Chapter 8
Bianca
I don’t know how I found the strength in me to tear myself from Leo’s arms and threw myself into the elevator, stumbling out into the bar on the first floor and then onto the street where I flagged a cab and stuffed myself in, giving the driver the address of my father’s house in Lenox Hill.
I close my eyes and will my breath to return to a semblance of normal, sure its rapid pace would lead me into hypoxia soon if I didn’t get a grip on myself.
“You okay there?” the turbaned driver asks as he throws me a glance in the rearview mirror.
My breath staggers as I try to respond. Finally, I nod—he’s still watching me, so he’ll see the nonverbal answer.
“You sure? You look like…someone tried to hurt you, kudi .”
I smile and shake my head. “I’m okay, Paaji .”
These Punjabi older men, they’re very protective of young girls. From the first time I walked into a shop in Queens owned by Punjabi Sikhs, I was addressed as ‘ kudi ,’ which means ‘girl’ and sounds like kuri aloud. I was always told to respect my elders, so I enquired how to address the mom-and-pop duo. I was told ‘ Paaji’ for a man, ‘ Baaji’ for a woman.
It’s come in handy quite a few times in New York cabs.
“Sure, na ?” he enquires.
“Yes.”
He returns his focus to driving, leaving me to contemplate the state I’m in. My dress is all askew, the tie loose around my waist, and the skirt is crumpled. I smooth it out with my hands. Thank goodness it’s a hardy synthetic and not fragile silk; I can make myself presentable pretty soon.
Not so much can be said about the state of me inside, though. Leo all but tossed me into a storm and made mush of me with his impassioned words and declarations. Then the way he pushed me into that wall, was about to have his way with me…
God, how I’d wanted that. I would’ve given anything to have him fuck me again, fill me with his cock, take from my mouth and body and pussy, plunder and ravish, pleasure and torment until he pulled orgasm after orgasm from me. His hands on me, his mouth on mine, his finger in my sex—I have to inhale sharply to clear the fog of desire wrapping itself around me again.
Marry me.
My hearts caves in on itself. There’s nothing more I want in the world. I know Leo wants my body. He can’t want my heart, not yet; we don’t know each other enough for that, for love. But even so, I know no other man will ever be able to elicit such desire in me, such carnality, such completion. My soul knows this, so yes, I would totally agree to marry him today itself…if I could.
I can’t, and that’s the kicker. I’m promised to another.
All of this had run into my head despite the heat of his body seeping into mine, lighting my blood on fire as he kissed me like his life depended on it. As much as I wanted this, craved it, needed it even, I couldn’t go along with what we were doing. It would just throw oil on an already raging fire, and we’d light an inferno that’d burn not just us but our families and everyone in our entourage.
So I’d had to do the rational thing, the right thing. I’d had to tear myself from him, walk away before anyone got hurt even further in this dangerous game we were playing.
The words that’d fallen from my lips as I was running away, though? Hadn’t planned on them.
And if I have my way, they’re the last words I’ll ever speak to Leo Pellegrini aside from a simple greeting here and there.
The car stops. I can’t believe we’re already in Lenox Hill, in front of my father’s house. I’d thought it’d take longer to get here from Tribeca. Vince’s, where Leo had told me to meet him, is a bustling French bistro. I was looking for him at a table when Vince himself, the owner, approached and gave me the code for the elevator at the back. It took me to the third floor, to the loft where Leo was waiting for me.
Is that one of his haunts? I never got to ask him, because the doors opened and there he was slamming his fist into a wall. I ran to him, and then everything else melted to the wayside as I just knew I had to take care of him, that he was a man at the end of his tether. The raw look of pain in his eyes had felled me.
The driver announces the fare, and I shake out of my thoughts. I extend the money then slither out of the car.
“Thank you, Paaji . Sastria kal ,” I say, greeting him goodbye in his language. For a moment, he made me feel cherished, seen, and I want to return the favor to him.
My steps are leaden as I trudge to the front door and let myself in. It’s dark inside. A sliver of hope my father isn’t home carves itself in me.
It’s extinguished mere seconds later when the lights come on, almost blindingly so.
“Where were you?” he asks. He’s standing on the threshold of his study, a glass of cognac in hand.
I gulp. It’s hours past my dinner date with my fiancé. Can I fib?
“I was meeting Ardian tonight, don’t you remember?”
His face grows stern. “He says he dropped you off two hours ago at Mattia’s.”
I shrug. “Then why are you asking where I was?”
“Because you weren’t at your brother’s.”
He checked, then. I didn’t think to let Hana know to cover for me. I needed to go see Leo. Had Ardian dropped me here, I wouldn’t have been able to sneak out again. Mattia and Hana are at a dinner party tonight, so I knew their house would be empty.
Best defense sometimes is attack. So I throw my hands up and huff. “I went for food, okay? That ignoramus ruined a perfectly good sole meunière with a Burgundy red.”
“Careful with that mouth of yours, figlia .”
I glare at him. Mattia always cowers in front of our father. I’ve learned to stand my ground whenever possible—he’d railroad me otherwise.
He waves at me with the glass. “And it took you two hours to find food?”
