Chapter 5
LEILANI
The noise tears into my foggy brain like a worm into an apple.
“Miss Leilani? Miss Leilani?”
I push my head up, an eye slightly open.
“Huh?”
The sheer curtains move like waves across the windows.
Quiet voices and laughter travel from outside, while a firm voice bellows out at me from behind the door.
“Fuck… Nona,” I murmur to myself, shifting my eyes to the wall clock.
It’s nine fifteen in the evening?
What?
I can’t believe it.
I missed the exact point in time that marked my twenty-first year of existence on this earth.
I clamber out of bed and push upright, looking for my robe, although no housecoat is decent enough for Nona.
She’s not that old and stuck in her ways, but she knows how a proper lady needs to dress.
And I’m anything but proper.
“I’m coming.”
My words make the noise outside the door subside.
Quick steps take me to the walk-in closet, which is almost as big as my bedroom.
Mirrors line one side. Antique furniture leans against the other.
It’s a world within a world, and I routinely use this space to lounge and read a book away from everybody else.
The comfortable couch and pillows are more than enough for me to get lost in a dream. The only downside that I see is the lack of natural light.
Luckily, I can adjust the lighting.
Where the fuck is my robe?
Another good thing about my walk-in closet is that it provides a secondary access to the bathroom.
I push the door open and look around the vast bathroom, which feels like a museum, with expensive art adorning the walls and a sparkling white, large clawfoot tub in the middle.
A glass wall encases the shower by the window.
Showering in front of the open window has never been my problem.
I finally find the fuzzy little thing in the hamper.
Displeased, I slide my arms through the armholes and make an honest effort to tie the belt.
Walking into the bedroom, I pull my hair up into a messy bun. Frankly, I’m in such a bad mood that I might not show up at my birthday party at all.
Nona quietly knocks on the door before I swing it open.
Her eyes glint with panic.
“Miss Leilani?”
Her disappointment is thick as she rakes her eyes over my face and hair.
“You thought I was ready?” I toss at her as I swiftly turn and head back where I came from.
She follows me into the bathroom, her pacing frantic behind me.
“Please don’t do that,” I say, holding my hand up in warning, not looking at her.
She freezes next to me.
“You need to brush your hair and put on your makeup,” she says evenly.
I turn on the lamp on the vanity and the small lights outlining the mirror.
“I’m good. Thank you,” I retort.
You could hear a pin drop.
I doubt she’s still breathing.
“What did you do?” she murmurs, looking around the room.
She starts organizing the towels on the shelf to cope with her own panic, I suppose, and her behavior rubs me the wrong way.
Holding a cotton ball between my fingers, I wait for her to bring her eyes to me.
Nona is forty-nine, ten years older than my mother would have been had she been alive. Her dark hair is cut short.
It has volume and curls at the tips.
She usually runs a brush through it in the morning, and she’s ready to go.
I can’t say the same thing about my hair.
My mane falls down in a cascade of rings that fuck with the style whenever they want.
She wears the same dress size she did when I was little, but the older she gets, the more boring her clothes become.
There is no uniform requirement in the house, so it’s up to the staff to wear something nice.
This will be my house, so I can run it any way I want.
She’s opted more and more for washed-out colors as if her soul has faded with her dresses.
Her colorful dresses, skirts, and blouses were the highlight of my existence when I was a kid. My mother liked to dress up, too, but I spent more time with Nona than I did with her.
Nona’s new clothing choices might’ve been influenced by my mother's passing.
A twelve-month mourning period is expected in Italy, and although we’re a family with mixed blood and not that great at observing the traditions, she did grieve after my mother died.
So for her, that first year was ‘dark' everything. Dresses, shoes, and nylons.
She even wore a black headband that drove me up the wall, but I’m all for respecting people’s choices, so I let her be.
I love Nona in my own twisted way.
After a while, she experienced some freedom in her selections, and I loved that Nona even more.
She rocked cute outfits with floral patterns. Pinks, reds, and yellows.
And then the bright colors vanished in thin air.
Something must’ve happened to her soul.
“What?” I push out, not answering her question.
“You’re late.”
I tear my eyes away from hers and focus on my face, cleaning my skin with a smooth, creamy milk I regularly order from France.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I murmur.
Her sigh makes me flick my eyes to hers in the mirror.
“Giorgio and Sylvia are waiting downstairs.”
My hand stops midair, my heart racing.
If they are here, who else is here?
“Go on.”
“That’s it.”
I shift in my seat.
“Are you so worried I’m not ready for my birthday party because my grandparents are waiting for me? I didn’t think they’d show up, anyway.”
“Well, they’re here.”
I study her face for a second.
“But that’s not why you’re so concerned.”
“A hundred guests are waiting outside, and you’re only wearing your ugly robe.”
Laughing, I spin in my seat and continue cleaning my face.
“I’ll be ready in no time.”
“You probably don’t even know what you’d like to wear.”
“You’re probably right. I’ll find something.”
A few moments pass before I go on.
“Rest assured, the guests aren’t here for me. They’re here to schmooze with the Gallos.”
I pause before I drone on.
“They want to make deals with Giorgio. It’s always been about that.” I glance over my shoulder. “I know how these things work, Nona.”
“You just said it,” she tosses back at me in a soft voice. “By the way, Giorgio was supposed to arrive on Sunday.”
“Giorgio Gallo always does what he wants, which never stops people to try to get in his good graces.”
Shrugging, I drop the cotton ball into a small container and pick up a clean one.
“We’re still running this part of Sicily, I suppose. So there’s that,” I murmur. “Other than that, nobody cares about me.”
Her silence prompts me to meet her eyes in the mirror again.
