say in his letter? Is he coming back?”
I slide my palms down my face and stare at the stark white ceiling. “I don’t know.”
He said in his letter he was returning to New York, but he didn’t say when, how, who with. And remembering what I can of my old friend, what Federico said and what Federico did were often two very different things.
Bambi’s voice dips. “Would you like him to come back?”
I swallow, my gaze still glued to the shards of light stretched above my head.
Truly, I don’t know what I want. I want for Federico never to have written the letter; I want for Benito to never have doubted me so quickly.
I want to turn back time so I can forget the heat of his lips on my throat, the scorching trail of fire his fingertips left on my thighs.
But I also want to know Federico is okay, and that Benito sending his family away didn’t hurt them too badly.
I recall the bite in his words and know one thing for sure: The Falconis were hurt by Benito’s actions—enough that Fed seems determined to get his revenge.
The only problem is, he still believes I want revenge too, but I don’t.
I know Benito now, and I know in my bones he was telling the truth when he said he’d sent the family away for their own protection.
I worry for Federico if he does choose to return. If Benito can turn on me at the mere suggestion I was plotting against him, I’m frightened for what he’ll do to Federico knowing my old friend really is seeking revenge—it was written in his letter; it was there in black and white.
With that in mind, I reply with a fervent, “No. There is nothing he can gain from coming back here.”
“Not even your heart?” If Bambi’s own heart wasn’t so sweet, I might have snapped, but she knows nothing of my history with Federico, nor my past and present with Benito.
I lift my head and let out a soft sigh. “No, Bambi. That ship has sailed.”
An hour and significant effort on Bambi’s part later, I drop my suitcase into the trunk of the car and ignore Allegra’s scowl as I slide in behind her.
“Honestly,” she mutters. “You girls will be late for your own funerals.”
“I was on time!” Bambi shoots back. “Besides, not planning on dying any time soon.”
I look across to see her inspecting her newly painted nails. “Well, if you do, you can rest assured our aunt will get you to the burial on time.”
“Not if I go before you,” Allegra snaps.
“We’ve got an hour’s drive ahead of us,” Papa grumbles from the driver’s seat. “Can we pick a more optimistic topic?”
I chew the inside of my cheek and drift my gaze out of the window. The grey of the roads eventually gives way to expanses of green, trimmed lawns warming under a cloudless sky.
I feel like I’m on the edge of exhaling a long breath, emptying me of the tightness that has allowed me to function over the last three weeks. But the knowledge of what awaits me keeps the iron fist closed around my heart.
I want to feel everything for Trilby—this will be the happiest day of her life.
But I can’t and won’t be vulnerable. I’ll watch the proceedings with a detached eye, I’ll hold a tissue to dry cheeks and I’ll make my apologies at the earliest opportunity.
If I stay around just a second longer than I have to, I’ll risk being drawn back into darkness and that scares the life out of me.
For now, darkness recedes as the view ahead fills with bright white architectural splendor.
“Oh, it’s gorgeous,” Allegra says, fanning herself with a magazine.
“It’s even nicer than the pictures on the website,” Bambi adds.
I step out of the car and take a deep breath. My chest releases a little. Somehow, I know he isn’t here yet.
The wedding isn’t for another three days but we’ve arrived early to help Trilby with preparations, hold the most epic bachelorette party for her, and of course, spend some time with Sera, our second eldest sister.
A doorman hurries down the steps towards us and Papa tosses his keys to a valet. We unload the trunk and leave the suitcases with the doorman as we climb the steps to a picture-perfect country club-esque hotel.