Chapter 7
LEILANI
I shove the door open and enter the reading room. No one reads in this house, but that hasn’t stopped me from asking the interior decorator to create this safe haven for me.
Most people avoid this room like it’s cursed.
It could be.
I just don’t care.
Someone said people were killed in this room.
More reasons not to care.
The space is dark, the shelves crammed with books.
It’s also quiet and doesn’t connect to the rest of the house.
A long corridor is the only way to get here. The walls are even soundproof.
A secondary door opens into the balcony facing Etna in the back.
On nights like this, when the sky is clear, I can stare at the stars and imagine what the sky would look like if the volcano erupted, spewing lava, fire, and ash.
I love this place more and more with every passing day, but I resent my family.
Never fond of them, I like them even less now.
I push the door open and walk onto the patio. The wind curls around me like an old friend.
I suddenly remember how hard it was to adjust to this place initially. They removed me from everything familiar to me two years ago.
I look away, my pain refueled, my anger growing.
Somewhere on the shoreline in some fancy apartment, he might be looking at the sky, perhaps, like me now.
Maybe he’s checking the time on his expensive watch.
He probably knows by now about my family’s efforts to push me out again.
He must also be pondering whether to come to my party.
Perhaps he is alone.
That’s a possibility too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve all worked together to bring me to that point of saying yes to them and their stupid plans.
Who my ‘husband' is in the end won’t matter.
I’ll be living in a golden cage, privileged, and erased from this world, having no say in anything.
I’ll have power over people, and I could have my family go to war for me, but in reality, I’ll be someone’s property, buried in the secret chambers of their home.
That's what being married to one of them means.
Folding my arms over my chest, I’m begging for a tear to fall. Not one tear touches my cheeks.
I haven’t cried in years.
I may have cried over a broken doll as a kid, or a cookie I couldn’t get, or a slice of cake they wouldn't let me eat.
A few miles from here, he might be staring out the window, not knowing how to proceed.
He sold my soul to the devil.
And yes, I’m perfectly aware that Callum is not my blood, and I’m not his blood.
And he didn’t owe me anything.
At least, he could’ve warned me, but how could he?
His priority has always been to protect himself.
And no, I won’t go along with their plan.
They need to marry someone off?
They need to go look somewhere else.
They have no idea what kind of hell I can unearth if they keep pressing me on this matter.
I have nothing to lose at this point.
They want to take away my freedom and my future? I dare them to do that.
Any of these men. And there must be others.
Just take me home for a week and live with me, see how it goes.
They have certain expectations? I have my own, too.
There is no place for a Goomah––Mafia mistress––in my husband’s life.
In fact, there is no place for any other woman in his life. I’ve seen how marriages work in this world, and I’m disgusted.
Ugh.
What a horrible development.
Callum stayed away from me, even refused to answer my calls. I knew something was up.
I didn’t quite have the perfect representation of what it might be, and it didn’t cross my mind that they’d come up with something like this so soon, but never underestimate people.
My dear, dear family.
Hell is not big enough to accommodate all of you.
I’ll deal with you, one at a time, and rest assured that Etna erupting will look like an amusement park next to the chaos my fury will unleash.
A soft sound travels through the open patio doors.
I glance over my shoulder as Nona walks in.
As much as I feel bad about chastising her, especially since I’m perfectly aware she plays no role in this, I need to find the truth, so I swiftly spin around and strut back into the room.
The lamps on the end tables cast a warm glow around the space.
“Take a seat,” I say.
She freezes, but quickly finds her bearings and slowly lowers herself to the edge of the sofa.
Her expression is blank when she meets my eyes.
“Did you know what the Sandoval dinner was about when you talked to me earlier this evening?”
“Yes,” she says, a pang of relief flashing through her voice.
It must’ve weighed heavily on her, the grotesque secrets growing around my very existence.
“Did you know the birthday party was a mere pretext for having this meeting?”
She softly nods.
“Yes.”
“Did they ask you to suggest a big party so I couldn’t say no to it, and also ease me into the idea that an important meeting needs to take place?”
