Chapter 29 – Delphine
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Delphine
L uigi hasn’t come back to the lake house since our argument.
I don’t miss his ass in the slightest. Angela comes over every day and so far, she hasn’t brought him up, but apparently the two week-iversary of Luigi’s absence is the day Angela chooses to bring up her pig-headed brother.
I should have been suspicious about her walking through the door with that lasagna but instead my pregnant ass dug right in without questioning the situation in the slightest.
“When are you going to forgive Luigi?”
“Did he send you here with this lasagna to manipulate me?”
“No. I chose to manipulate you with lasagna,” Angela says. “And it’s more like a goodbye lasagna.”
“Excuse me?”
“You can’t tell my brother.”
“Are you free from your family problems?”
Angela makes slow, pointed eye contact with me and I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but something about the way she looks makes me not want to ask anymore questions.
Something is definitely up with her, but I can’t tell if it’s about me and Luigi,or if there’s something deeper happening with this woman.
“I’m here because my brother needs you in his life. He’s been drunk downtown every night since he left.”
“I’m sure he’s found plenty of women willing to comfort him.”
Angela laughs. “He’s not like that. Deep down, Luigi is a complete romantic.”
My stomach lurches with guilt. I can’t shake what he said to me the last time we were in bed together out of my head. I have to believe this is just a game to him to keep myself safe, but hearing that he can’t contain his sadness around Angela makes it seem more real to me.
“Your brother has a lot of negative traits, which you’re well aware of.”
“He has his pride, yes. He’s Italian. But he loves hard, and I know he wants to take care of you.”
“What’s stopping him from enforcing the contract once I have the baby? How can I trust this is more than a game to him?”
“Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“You’re part of one of the scariest families in this city. I pay attention to what happens around here. How can I know we won’t end up at another club bombing? What if our kid gets kidnapped? I don’t belong in this world… and I’m sure your family would agree.”
“If anyone in my family wouldn’t accept you, they deserve my wrath and Luigi’s wrath, which is exactly what they’re going to get.”
“Does Luigi feel the same way? Or is he going to get tired of playing this game and give me up for someone fresh off the boat from Sicily.”
“Luigi loves you.”
“He’s never used those words.”
“Is that what you really need? Because it seems like every time he says something anywhere close to that, you push him away. He might not want to scare you with a bigger, scarier word.”
Angela’s insights hit me with the guilty gut punch you get when you know your friend is right about a situation you’ve been stubborn about. But what exactly am I supposed to do about this now? Luigi isn’t here.
“I’ll give him another chance. Maybe.”
Angela sighs. “Okay. Promise me. Luigi might seem tough but he’s a sensitive man. If I’m not going to be around, I need to make sure he has someone to look after him. You know my pasta recipes. You know how to make him happy and you know how to piss him off. I just… I need someone to love him.”
“Girl, why are you talking like you’re about to die or go to Mars or something?”
“I’m just taking more risks lately.”
“That’s not suspicious at all.”
“Eat that lasagna and stop asking questions,” Angela says sassily.
She demonstrates more signs of anxiety. I’ve never seen Angela checking her phone this many times.
She rarely leaves the house and when she does, she’s not this eager to see any of her cousins.
She also doesn’t keep their meetups a secret.
“Okay. Damn.”
“How’s the baby today?” she asks, changing the subject as if our conversation didn’t just get strangely deep there for a minute.
“I don’t know. Fine.” I’m not in charge of whatever is going on down there. The baby seems to mostly make me tired and make me want to fart.
Angela smiles appreciatively, that wistfulness returning until she notices how suspiciously I’m looking at her. “Good. If she’s a girl, I can be her godmother.”
“Not if he’s a boy?” I ask Angela suspiciously as I survey my baby bump, wondering if I’m psychic enough to guess the gender from the shape of my stomach.
“I’ve had enough of the men in my family,” Angela explains.
“Is that why you’re so eager to leave me with Luigi?”
“I just don’t want him to lose himself,” she says with a wistful nostalgia that worries me again.
“Girl, don’t do anything too crazy, okay? You’re acting weird.”
“I just need you to trust me, Delphine. Luigi loves you.”
“How could you possibly know that? Did he use those words? Men want things they can’t have all the time. But they have a vision for how they want their life to look and I’ve spent the last thirty-something years gathering evidence that I’m not anybody’s dream girl.”
Angela’s face gets so serious again. “You shouldn’t ever talk like that, Delphine. There might be a lot of ignorant people in the world, but the second I met you, I knew we were meant to be sisters.”
“You definitely interfered with fate there.”
“However you want to explain it,” Angela says. “Just promise you won’t let Luigi lose himself.”
“Are you in trouble, Angela?”
I look at her face as if it will help me to read her mind. There’s definitely something different about this visit, but I can’t tell what it is. I can’t even guess. Just like Luigi, Angela keeps a lot of her inner thoughts a secret.
“No. I’m not. Nothing like that.” She sounds reassuring and believable. I can’t tell if she’s just a good liar, or if she’s being honest. I just know that I’m missing something.
“Are you sure?”
