Chapter 12
chapter twelve
Natalia
There was no use talking to Mateo about the panic attack. After the smoke had cleared he moved on from it like it had never even happened. He wrote it off as a mix of dehydration and pent-up frustration with his parents, years in the making. I knew what had conspired in the kitchen was something totally different.
That’s why my instinct to protect him made me lash out. I wasn’t proud of shouting at his mom, but Mateo was my person, and something was hurting him, and I wanted it to stop. It was a normal psychological reaction. I wouldn’t have cared if it was Jesus Christ himself, all I wanted to do was cover him with a shield and keep everyone else out.
Unfortunately, the entire ordeal had made things in the house more awkward. Yes, Anna was back to speaking to Mateo, more so out of fear for her son’s health than anything, but I’d begun sensing a bit of jealousy as well after she was pushed aside. Though technically that meant the task I had set out to do had been done. Just in a more traumatic, round the block, burnt meatball way than originally intended.
Still, it was like walking on eggshells between everyone. I thought wedding planning would be a fun way to bond with Mateo’s mom, but after the disagreement over invitations I didn’t even want to bring up the details anymore. She didn’t seem too interested in it anyway, which was especially confusing after using that as a reason to visit in the first place.
There was no time to agonize over that though; I had my own family to deal with. Isabella had texted me a place and time to meet her for coffee and considering the fate of my wedding party lay within a confined time, I really had no choice but to answer the call. I left my house pretending I was on my way to work at the bank and instead met Isabella inside a cozy modern roastery in Coconut Creek. The bright interior was designed in light wood and earth tones, and artwork decorated the walls with tasteful splashes of color. A few people sat working on laptops at the bar counter and sun drenched the front of the store through the big open windows.
Bella looked as beautiful as always with her short hair curled close to her ears, designer earrings, a matching tennis bracelet, and a few dainty chains layered around her neck. Gold. Always gold. She was wearing a light-pink blazer and a white turtleneck sweater. Meaning she was either done for the day, or on her way to make someone’s life an absolute living hell in the courtroom. She was infamous for bringing grown men withering to their knees in front of the judge.
I plopped down in the wooden seat across from her that was two inches lower than I expected it to be, and the chair whined gracelessly beneath me.
"Coffee?" Bella asked.
"I'm good. One of those chocolate eclairs might entice me though."
She pursed her lips, probably fighting back a comment about the calories. "I'll buy."
"Are you sucking up to me? Or is this an apology? You can say the words, you know. I'll help." I traced my mouth with my finger. "I'm—sorry."
Bella crossed her arms over her chest. "You know that a Russo doesn't apologize. We just move on. The eclair is the truce."
"That is called a toxic relationship," I pointed out. "Just because it’s how we grew up doesn't mean we need to continue it as adults. I'd much rather forget the entire portion of my childhood where Dad apologized by buying me a new Chia Pet every time he missed a school concert, or ran over my bike backing the car into the garage. I had, like, seventy-two Chia Pets."
"You did have a lot of Chia Pets." Bella pushed her tortoiseshell reading glasses into her hair like a headband. It was both stylish and effortless.
"I don't want your pity eclair, Bells. I want to have a normal relationship with my sisters. Plural. Because the parent ship has sailed."
"That's not true." She tilted her head ruefully. "Mom is just as fucked up as we are. Think about the generation before her that put all those ideas in her head in the first place. It's not us, it's men. I work in a field absolutely dominated by the most narcissistic assholes on this planet, so I can vouch."
Even so, my mother was a brilliant woman. There was nothing she couldn’t do if she wanted it badly enough; she was an extremely career-focused and calculated entrepreneur. She knew right from wrong. It was her inability to admit her wrongs that infuriated me. She was too vain to protect us from the things kids should never have to endure growing up. Her own misaligned, volatile parenting included. My parents loved each other in a checks and balances kind of way. My dad provided the check, and my mom balanced the duties of motherhood by pushing them off onto a nanny for twelve years.