“You know of any place in Central Manhattan not booked out in advance on a Saturday night?”
“It’s past midnight, Bianca. What will people say?”
I shrug. “That I have a life?”
The frustration of tonight—Ardian at first, then Leo with his proposal, my unsatisfied body still screaming at me that I denied it a perfect encounter with a skillful lover, and now my father on my case—it all comes rushing to me like a tsunami engulfing everything on its path. I’m beyond caring what comes out of my mouth at this point.
“You don’t have a life!” he barks at me, making me flinch. “Your only purpose is to bring peace between us and the Albanians.”
Leo said something similar tonight. I hate seeing the truth laid out so bare before me.
My father takes a few steps toward me. “Don’t fuck this up, Bianca. Too much is riding on this. The Abrashis want a pure bride. You can’t let anything mar your reputation.”
I’m seeing red now. I’m just a commodity to them all.
“So just because I come home a little late one night, I’m a slut now?”
I don’t see the slap coming—just feel the crash of his meaty hand on my cheek, the smarting his fingers leave on my skin growing hot from the blow.
My father’s never raised a hand on me before.
“Don’t dishonor me. Or your fiancé.”
Something else Leo said flashes in my mind.
“My fiancé?” I ask. “When two people get engaged, the man puts a ring on the woman’s finger.” I wave my left hand in his face, beyond caring now. What’s he going to do? Hit me? He’s already crossed this line. “Where’s my engagement ring, padre ?”
His mouth curls into a snarl. “Stop behaving like a little girl, Bianca. You and Ardian are getting married. You don’t need a ring for that.”
I know how far to push with my father, and I’ve come to the end of the road today. His cold dismissal has shut the door on me already.
I turn my back and go upstairs, closing the door to my bedroom with a thud. At least this brings me some satisfaction. I grab a pillow and yell out my exasperation in it.
Why is my life turning into such a fuckup?
My gaze lands on my left hand as I fall into a lump on the bed. No one looking at my ring finger would know I’m engaged.
Our marriage will be an alliance, yes, but we’re adhering to all the conventions of being engaged. Except for the ring. Suddenly, I’m ravenously curious why Ardian, or even his family, haven’t thought of giving me an engagement ring to further highlight the tie between us.
I pause and wonder: what do I really know about my fiancé?
I hadn’t really bothered to learn more about him before. Our wedding was a done deal, so I had no way out, whether I wanted to or not. It didn’t matter how he lived his life if I was stuck with him either way.
But today, Leo, and then my father, forced me to think deeper about what’s going on. There must be more than meets the eye here, and I have to find out.
Good thing I know someone who can help. All sorts frequent the Sorbonne, from the straight-laced to the straight-up deranged. Benji Castiel is one of those. We’re friends, though; I was even his beard for a while. So he owes me, though I’m sure he’d help me just for the fun of it. He loves to test out his hacker chops.
I pull my laptop and fire off an email to Benji, asking him to find all he can about my secretive fiancé. Maybe this will bring me some peace of mind, or better yet, leverage to worm my way out of this alliance.
***
Benji comes through a week later. I’ve thrown myself into meetings with the wedding planner in the meantime—it keeps my father off my back, my fiancé is recalcitrant to get involved so I dodge him, too, and it forces my thoughts and my path away from Leo.
I sit down at the small desk in my bedroom and open the email, frowning as I read along. When I’m done with his missive, my heart is hammering.
What does he mean by ‘open at your peril’ on the four sets of files he’s sent me in increasing number of importance?
What the hell is Ardian Abrashi up to that a seasoned hacker and dark web spider is telling me to be careful and think twice before looking through?
I hitch in a breath. Is there hope for me in there? A way to break the marriage contract?
Steeling myself, I open the first folder.
Pictures pop up, and I gasp.
Selfies of Ardian with a pretty blond woman, his arm around her, a small smile on his face while she grins widely into the lens. A file in the folder states she’s twenty-five, a kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn. I check the metadata on the selfies—the latest one is from last week.
I gasp out in shock. Ardian isn’t single. From the looks of things, he’s in love with this woman, is in a relationship with her as at last Friday, a day before he met me for our ‘date’ in Manhattan.
No wonder he’s always busy. He’s got another life with someone else out there.
This changes everything. When I thought I was marrying someone coming into this partnership on the same terms, I could stomach it. Now, I’d be the other woman, even though I’d legally be his wife. I can’t do this to another woman!
My cursor hovers over the next file. Maybe there’s more of the same ilk in there? I’ll need all the ammunition I can get to take this to my father, to get him to break this contract.
I click on the second file, and my heart almost stops. Pictures, most of them. Of women in various forms of bondage. But always with a gag in their mouths, mascara running down their pale cheeks.
I don’t know why I open the third file. More pictures, and these look like torture sex. There are compressed video files, too. I open one of them, and I freeze as I watch the short clip, bile rising in my throat. A woman is gagged and tied to an X-shaped cross. A man in a balaclava pushes an open champagne bottle into her vagina; it’s obvious she’s in pain. Then he takes a hammer and breaks the bottle, and the psycho then fucks her with the neck of the bottle that’s still inside her. The broken edges on the other end slice her inner thighs open, there’s blood running down her legs, and—
I slam the laptop closed and vomit in the paper basket next to my desk.
