35. Ariana
35
ARIANA
This. Obviously this. Any woman offered the choice of a life between prostitution and working in a house like this turns a blind eye and takes the latter.
I breathe in the splendid space. It’s a vast room with high ceilings. Big old-fashion sash windows completely line the one side, with a fireplace on one wall and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves flanking it. A comfortable seating area faces the fireplace, and an easel stands in the corner with a half-painted landscape on it. It looks like the beginning of a garden, maybe even the view from one of the windows.
To the other side of the room, a massive four-poster bed takes center stage, made up with crisp white linen. A door leading to a dressing room and adjacent bathroom is cleverly hidden by the wallpaper, which is dated by modern standards. Chintz in pink and blues. The wallpaper, the cream-colored carpet, the pink drapes, everything gives away this is— was —a woman’s sanctuary, frozen in time.
Portia steps up to a dainty antique desk that stands facing a window and runs a finger along its surface. She inspects her fingertip with a huff and mumbles something involving standards .
“Right. Whoever leads the show here now needs a talking to. The Don died, and two weeks later, the head housekeeper left on holiday. If I have any say in it, I’m thinking she’s holidayed herself into getting fired.” With a dismissive shrug, she turns to the guard who still hovers in the door. “You can leave us now. Close the door and wait outside.”
“Portia—” the man starts, but she only pulls up to her full, unimpressive height, gives him a scowl, and shoos him with her hands as she walks up to him, ready to close the door in his face.
“We’re fine. This is women’s business, and Ariana won’t try anything here. She’ll have to jump from the window to escape, and there are hounds and guards enough to catch her when she tries to limp off with a broken leg.”
The man raises his eyebrows and then his hands in defeat. “Okay-okay. Just watch your back. As I’ve been told to watch yours.”
Portia shuts the door in his face as soon as he gives an inch and rolls her eyes at me. “As if I don’t know how to watch my back.”
I shoot her a half-smile. She’s already stepped in as a mother figure to me, and for someone who lost her mom at such a young age, it’s slowly becoming harder to even think of hurting Portia, never mind getting her into trouble by trying to escape. Plus, she’s a helluva shot.
She walks past me and murmurs, “Just like this house, Dominic’s mom had her secrets. We’re here to keep them safe for her as far as possible. I won’t have any random guard look on while we do this.”
But she’d trust me ? A total stranger coming in, to help heave a massive skeleton out of the closet? The only people who get to keep secrets are the dead…
“This was Bianca Scalera’s safe space,” Portia says as her gaze travels the room, interrupting my thoughts. “The only times she got to use the bed was until six weeks postpartum. Then it was back to work.”
The way Portia says those words pops goosebumps on my arms. Work . By what I’ve seen of Dominic’s skin, I don’t want to imagine what work Don Scalera had for his wife. This is a mirror to the life I would have lived if I’d married Franco Fiore. My throat tightens again with helpless fear swarming in me. Bianca Scalera didn’t have the same luxury of a choice between housekeeping and prostitution. It’s clear she was here to do only one thing: bear sons.
“What was she like? Dominic’s mom?”
A full minute passes as Portia mulls over my question, her feelings openly displayed on her face as she goes through them.
“A caged tigress,” she murmurs eventually. “Keeping her cubs close for as long as she could. But caged all the same.” She sniffs as tears roll down her cheeks. “She did everything to keep those boys safe. Fought for them like a tigress as long as she was able to. God…the things?—”
She breaks off in a suppressed sob, crosses herself, and under her breath, she mutters a prayer in Italian. One I don’t recognize. My Finnish mom wasn’t religious, and once in foster care, church wasn’t high on the to-do list for anybody. I reach for her in sympathy, and she grabs my hand, urgently squeezing now.
“If you ever wonder why these men are the way they are, it’s because despite everything, their mother showed them enough love to carry them through it all. To this day and beyond. The love she had for her sons will carry them for the rest of their lives, and subconsciously, it sways the direction of every decision they make.” She gulps in a breath, her hand still squeezing mine as the other comes to rest on her heart. “I’ve seen it over the years. Don Scalera might have had a cruel fist and a mental hold on his sons they would bow to all the way, but when it comes to women, these men will never be their father.”
Portia’s words echo everything I’ve experienced with Dominic so far. With me, he’s been the most caring and compassionate man I’ve ever met, and I bet he is like that with every woman that crosses his path.
Portia lets go of me to wipe roughly at her face. She shakes her head as if she can shake off memories. “Come, we need to work. To think this whole situation with Gabriella only came to light now. When Bianca knew her time was close, she made me pack everything away, promising me to never look at it, and I honored her wishes. Now I can kick myself for being so naive.”
So loyal.
“You didn’t know about Gabriella?” I ask, getting the feeling if someone knew something, it would be Portia.
“No.” She leads the way into the bathroom which has an adjacent dressing room and walk-in closet. It’s stacked with clear plastic crates filled with clothes and shoes. “The Don took Bianca to a different hospital to give birth than the usual. Due to the new doctor, see? None of us were there to see what happened, and with her so weak…we didn’t even think to question it. We just took his word. Now I wish I saw the bodies, but even that never happened.”
No bodies? How did this happen? Everybody took the Don’s word, but without ever seeing Bianca’s body, there is no certainty of her death.
Portia picks up the top crate and holds it out for me, and soon, we’ve stacked those that were against the one wall away to the opposite side. “To think I stored all her things away years ago, and never caved in to the temptation to even look…”
I’m in awe. Loyalty gets rewarded, indeed.
“You cared for her very much, and you still do,” I say, reaching to squeeze her shoulder where it’s shaking with sobs. “You didn’t know, and you had no reason to suspect—” Treason. This is a form of treason.
“I know, right? And after she died, there were the boys…all of them so lost, and poor Benedict hardly five years old. I was busy, trying my best to fill a hole nobody ever could or would again.”
She drops to her knees, and I’m readying myself to see her whip out her rosary and go through a string of prayers, but instead she tugs at the baseboard, wriggles and shimmies it until it shifts.
Eventually, it slides out without protest, and Portia glances up at me.
“When the closet is full of clothes, you don’t notice, and I was careful to stack the crates just so.”
She pulls on the other corner’s baseboard, but this one has been hammered in with a lone nail, and she puts in a bit of force. Once it’s out, it exposes the cream carpet covering the floor, cut flush to the wall, now only with the baseboards’ footprint on it. Portia reaches for the carpet’s corner and peels it away, revealing the old hardwood floor underneath. One board has a hole in it, just big enough to fit a female finger. As she lifts it away, the wood creaks, and dust clouds up.
“Have no fear,” she whispers. “Everything in here is wrapped in plastic, covered for posterity.”
My heart hammers in my chest as this new reality finally sinks in.
“You told Dominic you didn’t know where her journals were,” I whisper, stunned.
“I lied,” Portia says without a blink or a blush. “I’ll go to confession on Sunday.”
“What? You lied ? To Dominic? Of all people?” Does she know he tortures people to death? For the truth? He’s admitted it to me…not in so many words, but I heard the evidence—there’s no misunderstanding the role he plays in this family.
“I did.” She glances at her watch again, clearly keeping an eye on the time, then leans back on her heels and gives me a stern look. “Listen, we Mafia women need to stick together. You and I have maybe two hours to scan through everything here and decide if we tell those boys where these are, or if we let sleeping dogs lie.”