"If she stood up for me, maybe just one time, I could have sympathy. At this point in my life I don't feel responsible for another grown woman's feelings being hurt. I love her, but she is a witchy woman."
"She’s terrible at articulating herself, and you're the baby of the family, so you always take things way too personally. Fact of the matter is that we don't want you making any rash decisions, just as much as you don’t want any pushback. We do care, Talia. You’re not Donnie Darko."
"God, just get me the eclair," I grumbled. "I’ll be rehashing this conversation in my nightmares later."
Isabella reached over the table, in one of the most foreign gestures I'd ever seen, and closed her hand over mine.
We did not touch. We barely hugged. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd ever embraced any of my sisters just for the heck of it, and the last was my grandfather’s funeral five years ago.
"What are you doing?" I asked, closing my fingers into a pinched little claw. "Did someone die? Is that why you asked me to come here?"
Bella's eyes rolled and she returned her hand to her side of the table. "Didn't you just go on this whole rant about healthy relationships and undoing familial trauma? You can't even hold my hand."
"Well, that's because it’s weird," I volleyed. "We look like lesbians. You look like a lesbian in that outfit, and I look like your sad, alt younger girlfriend who calls you Mommy."
"Oh, for fuck’s sake." Bella reached into her pocket, leaning back on her chair and pulling out a tube of Chapstick to apply.
"Baby steps," I suggested. "You know what would really prove to me that you, Mia, and Cami actually care? Answering Ophelia's text messages about Vegas. She is way too nice and non-confrontational. You can walk all over me but my best friend is where I draw the line."
Bella sucked in a breath that blew up her cheeks and then let it out dramatically. "Fine. We will comply with Ophelia and her Excel spreadsheet.”
"Thank you." Finally, getting somewhere. A tiny weight lifted off my shoulders and took flight into the metal rafters above us.
"But does she really need our underwear sizes?"
That question did not even faze me. It registered in a very neutral area of my brain as just a matter of fact, because I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Phee and her crafty ideas never ceased to amaze me. If I'd done everything else in life wrong, at least I got Ophelia right. She was my invisible string.
"What's the worst that could happen?” I shrugged. “You get a brand-new pair of underwear?"
"Right,” Bella conceded. “So the world keeps spinning, and we will work on communication and answer Ophelia's texts. And emails, and invitation to the Google calendar, and the collaboration on the Pinterest board. Now can I actually do my job, as your sister and lawyer?"
I sat back in my chair, crossing a leg over my knee. "Was I arrested for something I don't know about?"
Bella leaned down to her bag on the floor and plucked a thin binder out of it, settling it on the table between us. It resembled a menu you’d get at a swanky restaurant, stocky paper with tiny bindings and even tinier letters when she flipped it open.
"Don't ever tell me I don't love you," she said. "Consider this a wedding present, because I'm doing it pro bono."
My eyebrows knitted together as I pulled the binder closer and stared down at the professionally formatted legal paperwork. Isabella had tabbed important clauses and highlighted keywords in the text, but the only thing that stuck out to me was the bold and underlined words at the top of the page. PRENUPTIAL AGREEMENT.
She couldn't have been serious. A slew of colorful words rose to the top of my throat with what stung like bile and it took everything in me not to swipe the book off the table like a miscreant cat.
"Uh, thanks." I slid it back in her direction. "But no thanks."
The milk steamer across the room hissed as the barista worked a metal cup underneath it and I buried my attention in the people moving around the cafe. If I didn't look at it, it would simply cease to exist. My sister reared the binder back in my direction like a petulant child.
"What do you mean, no thanks ?"
My deep brown eyes met her more hazel ones. "I mean, we aren't doing a prenup. I don't need it."
"You and Mateo both decided that?" A pen had materialized between her fingers. At the ready to take notes, or lecture, or stab me. Preferably stab me.
"No, we never talked about it," I said. "But we don't need a divorce contract. That's fucked up, don't you think? It's like dooming us from the start."