“Why wouldn’t you be ready on time then?” she asks. “You could’ve been done with it by now and let them spend the night talking about their business.”
I plop the second cotton ball down and turn to her.
“It doesn’t matter what I do. I won’t hide in my own home. I won’t get rushed to my own birthday party. And I refuse to be accountable to anyone.”
“It’s not about––”
I flick my hand up, cutting her off.
“I know what it's all about. You want things to unfold smoothly. I want that, too, but it doesn’t matter how we accomplish that.”
I push to my feet and grab the lapels of my robe.
“If you don’t mind, I need to take a bath.”
Her eyes look downcast as she’s studying my face.
“What’s bothering you now?” she asks, reading into my behavior more than I’d like.
“Nothing is bothering me,” I say, keeping my robe on and heading to the bathtub.
I turn on the faucet, let the water run, and turn to her.
“Have you heard from my father?” I ask her straightly, not a muscle moving on my face.
I never called my real father "father."
I never called Julian’s father my father, but I’ve called him my father a couple of times just to fuck with everybody’s brains.
I can’t do it in front of him these days since he avoids me like the plague. But I still like to rub it in his face whenever I see him and get the chance.
Calling him that truly gets to him.
I also hope it makes him hard, the way it gets me tingly and needy and makes me want to check myself into an asylum.
“I’m just asking,” I say, moving my focus away from her.
I pick up my favorite shampoo and conditioner bottles and stack them on the edge of the bathtub.
“I’ve heard Giorgio talking about him,” she eventually says.
I freeze before turning to her slowly.
“As in…?”
“He’s in town, but I don’t know if he’s coming.”
“What exactly did Giorgio say?”
“He was talking business with one of the Sandoval brothers.”
I hold her gaze for a moment.
Of all the people in the house, Nona is the only one I can tell when she picks up on something.
She’s the housekeeper, the omnipresent person in the house, and she has known me since I was a baby.
She’d need to know almost everything about me by now, and she does.
She respects my boundaries, and I treat her nicely.
But there were things. Things that happened in the house.
From what I could tell, not many people… Let me rephrase it. Most people had no idea what was happening in the house.
I could talk for hours about how oblivious people were to the things that happened right before their eyes.
Even when people see that something’s wrong, they’d rather look the other way than intervene.
They’re having a hard time admitting to themselves that they’re witnessing something that they’d normally despise and resent.
Alexandra, her right hand, is only a few years older than me, so she’s too young for this kind of stuff.
And the much older people in the house?
They mind their own business.
But Nona?
Nona is a single woman with no kids of her own, only a niece she visits from time to time. And maybe, that’s why the color of her clothes has started to dim, too.
Maybe living an ascetic life no longer cuts it.
She’s an industrious, loyal, smart, humble woman. A combination that’s hard to find these days.
She works her butt off and makes good money that she stashes away for the uncertainty of the gray hair days, unreliable knees, poor vision, and self-imposed isolation.
She prays every night and finds solace in that, and I envy her for that more than she knows.
I wish I could have a soul like hers, instead of the filth and darkness in my chest.
“Go on,” I say.
“They were talking about having dinner here. So Callum O’Hara might be here at some point. I couldn’t tell whether they were talking about tonight or tomorrow evening.”
“Of course they didn’t talk about tonight. They need to discuss business. Why would they meet in a house full of guests? Turn, please.”
Without a word, she turns her back to me and tilts her eyes down so that she doesn’t get a glimpse of me in the mirror.
I shed my robe and slide into the bathtub.
“So he’s not coming,” I murmur.
It’s not like I’ve held out hope he’d show up for me.
She spins to me.
“I see no reason for him not to come. It’s your birthday,” Nona says.
Right.
“We’ll see about that.”
I lean back and relax against the porcelain edge.
He won’t come.
If he wanted to visit me, he would’ve done it already.
“How long has he been in town?” I ask, lifting my gaze and finding the woman frozen in place.
“I don’t know.”
The slightest hesitation in her voice registers with me.
“Has he talked to you?” I ask.
“No.”
“Nona?”
The blood drains from her face.
She hates it when I suspect that she is lying.
She’s an honest person, and getting caught in the middle isn’t her idea of sticking to her values.
She has no choice, I imagine.
“Did he ask you to keep it a secret?” I ask.
My eyes stay on her, my lips pressed together.
“He did,” I infer from her silence. “What did he say to you? Don’t tell Leilani? Why would he do that? And why does he hate me so much?”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“What did he say to you, Nona?”
My voice booms in the large space.
“He said it would be better if you didn’t know. He also wanted to know if you were all right.”
I lift an eyebrow in disbelief.
“That’s it?”
She nods.
“When did you talk to him?”
“On Wednesday.”
Two days ago.
Huh.
“Is he here alone?”
Her eyebrows move up into a questioning look.
“Does he have a woman with him?” I ask again.
She shrugs.
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me even if he did.”
“So you made up that story about the Sandoval brothers to ease me into the idea that he might show up.”
“No. What I said was true. It is true. They’ll get together at some point to have that conversation, but I can’t tell whether Callum O’Hara will join them or not. He might not be in town tonight. I’m sure he has plenty of things to do.”
“Yeah, right…” I mutter. “Okay. You can go now,” I say, suddenly irritated with the story.
What a dick he is.
I hate him.
“Please don’t be late,” Nona says, ready to leave.
“I’m late already, so what difference does it make?”
“It does. Sylvia also asked about you. They both want to see you.”
“They’ll see me,” I murmur, talking about my grandparents, suppressing the not-so-nice thoughts in my head. “I need some time alone.”
Without a word, she exits the room, while I slide into the tub until the water drapes over my bare shoulders like a royal cape.