“Yes, they did.”
A soft sigh falls from my lips as my gaze trails down.
“What else do you know?” I ask, shifting my attention back to her. “And please, no more lying through omission. You owe me that much. Besides, I won’t tell anyone about our conversation.”
She looks at me, skeptical.
“I know they can do bad things to you,” I say. “But they’re busy with me right now, so they won’t focus on you. It’s not like I can’t figure out these things for myself, but I want to hear them from someone else to know how far they went to ruin my life this time.”
Her eyes glisten as if a goblet of tears has spilled over them.
“It makes no difference,” she says quietly.
“Tell me.” My voice is hoarse. “What did they say?”
She looks down, a kernel of guilt moving across her face. She’s feeling bad for me again.
I’ve seen her draped in anguish too many times because of me, so maybe the fading of her clothes is not only about her life.
“They’re actively seeking a suitor for you,” she says, her face ashen.
“I gleaned that much,” I say, composed, still gauging how bad this is.
Her eyes look like broken glass in the soft light.
“Do they have a certain man in mind? A fixed timeline?”
She studies me for a few seconds.
“They need to do it as quickly as possible.”
A smile dripping with disbelief curls my lips.
“They need to? Why? What happened?”
“I can’t say more,” she says, rising, her answer rather abrupt.
I lose my cool fast.
“Nona,” I bark, closing the space between us, curling my hand around her arm as she pivots to pull away from me.
Her skin is cold with no trace of life in it.
“I can’t say more.”
“You have to tell me more. Please. At least I’ll know what I’m dealing with.”
She ponders something before turning to me and looking me in the eye.
“You’re in great danger, Leilani. That’s all I can say. I know it’s not news to you, but this is different from what has happened before. I know about some of the things––”
She stops when I straighten, bracing for the worst.
My hand slides off her arm as I look at her expectantly.
Of all the days I thought Nona would acknowledge what had happened, it had to be this? My twenty-first birthday?
“Please go on.”
She clams up.
“That’s not what I wanted to say.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” I say, my voice ice cold. “You know what you know, and I experienced what I had experienced. How is this worse than what had happened before? And why can’t you tell me? It will happen to me one way or another.”
My last words wear the coat of prickly sneering.
Her eyes drill into mine as I stare at her, unbothered.
I see the battle in her eyes. I know how it feels. I’ve been there so many times. She’s scared. There’s also a part of her that wants to do the right thing, warn me about what’s to come.
But her fears are stronger.
She’s afraid she might not wake up one day, and instead of growing old and blissfully insignificant, she might become a victim of this cruel world.
I can see it in her eyes.
The splattered blood on her snow-like pillows, the disposal of her body, the made-up story everyone has to swallow. I see everything, and suddenly I don’t care.
This is the world we’ve been living in.
This is how they’ve taught us to be.
Crude, self-centered, fighting to survive.
“Let’s do this,” I say. “I’ll ask you a few questions, and you give me yes or no answers. I’ll glean what I need from that.”
“It won’t work.”
“You want me to go straight to my grandparents and ask them?”
Her eyes are flushed with panic.
“No. It would make things worse.”
“That’s what I thought. Then, speak. I’ve got time,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning back against an armchair.
Someone knocks on the door.
“Ignore them,” I say.
Her panic swirls into restlessness.
“They’re probably looking for me.”
“I’m sure they are. They might be looking for me, too, but I need to know what this is before I step into chaos.”
Slowly uncrossing my arms, I walk to the door, pick up a key from the wall table, and twist it in the lock.
As the person knocks again, I bark through the locked door, “Go away.”
Whoever is on the other side paces away.
I take it it’s not a good sign. They’ll probably come back with reinforcements. I expect Sylvia to knock at the door next.
I spin around.
“Yes, or no, darling. It’s not that hard,” I say, dropping the key on the chair.
“They need to marry me off because the family is in trouble,” I say, not looking at her.
Her silence swirls around the room like a startled bat, his wings flapping, dipped in dread.
“Yes or no?”