Mateo and I had never had the conversation, but I knew my fiancé. If one of us were worried about the possibility of calling it quits, we never would have gotten engaged in the first place. Agreements like this were for people with asset management and money tied up in stocks, second homes to account for. That was not us. Apart from the success of the cam page, we were extraordinarily regular people. To me, a prenup was like admitting we weren't positive about one another. That while things might be great now, there could be a day I didn't love him anymore, and that just wasn't fucking possible.
"That is the most childish way to perceive this, Natalia." Bella nearly scoffed. "This isn't a loyalty test. This is protecting each other in a worst-case scenario. I see it day in and day out. Couples who thought the sun shone out of each other's assholes fighting over canned beans in the pantry. Men caught wanking off to a twenty-year-old on OnlyFans while their wife bathes their children resentfully in the bathroom. Things change, people evolve, life happens."
I crossed my arms over my chest and sank my teeth into my tongue. Mateo wouldn’t do that , I thought. My skin bristled but I swallowed down a sour retort. "Matty and I aren't like that.”
She nodded sympathetically. "I know you're not. And this is not me trying to say I think you're going to have a failed marriage. But think about Mateo." Bella's pen hovered over a paragraph of words. "He is the breadwinner, he owns a business, he has assets from the military, benefits, money, et cetera. This is to say, if you two ever needed to go your separate ways, his business still belongs to him. If nothing else this is showing how much you love him. Willing to lose your main source of income over a divorce if it comes to it."
I could have screamed. I was the breadwinner. I owned a business. I was not helpless, or dependent on anyone to take care of me. I took care of myself. But like always my mouth remained shut. Prioritizing keeping my personal life to myself because it was the one thing I had that no one else could take from me. It was my and Mateo's secret to share. Frankie and Ophelia were the only two people we trusted with it.
A deep, long, annoyed breath let out through my nostrils. "So this is me agreeing not to claim any stake in his company in the event of a divorce."
"Part of it." Bella tapped on a highlighted passage. "This also keeps your inheritance safe, like any money from Mom and Dad. It defaults debt back onto the person with the debt, and details protocols if—God forbid—one of you kicks the bucket."
My knuckles rapped on my wooden chair. If I had to pick and choose my battles, letting Bella explain a bullet-pointed legalese to me was the least I could do, regardless of what I was going to do with the information afterward. She went on and on, scribbling into the margins upside down, stripping each sentence into something understandable, and after the final sentence, she flipped the binder closed and pushed it toward me again.
"This is just a draft. I'll need you and Mateo to sit down and go over your assets together, compile an itemized list of what you want to keep separate, and then we can go from there."
I wouldn't be doing any of those things, but I put on my brave face and smiled as I said, "Thanks for giving me the rundown. I'll talk to him."
Bella checked the time on her cellphone and dropped it back into her bag, then rooted around for her keys. "I have to get back to the office, but seriously, Talia, don't shove that thing into the back of a closet as soon as you get home and forget it exists.”
That was exactly what I was going to do.
“I have to go to the florist and design the flower arrangements for the wedding anyway.”
"Did you talk to Mom?" she asked, standing from the chair as it scraped across the floor. "Dad's birthday dinner is coming up."
Right. My father's sixtieth birthday. A night of listening to the same stories about the good ol’ days at Harvard and then watching him drink gin and tonics until he falls asleep on one of the pool loungers. Even more exciting now that my in-laws were invited there to bear witness to it.
"Anna is already permanently scarred from that dress fitting. I can only imagine what the Durans are going to think of us after a night with John Russo."
"It'll strengthen your bond." Bella trotted toward the exit, her expensive heels striking the floor with each step as I followed. "You couldn't hide us forever, Tals. Mateo is part of the family now."
I couldn't hide him from them, but I could protect him from them. I'd been doing it, and I would keep doing it for as long as I needed to. Until my parents stopped treating me like a child, and my sisters started seeing me as an equal. So that I didn't have to make excuses for them every step of the way. Being with Mateo taught me how love should feel, how a healthy relationship works, and what I would never settle for. The two of us were going to break our generational curses together.
That prenup could go fuck itself.