Chapter 2 #2
This must be the first time he’s spoken my name since he walked into this house.
It’s the first time we’ve talked that much.
The first time we’ve discussed a family issue, yet he has no right to deliver this kind of news to me.
Whether he likes it or not, I am the Gallo heiress and have no business being in Sicily.
There’s nothing for me to do over there. Sicily, to me, is what Alcatraz is to the most heinous criminals.
A place where you go to die.
What did I do to deserve this?
“What did I do?” I murmur, drowning in disbelief. “Do Giorgio and Sylvia know about this?”
“We’ve discussed it,” he says curtly, and I quickly shake my head in disbelief.
“We? When? This couldn’t have happened within the span of the two hours since you put her into the ground and I left the cemetery.”
“This has nothing to do with Bianca’s death.”
I shake my head again in disbelief, a scowl crawling up my face.
“No? Do you expect me to believe you?”
A few moments of silence swirl around us, ominous and stale, as our eyes stay locked, and I struggle to understand what this really is.
“Who was ‘we' exactly?” I ask quietly, my voice scraping my throat like wet sand.
“Sylvia, Giorgio, and I.”
“When did you talk about me, and why wasn’t I part of the conversation?”
I can tell by how our conversation is going that I have already lost this battle.
“It wasn’t for you to choose.”
“It wasn’t? Maybe it is now. I don’t want to leave, and that’s that.”
“You have no say in this,” he says and pushes upright before turning and pouring himself another drink.
I find his demeanor absolutely infuriating, and without giving it a second thought, I close the gap between us, yank his drink off the counter, and empty it on the floor, our eyes clenched in a battle.
“I don’t want to leave. You can’t force me to go to Sicily. I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t deserve this.”
He narrows his eyes at me, the distant flicker of a dark smile that looks, again, like a life sentence, flashing between his eyelashes.
“You need to spend some time away,” he says quietly with little pauses between his words, each nipping away at my resolve.
“I don’t want to be alone.”
I say words without a real meaning, hoping to make him talk and help me understand why this is happening to me.
“You won’t be alone.”
And those few words only confirm that this is not a random thing.
My spending a couple of days there picking lemons and watching the birds dive for food in the sea won’t be a mere vacation.
My exile will look like a string of long, empty days filled with unraveling threads of longing and desperation.
“I won’t be with you,” I say, my eyes inadvertently slipping to his mouth.
The mouth I’d love to feel on me––my lips, my hair, my thighs––although I know it will never happen.
I hate myself for saying that.
He doesn’t even flinch. Not a muscle throbs in his jaw. Not an eyebrow lifts with a questioning look.
His expression remains a frozen, painful puzzle.
“I’m nothing to you, Leilani,” he says in the frosted voice of someone delivering insignificant, at least to him, news.
He means it.
He looks like someone who does.
Unwavering eyes, a stern expression, and lips made for sin, refusing to bow to my needs, punishing me, the sinner.
Me.
What did I do?
My chest doesn’t move, my heart buried in a tomb of unrelenting disbelief.
‘You’re everything to me.’
I wish I could shout that at the top of my lungs. Let everybody know. See my world crumble. See the world at large implode.
Can you imagine the panic in my family as they would feverishly look for a way out?
The things they could do to me, aside from putting me into an asylum, or paying for evergreen therapy, or wiping my memory clean so I can never think of him again.
I bet they’d love to do that.
What could they seriously do to me?
Other than lock me away, forcing me to marry some old mobster who’d touch me with his slimy, shaky fingers, unable to get it up?
Or would they simply kill me and make it look like an accident?
A decent one at that.
Something some poor soul could grieve over, although no one who would bat an eyelash if I died.
Unlike my mother, I can’t always lie to people, be a hypocrite, make myself fit into a box, strike up unusual alliances, or shape myself into something that I'm not.
It’s probably the only thing I have inherited from her.
Back to the Gallos, the precarious balance would be forever ruined, with no hopes of ever bouncing back if I didn’t abide by their rules.
How many wars would my little transgression clumsily start?
How much money would be lost?
How many people would perish if little old me had obsessed over the wrong man?
But what do I know?
Maybe I’m wrong.
I’m not old enough to drink, let alone understand the criminal world I’m living in.
I release a quiet exhale, not knowing what else to say. The news has knocked the air out of my lungs.
I doubt everything about myself now. My thoughts, my feelings, and above all, my beliefs.
What if this is it?
They exile me to some dusty old town still sleeping in the clutches of old times before that day comes when they’ll tell me what to eat, how to dress, and who to open my legs for.
Who to marry, for sure.
And it won’t be the man in front of me.
He’s already been married to my mother.
I find some strength in the last shred of dignity clinging to my soul.
“Okay. All right,” I say dryly, a dark smirk twisting my lips. “Is everyone on board with this?” I ask, fully knowing the answer.
A clipped nod of his head is my answer.
Hatred that I never thought I’d harbor balloons in my heart.
They’re all part of this.
Somehow, I’m their only problem?
Their biggest problem?
Oh, how they’ll regret this.
“I’ll leave now,” I say, hoping to hear him speak again, ask me to stay, comfort me, and tell me it was all a lie as he was only testing me.
“You do that,” he says, moving away from me and rounding his desk.
No longer looking at me, he pushes a drawer open and searches for something, while I pick up my things.
He lifts his gaze one more time.
There is no smile, not a kernel of understanding, not a hint of empathy for me, only crudeness.
And then he speaks again as he flicks his eyes to my head.
“Stop doing that to your hair,” he drops before moving his eyes to that damn drawer, and a flicker of hope flashes through me with the belief that maybe not all is lost.