“I promise.”
Angela spends the rest of the night without saying much about Luigi and without acting as suspicious as she did during our more serious conversation. She leaves around 9 p.m. and I notice that nobody in her family picks her up – just like no one dropped her off.
That’s never happened for as long as I’ve known Angela and now, I’m convinced that something is very much wrong.
My initial suspicion is that Angela is staging this whole sketchy situation to get me to reach out to her brother.
If that's her plan, it's working. She hasn't left the lake house for more than fifteen minutes when I feel a strange sense of panic coming over me.
This isn't right, and I need to trust Luigi and tell him.
By 9:30 p.m., I can't contain the feeling that something might be wrong with Angela and that I should trust Luigi with my suspicions. I call him, half expecting the call to go to voicemail, but Luigi picks up in one ring.
"Your girls' night over already?"
"Angela told you she was coming over?"
"No, I've been looking for her and CC told me-- Wait, is Angela with you?"
Luigi has good instincts for trouble. He seems to have pieced together what might have happened faster than I could have.
"No. That's what I was calling about."
"Have you seen her tonight?"
"Yes. She was here for about three, four hours. She didn't even seem rushed, just weird."
"Fuck," Luigi grunts. "She's making a run for it."
Crap. Now I'm torn.
"It might be that," I answer him. "But she could be in trouble. She seemed really... different. Sentimental."
“She was like that with me earlier today,” Luigi confesses. “I was suspicious too. But I thought her little disappearance tonight was just a devious manipulation to get me to call you.”
“And you didn’t call.”
“I was going to,” Luigi says hastily. “I only didn’t call because I thought you didn’t want to hear from me.”
I could push him away now. But I worry that if I lose this chance to connect with Luigi, I won’t get it back.
“Just because I’m mad doesn’t mean I stop caring about you.”
“Are you admitting you care about me?”
“Yes. And it’s not just because Angela came over here acting all weird.”
“I miss you,” Luigi says, more forward and confident with his emotions than I could ever find myself.
“I...”
“It’s hard for you to feel safe with me,” He says before I can spoil the moment. “I understand. But what I want more than anything is to earn your love and trust. I’ll give you a whole new contract if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t want a contract.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want you to get over here. Angela scared me and I don’t know if your family drama finally pushed her over the edge or if she’s in genuine danger.”
“If I come over to the lake house, I won’t be leaving,” Luigi says, making it clear that this invitation means I’m signing up to take all of him back at once.
While my anger with him feels way too real, the other emotions are stronger than my frustrations.
The way I crave his presence defies logic.
It must have something to do with the life growing inside me.
Even if it’s “just hormones”, I don’t think those hormones will disappear once the baby gets here. Once we have to name him or her.
If I can believe our feelings will disappear with the baby’s arrival, I can just as easily convince myself that those feelings will deepen and grow with a new bond to connect us and grow alongside ours.
“Then stay,” I tell him. “Just get over here.”
“I won’t be long.”
“Bye.”
“I love you, Delphine.”
“Love you too.”
We’ve never said those words to each other.
I hang up and fight the urge to throw up.
It’s pure anxiety, not disgust. I feel like I’ve been launched off a roller coaster and I don’t know if I’ll land on my feet with stability, better yet in Luigi’s arms, or if I’ll face plant because I took a chance on a man who could never be mine.
Three minutes after I put down the phone, I see headlights in the lake house driveway. What the hell? Was he waiting in the bushes? Considering my suspicion that the Angela situation might have been staged, it could have all been part of Luigi’s plan to pop out of the bushes.
I eagerly rush to the front door and look out the peephole to watch him approach. I want to see him, especially since Angela’s bizarre visit and departure have me on edge. When Luigi gets out of the car, he’s covered head to toe in black. I can’t even see his face.
Is he trying to scare me to death? I open the front door to the lake house to greet him and tell him off about the sketchy ass outfit. My timing is completely fucked up. I swing the door open, take two steps out and come face to face with a man who is... not Luigi.
For a fraction of a second, I question myself because they have the same icy blue eyes, but this man is NOT Luigi Taviani.
I step backwards, giving myself another millisecond to double take.
It’s not him. And it’s too late. The man lunges forward once he spots my panic and he covers my mouth with his hands.
I couldn’t fight him off if I wanted to considering he’s roughly the same size as the giant man who I mistook him for at first. I also have the primal instinct to protect my baby and to put my baby’s survival over even my own...
I try to scream and drop my weight protectively, but the man is way too strong for that defense to work and he effortlessly picks me up into his arms and squeezes me against his chest, taking me to his waiting car.
I fight the entire way down as he shoves me in the back until he threatens to cut the baby out of my womb.
The threat is enough to shut me up, I won’t lie. That’s my baby he’s talking about. Our baby. The man ties me up and blindfolds me, making it impossible for me to do anything but tilt my face towards the roof of the car.
When he returns to the front - the car is similar to a Tahoe, a vehicle I got familiar with during my first kidnapping - I hear my kidnapper speaking in a quiet, melodic language that my ear eventually recognizes as Italian.