She ponders.
“Nona?”
“No.”
I study her face.
She’s hiding something, and maybe a yes-or-no answer doesn’t truly reflect the reality of this.
“Is my family in immediate danger?” I ask again.
“No.”
Her answer is prompt and feels sincere.
“Is there a rising danger in our world?”
She nods.
“Say it out loud.”
She tilts her head again.
“I don’t get it,’ I say. “Why is it so hard to talk to me?”
Her eyes sparkle with a shred of encouragement as if I’m close to learning a few new things.
“You’re hinting at how you got the information,” I say, prompted by a hunch.
She slides her chin down again.
“Someone, uh, has talked to you?” I ask incredulously.
She shakes her head, her eyes connected to mine.
“Ahh… You overheard a conversation.”
Her expression tells it all.
“Huh. Interesting. That’s why you fear them so much. Who was talking to whom? Giorgio?”
She shakes her head.
“It was Sylvia,” I say, convinced I got it right. “Sylvia talked to whom?”
I can’t imagine that Sylvia has spoken about me to a low-ranking member in our family.
“Was it a woman?”
She lifts two fingers instead of using her yes-or-no signaling.
“There were two women?”
She shakes her head.
“Two conversations?”
She nods.
“You overheard her talking in two instances with two different people. Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. Was the first person a woman?”
She nods her head.
“Was it Flavia?” I ask, smiling with disbelief.
She gives me a soft nod again, and I stare at her for a second, and then I chuckle.
I’ll be damned. My outcast aunt has made a comeback.
Since I can remember, Flavia has always been the invisible daughter.
Once she slept with my biological father, she lost everyone’s respect, yet at the same time, she was regarded as someone useful.
Luckily, not many instances required her help, so after her indiscretions had been swept under the rug, the family left her alone and only occasionally talked to her.
No one cared about her.
No one talked to her in a meaningful way.
No one considered her important enough to give her an active role in our family.
Her husband is not a made man. And he shouldn’t be.
He’d be dead in no time.
He’s a klutz.
“Did they talk seriously about me?” I ask, still finding it hard to believe.
She doesn’t flinch. And then she nods.
“Hmm… When was that?”
I find it impossible to set a timeline. My grandparents haven’t visited me since I moved here. My aunt hasn’t even talked to me during this time. Nona was with me all the time.
She stares at me, and I get a hint that I need to think harder.
When could she possibly hear them?
“Was it before I moved here?”
She shakes her head.
“Was it…?”
My mind spins, looking for clues.
“Wait a minute. You were on vacation a couple of months ago. Weren’t you?” I ask, trying to make sense of this.
She went up north to meet her niece, relieved of her duties, with no obligation to even talk to my family.
“Did they summon you to Tuscany?” I murmur, and then my mouth drops.
I can’t believe this. They must’ve asked her to take some time off so she can travel up there and meet with them. They were in Italy and didn’t even bother to come visit me?
Wow.
The ploy is bigger than I had imagined.
Why did they need her to sneak out of the house and meet them?
Oh, my. They wanted her to spy on me. They needed her to report on the state of my mind.
Her expression changes as mine does.
It’s true. I can tell from how she looks at me.
“What did you tell them about me?” I say, picking up the key and sliding into the chair.
“You’ve gone so far, Nona. You clearly have a problem with keeping it to yourself, so please tell me exactly what happened.
You’re a woman of faith. I can’t say the same thing about myself.
Too many things have happened in my life to be humble and listen to a voice other than the crazy one inside my head.
But you are here with me because you listened to that voice.
And that voice had told you that what they did behind my back was wrong. ”
The more I talk, the more her eyes glint with emotions, and then she brushes off a tear from her face.
“They’ll kill me if they know I talked to you,” she says quietly.
“I’ll kill them first if they dare to touch you. You know me. I have no fear.”
A few moments pass.
“If you tell me what you know, I’ll let you walk when I get in power. Full retirement. You can buy a little house someplace nice. You have my word.”
She sucks in a long breath and quietly exhales, and then I know she is about to speak.