Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Giovanna
B efore the sun had even risen, while the moon was still high in the sky, I had walked off Dante’s boat with my head held high, refusing to lose myself to my heartbreak until I was once again alone. I’d walked barefoot along the pier, feeling the cold on my bare feet. Gingerly, I had climbed aboard, and after walking out of my way to the bow, with relief I saw that the guard was still where I’d left him, asleep on the floor. I was sure once the sun had risen and warmed him up, he would wake up and make no mention of the fact he’d fallen asleep on the job. So, I was convinced my secret would remain just that, a secret.
After checking for any movement from the staff, who I knew would soon be starting their day, I made my way to the saloon and after grabbing pen and paper I wrote out a note to my stepfather Peter. With Dante’s threat still ringing in my ears, I wanted to go home and back to Calabria as soon as possible. So, I feigned homesickness, and told him I was missing my fiancé and asked if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for me to be dropped off before he and my mama carried on with their holiday.
Then I managed to get to my stateroom, without any questioning looks or questions being asked of me. Once there, I slipped inside the door, closed it quietly and turned the lock against the world.
With my back against the door, I allowed my emotionally overwrought body to slide down the wood before collapsing in a heap at the bottom. There with no witnesses, and no answers to the loneliness I felt, I allowed myself to succumb to the pain crashing through me.
How did something so beautiful end so distressingly?
Do I really mean so little to him?
Questions went over and over around my head, as my body convulsed, and tears fell from my eyes as I tried hard to purge my body of the anguish I felt in losing him all over again. Curling up into a foetal position, I thought back to when he’d entered me for the first time, and when he’d craved the connection so much between us, he’d entered me again to fall asleep. The completeness I felt at our primeval coupling, I was sure was replicated in him. His face had shown no disgust at not finding me intact, so why had it become a problem afterwards?
It didn’t make sense.
Nor did the way his blue eyes bored into me as I prepared to walk away. Or was I, with my total lack of life experience, reading things completely wrong?
With my breathing becoming more and more jerky, as I asked question after question of myself that I couldn’t answer, I inhaled a breath and held it as I tried hard to calm down. Eventually, I succumbed to my emotions and cried out state, and exactly where I’d collapsed into a heap, I fell asleep.
A phone ringing brought me to, and I peeled open my reluctant, dry eyes and sat up, feeling the discomfort in every bone in my body after falling asleep on the floor. Looking around, I could see the sun had risen and was strong enough to be spreading her long fingers inside my stateroom. It had to be mid-morning at least. Concentrating, I understood by the sound of the engines, we were back out at sea, and it appeared we had left Malta early.
Please let me be going home.
Another sob threatened to leave me as I understood that even though I’d asked for it to happen, Dante and I were once again to be separated by distance as well as this time by anger. Determinedly, I swallowed it down, knowing I couldn’t succumb again to letting the pain take hold. The phone which had rung off a few seconds before began to ring again.
‘Dante?’ I questioned as I sat up and reached out next to me to pull my handbag closer, even though I knew somewhere deep down that the ring tone was wrong. With eagerness I emptied my bag onto the floor and then remembered with a feeling of melancholy, as I looked at the contents, that Dante could no longer contact me. In my mind, I replayed dropping the small phone he’d given me years before to the floor in anger and watching it shatter. The ringing continued as I sorted through my stuff, spare panties, perfume, deodorant and everything else I thought I might need to spend a night with him.
Finally, I saw the screen of my everyday phone, and the screensaver that I’d fashionably added to the number it was associated with, as it now came back to bite me. As my fiancé’s face smiled through the detritus around him, guilt once again consumed me, and I saw the empty space on my ring finger.
‘You have to be joking?’ I whispered, holding up my left hand and touching the slightly paler skin wearing the ring had caused.
Choosing once again not to answer him, I searched through the pile over and over, knowing without looking that I probably wouldn’t find my engagement ring there. But with growing panic, I frantically pulled everything apart once more, before I shook each individual item, and comprehended that I couldn’t find it because it wasn’t and never had been there.
The last time I’d seen it was on the floor of Dante’s stateroom.
‘Oh no,’ I whispered, as I closed my eyes against the inevitable.
Hearing movement outside my door, I hurriedly picked everything up and rushed to the bathroom, but not before stopping at my bed, mussing up the covers and pillow, and grabbing my work out clothes. I heard the knock on my door, and called out as I turned on the shower that I would be with them shortly.
Ten minutes later, I stepped out of the bathroom, and after dropping my handbag on the chair I normally kept it on, I walked over to the door. I knew with absolute certainty someone was still behind it and waiting for me. So, I unlocked and opened it tentatively, holding one hand to the wet towel coiled up perfectly on top of my head.
‘Yes.’
‘There you are, Giovanna… I hope you’re feeling better?’ My perfectly put together mama didn’t wait for an answer, before moving closer to the doorway and wordlessly demanding access to the room.