Lord in Heaven! What sort of man am I about to marry?
I can’t do this. I can’t go ahead with this marriage. If this is Ardian’s tastes, I don’t see him playing them out with the sweet-looking kindergarten teacher, though this might be her jam, I don’t know. But if not with her, the woman he seems to love, why not with the woman legally his, his wife?
I used to think letting him touch me would be hell, but this? This would be literally an encounter with the devil. One he might revisit on me every day for the rest of our lives…
I’m out of my chair in a flash, requesting an Uber on my phone. The closest one can be here in twenty minutes; I can’t wait this long. Mattia’s house is three blocks away. I can walk there in as much time.
I hotfoot it to his house, breathe out a sigh of relief when I see his Cadillac in the driveway. I’m already punching in the door code when I remember to ring the doorbell—wouldn’t want to walk in on anything happening between those two. Hana told me they’re trying for a baby in earnest.
“Bianca, what’s wrong?” Hana’s on me the second I make it in. “You’re pale as a ghost.”
“Where’s Mattia?” I croak.
“In the kitchen. Why?” Her hand, which was rubbing my back, pauses. “Did someone hurt you?”
The tears I’ve been trying to keep at bay surge through, and I’m blubbering like a fool as she wraps her arms around me.
“What happened?” Mattia asks as he rushes to me. “Who did this to you?”
They both steer me to a sofa in the living room section off the kitchen. Hana thrusts a glass of water in my hand. I’m trembling so much from the delayed shock, I can’t get a sip in and it’s falling on my clothes.
“Bianca, talk!” my brother orders.
“I-I can’t go ahead with this wedding,” I stammer.
“Why not?”
“Ardian has a girlfriend.”
“So?” he asks. “He’ll break up with her when you’re married.”
“That’s not the point, Mattia,” Hana gently points out.
He sighs. “Bianca, you’re not this na?ve, surely. Some men do keep mistresses after they’re married.”
“Again, not the point, Mattia.”
“Thank you,” I mumble, glancing at Hana. “I’ll be the mistress, in this case.”
“You’re not making sense.”
Both Mattia and Hana are watching me with furrowed brows now.
I take a deep breath, not knowing how to tell them this. “Ardian…he’s into…weird stuff. Twisted shit. I’m afraid he’ll make me do those things…”
We all know in our world of arranged marriages, men bed their wives, make love to them if they care for them, and all their fantasies are reserved for their mistress or carefully procured escorts.
“You said he’ll make you do it, so this means he’s not into kids,” Mattia says.
I bristle. “And that makes it better?”
His jaw tenses. “Of course not.”
I take a deep breath. “I…I saw what’s on his computer. It’s fucked up, Mattia. Dangerous stuff. Like, painful, sadistic, and possibly lethal, too.”
“It’s his brother who’s the pervert.”
“It runs in the family,” I counter. “I’m not doing this. Please. You can’t make me go through with this.”
Mattia remains silent for long moments. I see him pondering, weighing it all in his mind.
“Bianca,” he starts. “I…I’m sorry. I can’t.”
I blink. Hana gasps. I was fully expecting he’d be helping me, that he’d be on my side.
“You won’t, you mean,” I whisper.
He scrunches his face as if he’s in pain. “It’s Padre ’s will. Neither of us can go against that, against him.”
I remember the slap, the sting on my cheek, the imprint of his fingers that was still visible on my face when I glimpsed my reflection in a mirror upstairs. My father won’t help me. In fact, he’d tie me in those shackles himself, literally and figuratively, if it means getting his foot up the organization’s ladder. A perfect stranger—the Punjabi cab driver—has shown more compassion to me in two minutes than my own father in two decades.
A ball clogs my throat, and as my stomach hurls in revulsion, in disgust that my father would sell me off like this, that Mattia would put his father’s wishes over the safety of his sister, I get up and run to the powder room under the stairs.
Head over the porcelain bowl, I throw up again, dry retching for long stretches. At one point, Hana comes in, pulls my hair back gently as I upchuck my guts.
“I’m sorry, my love,” she says, soothing me by running a hand on my back. “It’s not right, what he’s doing.”
“It’s not,” I mumble, tears threatening to fall again.
“Come on. Clean up. You need some food into you.”
The idea of food makes me nauseous suddenly, and I lean over the bowl again to dry retch.
Something dawns on me. I’ve been throwing up a lot this week. It can’t be something I ate—and the very thought makes me want to vomit again—so if it’s not food poisoning, then what?
A possibility pops up…
“No,” I gasp.
“What?” Hana asks, sounding worried.
It’s been five weeks since her wedding. Since the afternoon with Leo. The dates align, and I’m frowning. I thought you couldn’t get pregnant your first time. Guess that’s a myth.
Guess I’m going to find out…
I look up at my best friend. She’s been trying for a baby—she’s going to have a pregnancy test or two in her bathroom.
“Han? I think I just fucked up. Royally.” I choke on a sob. “Please, you can’t tell anyone! Promise me you won’t!”