Chapter 1
ANNETTA
Three Days Later
“You look good,” Mom says.
Her clear, steady voice is nothing short of a miracle after so much wine, but the slight droop in her left eyelid gives her away, despite having injected enough Botox over the years to kill a horse.
A half-empty bottle of Pinot Grigio sits within arm’s reach on the bathroom counter, surrounded by a spray of sparkling droplets.
The face that looks back at me in the mirror isn’t my own. This woman has long, dark eyelashes glued to her eyes. Her lips are raw and puffy from a last-minute exfoliation. Self-tanner smears her skin with a false glow.
Serafina gazes back at me.
Except that isn’t right.
Serafina is gone.
I don’t move when Mom touches the ends of the new hair extensions that fall below my breasts.
“You look just like her,” she says.
I only look like Serafina if you’re drunk.
Her comment should annoy me, but instead, I’m numb.
The doorbell rings downstairs, and Mom startles. She turns to the mirror, plucks a tissue from a marble container, and dabs at her eyes.
“Leave this.” She takes what’s left of the pansy out of my hand and tosses it into the sink.
Bruise-colored petals circle my feet. My fingertips are wet and stained.
I follow her from the bathroom, and my sister’s shape in the mirror trails behind.
The sticky-sweet scent of flowers suffocates me as we pass Serafina’s workbench. She’d been crafting an arrangement for Aunt Francesca’s birthday. It’s unfinished.
I don’t look at her bed, where the gossamer canopy drapes over the top like a shroud.
A deep laugh seeps up through the floorboards from downstairs, and my stomach twists.
“Sweetheart.” Mom looks back at me expectantly. That’s what she calls Serafina.
I look down at my feet, surprised that I’ve stopped.
“I don’t want to go.” My voice croaks. I’ve barely spoken a word in the past three days.
I was supposed to be done with all of this.
Mom’s brows pinch together. She’s usually more careful about letting that happen. Gives you wrinkles.
“It’s too late for that. Don’t keep him waiting.” She twists her hands together. “He’ll send Junior.”
I wait for fear to whisper in my ear, to curl around my muscles and bones like it does whenever Junior’s name is spoken, but my grief sinks me into a deep, dark well. Nothing can touch me here.
Mom sucks in a breath and rolls her shoulders back. “Don’t be difficult. It’s one dinner. You go, you sit, you look pretty. Do you want Dad getting in trouble?”
“No.”
“No, we don’t.” Mom looks lost for a moment. “We’d better go now.”
I jerk my legs forward like a clumsy marionette puppet. If I’m Serafina, then she would listen. She always obeyed.
Mom smiles wearily and loops her arm through mine.
As she tows me through the house, the bleached hallway runner bleeds into dark wood underneath my feet. She tugs me to a halt next to Dad’s worn loafers. I stop. The tops of my high heels shine like two black beetles against the marble flooring of my parents’ foyer.
“We were getting worried about you! Thought I’d have to send up the cavalry.”
It’s Aldo who speaks, but it’s his son Junior who I look at first.
Junior draws my attention the way an arm sticking out of a dumpster would.
You want so badly to be wrong about what you’re witnessing, but the longer you stare and the closer you get, the more sharply horror claws into your throat, until eventually, you turn and walk away.
You don’t engage with men like Junior. You avoid eye contact and pray he doesn’t notice you.
At family events, if he looked at me or Serafina for more than a few seconds, it would plant a seed of terror in my heart that would grow for days after.
Today, though, I’m only mildly interested in the new eyepatch covering his left eye.
He grins at me, too much white circling his single eye and too many teeth flashing like a dog baring its fangs. When I don’t react, his brow crashes down in visible rage. Mom’s hand on my arm tightens.
Grief feels like a superpower in this moment. Junior could shove a gun into my mouth, and I wouldn’t blink an eye. He seethes as I turn to his dad—my future husband.
It has been a little over a year since I last saw Aldo, but he looks a decade older. His cobweb hair clings to his scalp, and his skin hangs loosely over his face like melted candlewax.
“Serafina,” he says.
I nearly gag. I don’t want to hear his voice croaking out my sister’s name with that pathetic imitation of compassion. If he had a single shred of honor or kindness, he wouldn’t be forcing my sister into a marriage in the first place.
But what I want doesn’t matter anymore.
The don needs a wife.
Mom releases me to Aldo, who gropes into the open air until I’m squeezed against his side. I accept his touch. Serafina didn’t deserve this, but I do. This is my penance.
Outside in the dying sunlight, I float by Aldo’s side along the length of the walkway where Serafina had once planted a river of billowy golden bushes. Did she tell me their names? I can’t remember.
Aldo stops me next to his pitch-black SUV, where Dad and Junior are already sitting inside. Through the driver’s side glass, Junior’s gaze cuts to mine, and his eyes narrow.
Dad is already settling into the backseat for a nap. He always pretends not to see the way men treat Serafina and me. Mom says he loves us in his way, but she’s too afraid to acknowledge the truth.
Aldo poses me so I’m facing him. Serafina’s fawn-colored wool coat does little against the chill that cuts through to my bones.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Aldo says, caging my biceps in his hands. His thumbs lightly graze my breasts and then press into the flesh there intentionally, stroking back and forth. “A fucking hit-and-run? Don’t worry about a thing. When we find the bastard who did it, he’s gonna pay.”
I try not to breathe as he presses a withered kiss to my lips, but when he draws back, snatching a handful of my ass, I choke on his awful scent—like sour milk. Flakes of dry skin litter his face.
When he smiles, his veneers are blinding.
Aldo releases me, leaving me stumbling into the car. Dad is snoring against the far window.
“Seat belt, Serafina,” Aldo calls from the passenger’s seat as the car pulls away.
I buckle myself with mechanical movements and face the window without seeing a thing.
The golden plants in the walkway shimmer in my mind.
What did Serafina call them? I remember flicking through old photos on my DSLR on her bed, and her voice, soft and sweet from years of practice, excited to share a new perennial that turns gold in the fall.
She called it Amsonia. She said it would last forever.
“Break open the cigars!” Aldo’s voice snaps me out of my reverie.
I blink away unexpected tears. Outside my window, gravel leads to Turi’s mansion in the center of manicured hedges and a field of dark, rippling grass. I haven’t been here in years.
Serafina told me Turi had recently gotten married. She said it was a scandal, but I had just gotten into a fight with my husband, and I was snippy with her. I ended the call early.
It was our last phone call.
A huge, familiar figure outside my window startles me.
Everyone else has left, and I’ve been sitting in the empty car with my hands in my lap.
The door swings open as I unbuckle myself, smoke and pine needle scent coiling through my senses before I turn.
A crisp black button-down wrapped around a tall, heavyset build fills my vision until the man lowers his face to study me with espresso-colored eyes.
A strand of dark hair slips from his bun to brush against his thick, tattooed neck.
For the first time in three days, I feel a spark, a flicker, of something as I say his name.
“Dom.”