‘I am, thank you,’ I lied, as she walked in. Cautiously, I followed her as she suspiciously moved around my personal space. Breathing a silent sigh, I could see I’d done a good job as not one thing looked like it would contest the lies I’d told her.
‘Good,’ she smiled, turning back to me, without the smile strangely ever reaching her eyes. ‘Your fiancé has been trying to get hold of you.’ She held out her phone to me and wiggled it just a little to tempt me into accepting it.
‘I thought I heard the phone ringing. I was in the shower,’ I replied as I stretched out a hand to take the phone she was offering.
‘Lorenzo.’ I said his name and forced a smile onto my face, knowing I was standing in front of a very observant audience, without ever wondering how my fiancé had access to my mama’s personal number.
‘Gi.’ My skin prickled with the same annoyance it always did when he used the nickname my family used for me. ‘How’s your holiday?’ he enquired.
‘It’s been amazing, thank you.’ I followed my mama as she moved around my cabin, picking up my bottles of products and lifting them up to try or smell them, making it obvious she was going nowhere and the conversation between us wasn’t going to be private.
‘I miss you, Gi,’ Lorenzo offered.
‘I miss you too,’ I replied on automatic pilot, and I was sure I saw the corners of my mama’s lips lift in satisfaction, because it couldn’t be with happiness as that wasn’t part of her make-up.
‘I’ve been informed that you’re on your way back to Calabria.’ I heard him and looked through the narrow slit at the bottom of one of the blinds, as if by staring at the sea I could discern exactly where we were.
‘I hope so, I’ve been homesick,’ I lied again, and understood how much of it I did both around him and my mama. So much so, I knew it wasn’t a healthy way to live.
‘I’m glad. I can’t wait another year for you to be my wife. In fact, I’m going to talk to Don De Luca today about bringing our wedding forward.’
I noticed he didn’t ask if it was okay with me. He didn’t find out if that was what I wanted, he just barrelled ahead. Then I thought back to what Dante had said, and if this was going to be my only chance at marriage and the children I so desperately wanted, I needed to take it.
‘That would make me very happy.’ I heard myself say the words, and my mama smiled, another strange smile that took me a few seconds to work out. When I did, I realised it was the same one she had used whenever she had won in an argument with my papa. It was her smile of victory.
What? Why?
Inside, I recognised that I felt manipulated, more than I’d ever felt before and given my position in my family and my family’s traditions, that was saying something.
In my ear Lorenzo carried on speaking, and as if she could hear every word he was saying, my mama walked around my personal space grinning like a Cheshire cat. I on the other hand heard nothing. All I could do was focus on the feeling of being utterly purposeless and completely trapped.
My mind, without asking permission, escaped and suddenly I found myself lying next to the man who had always protected me, my nonno.
‘You are stronger than you think, Giovanna. I have refused all the marriage offers for you so far, as I wanted you to first become the woman I know is inside there. The same woman you rarely let make an appearance.’ His face had lightened and for a few seconds his pain seemed to slip away. ‘I saw her today. I saw her in your smile, I heard her in your laughter, and your zest for life. Don’t shut her away any longer, let her free. I regret I won’t be there to watch you fly, but you must promise me you’ll embrace the one who will, because he’ll be the same one who will catch you when you fall.’ He’d stopped as another cough racked through him, and I’d squeezed my eyes tightly wishing it away, all the while picturing Dante in my mind. Once Nonno’s cough had subsided, he’d carried on, ‘be the woman you keep out of your mama’s reach.’
‘Be the woman you keep out of your mama’s reach?” I hadn’t remembered those exact words until now, when I’d replayed the others so many times as I thought of Dante. I’d always imagined he’d said them to keep me from not taking every time she’d criticised me to heart. But what if that wasn’t what he’d meant at all? What if he’d felt that she possibly could represent a danger to me?
It couldn’t be right. I stopped myself from physically shaking my head at my own thoughts and studied her all the harder. By now, as I’d been encouraged to do, I was holding the phone away from me and Lorenzo was on speaker talking to my mama about me. And I was struggling to work out just when it was they’d become so friendly. I mean, he’d been my bodyguard for years before becoming my fiancé, but I’d never even seen her pass more than the time of day with him.
‘I agree wholeheartedly, Lorenzo,’ I heard her answer him and had no idea what it was they’d been saying. But having never heard her agree wholeheartedly with anyone except herself, let alone a near stranger, I was convinced it had been what Nonno meant, my head was screaming at me that I was in danger. Dropping the wet towel from my head and turning away from her, I grabbed at my brush and began to brush through my hair as I looked out to sea. Malta was beginning to shrink against the horizon, leaving only one boat anywhere near us. Realisation of just where I was, and who I was with, made me feel very alone.
‘You’ll make a spectacular autumn bride, Giovanna.’ My mama spoke again, and I quickly established she had said something that required me to talk.
‘Yes, autumn in Calabria would be lovely.’ I turned and smiled back a response, hoping it fooled her and Lorenzo.
‘Or we could do a late summer/early autumn wedding in Rome?’ my mama informed me.
‘Rome?’ I could hear the shock in my voice and knew it would be replicated on my face.
‘I’d want to attend, and I’m banished from Calabria… remember?’ All at once, the sweet and sickly smile she’d been moving around my stateroom wearing slipped and I saw her, I mean… really saw her. For a few seconds, she became the woman I remembered from my childhood. Spite overtook her features as though she couldn’t or no longer wanted to contain it anymore. Before, just as easily, she righted her expression, leaving me doubting what I thought I’d just seen.
‘It sounds lovely, and I know Rome is very beautiful, but Salvatore as head of the family wouldn’t allow it.’ I tried to reason and not to argue, not wanting to see the side of her I knew had terrified me since I was little. ‘What do you think, Lorenzo? I spoke once again into the phone I was holding away from my face, and as I did a message flashed up.
“I miss you already.” It wasn’t signed by anyone, but her phone named the contact as Ricco.
Ricco? I only knew one Ricco, and he was Nonno’s Ricco?
What on earth?
Thinking, I recollected that he too had gone to Malta to work for the family a few years after Nonno had died. If he missed her already, it could only mean one thing. She had seen him while we were there. Did Peter know she’d spent time with another man? And did Salvatore know he still saw a woman his Don had banished?
Of course, Salvatore didn’t. Peter, I was unsure of.
What on earth is going on?
As I tried to make sense of just what was happening, my head began to hurt with the dehydration I’d inflicted on it. My heart began to pound as it entered the fight or flight mode, even though I knew I couldn’t do either, and my body went onto high alert, as adrenalin flooded my system. My limbs were beginning to shake as I fought so hard to keep my fear under wraps.
‘I’ll marry you wherever I’m ordered to.’ I heard Lorenzo speak and wished I could have seen my fiancé’s face as he’d replied, because now I was wondering just who he was taking his orders from.
In my head, I once again replayed smashing up the phone Dante had given me on the hardwood of his stateroom floor. I had never contacted him in all the time we’d been apart, but I had been comforted from knowing that if ever I was in real trouble, I could call him to ask for help. Carrying it with me all those years made me feel we were still connected. Now it was gone, and I was once again alone. Only this time I was terrified for my life, not the restrictions my family had put on it.
Stop it, Giovanna. You’re emotionally overwrought, you’re tired—you need sleep. This must be all in your imagination.
‘Let’s see what Salvatore has to say.’ I pictured my home in my mind and for the first time I could ever recall, I wished I was there, with all the restrictions and concern for my welfare once again in play. I wanted to be at home and feeling safe. With those who I knew loved me.
A sudden knock at my door made me jump.
‘Yes,’ I called out desperately, hoping for an interaction with someone other than who I was stuck inside my room with. The door opened to reveal one of the stewards.
‘Miss Giovanna.’ He smiled as he opened the door. ‘Mr Peter says he is convinced this is yours.’ He lifted his hand and I saw my engagement ring being held tightly between his fingers.
‘It is.’ It wasn’t hard to fake my enthusiasm, as I quickly worked out that Dante had gone out of his way to get the ring back to me. ‘I thought I’d lost it yesterday in Valletta, and I was dreading telling you, Lorenzo,’ I lied, as I wondered why he’d made sure it had been returned.
He must still care.
‘You lost your ring?’ Lorenzo questioned.
‘I did, it was an accident.’ Again, I lied, as I thought back to removing the object from my finger and dropping it to the ground as though it meant nothing to me, because of course, it didn’t. ‘But I have it now, and it was meant to be if you’re intent on bringing our wedding forward.’ I cajoled as I put down my brush and took the ring from the steward, before pushing it back onto my finger in a flourish. In doing so, it scratched the top of my finger and I discovered it felt different. ‘Thank you.’ I smiled at the steward. Before holding my hand out in front of me as I pretended to admire it, when all the time I was studying it to see if it not only felt different but looked different too. Happily, my eyes found nothing.
‘Giovanna,’ my mama admonished from behind me, spurring me on to get myself out of my stateroom.
‘I’m hungry, after my illness yesterday. Do you think chef could make something for me?’ I questioned the man, reluctant to let him out of my sight and leaving me once again with just her and Lorenzo on the phone.
‘I’m sure he can,’ the steward smiled.
‘Lorenzo, can I call you later?’ I took him off speaker and placed the phone back to my ear. ‘Ciao,’ I added without waiting to hear what he replied. Then I dropped my mama’s phone onto my bed between us, before following the steward out of the door and leaving her in my wake.