12. Valentina
Chapter 12
Valentina
D irectly beside the church’s property is a chic restaurant, lounge, and bar. The placement seems a little odd – the floor to ceiling windows along the entire side of the dining room/lounge look out onto the graves of the cemetery next door. Even the large and elegant balcony – currently milling with the funeral’s attendees – has a view of the markers of the dead.
Somebody probably thought it would be kind of cool and edgy, I guess. To eat fancy, bite-sized food and drink expensive cocktails while glancing out over the graves.
I do have to admit, though, that the location is perfect for the refreshments after the afternoon’s events. With the humidity undulating like a living thing around us, no one has the energy to head to another part of town to eat. We’ve booked the entire venue for the night. All paid for by papà. Curse’s words slosh inside me like alcohol that isn’t sitting all that well. His words about being there to pick up the pieces of a broken man.
And then keeping them.
Or maybe it really is just the alcohol that isn’t sitting well. I put my glass of ice-cold rosé down on one of the tastefully decorated tables as my stomach roils.
I have to get out of here.
I eye the balcony from my position inside the crowded lounge. Call it superstition, or maybe call it good old-fashioned PTSD, but I can’t bring myself to even think about going out there without my heart threatening to hurl itself up and out of my throat. It’s nowhere near as high as that roof twenty-eight storeys up from two weeks ago, but the glass barriers look just the same, and all I can think about is toppling over the edge.
That, and gelo de melone.
My stomach contracts. My mouth floods with saliva. The murmuring chatter of the guests is suddenly so loud I think that it might split my skull.
I spot an exit sign glowing like a beacon of salvation above a door by the beautiful bar.
I don’t think twice. I don’t tell anyone I’m going.
I just do it.
The door leads me outside to a small landing and a set of metal stairs that take me down to the ground. I clutch the railing tightly. So tightly it’s like I’m afraid the stairs will buck me right off if I don’t.
Despite the fact that I’ve just traded air conditioning for humidity I could practically swim through, I feel immediate relief when my feet hit the ground. I close my eyes, still clutching the smooth metal of the railing, and just breathe. In and out. Slowly, the nausea and anxiety I experienced inside begin to ebb away.
When I finally open my eyes, I feel better than I have in two weeks.
Possibly because it’s one of the few moments I’ve had alone. Even at home, there are soldiers and cameras and allies of our family coming and going at all hours. Papà has put a moratorium on Mamma and I going to any events. Until this one, of course. Ironically, busy events with lots of people are so much easier to slip away from unnoticed. The capos and soldiers are looking out for Papà. Papà is busy with Rocco. Mamma is off somewhere making sure Signora Fabbri is alright. Curse is keeping his eye on everything, but not specifically me. Or maybe my observant cousin is keeping his eye on me, but he decided I needed the breather and let me go.
Either way, I’m free. For a few minutes, at least.
The sun has begun to set, making the green of grass and trees glint with edges of copper. Indigo shadows stretch like long fingers between the graves of the cemetery. I don’t go towards them. Too many people will be able to see me from inside and from the balcony above.
Instead, I start walking the opposite direction, following a gravel path through lush gardens on the restaurant’s property. I pass beyond scattered stone furniture, then follow the turn of the path through a corridor of shrubbery. I’m completely out of view of the restaurant now. Crickets make music alongside my feet as my heels crunch small stones. Dusk rapidly gathers darkness, thickening like velvet. It’s so peaceful I almost imagine that I can hear the burble of a creek or stream.
Another slight twist in the path and I come face to face with a huge stone fountain.
So I didn’t imagine the sound of water after all.
The fountain’s base is a huge basin with water so deep it would likely come up past my knees. In the centre, on a raised platform, stands a stone angel, pouring water from her cupped hands into the basin below. Her eyes are closed, her head is bent. Her wings are tucked humbly behind her body. I think she looks sad.
The water pouring from her angelic hands, though? It looks heavenly. My throat tightens, not quite with thirst, but with intense bodily desire. I kick off my shoes and wriggle out of my black tights, leaving it all in a pile before walking to the fountain.
The gravel presses painfully into the soles of my feet, but I don’t pay the sensation much attention. All I care about right now is getting some of that cool, cleansing water on my bare skin.
“I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” I murmur to the angel, tipping my head back to get one last look at her face. It’s gotten even darker just in the time it took to remove my shoes and tights. Shadows lance down the hollows of her cheeks like tears.
Papà wouldn’t ask for permission to get into the fountain like I just did. Neither would Curse or Elio. Pazza , they’d probably call me. Crazy.
I am a Titone. But I’m also me. And I just don’t feel right about rudely intruding on this sad, pretty angel’s fountain without saying something first.
Maybe I am a little crazy. Or tipsier than I’d realized after the rosé inside. I am talking to actual stone, after all.
The angel doesn’t respond.
“Thanks,” I say quietly. I hike up the skirt of my dress and climb into the fountain.
The water feels incredible, but it’s much deeper than anticipated. It comes halfway up my thighs. I yank my skirt up higher to keep it from trailing down and getting soaked.
Screw it.
I pull the whole dress off over my head.
There are no lanterns out here, and I’m too choked by thick trees to get any light from the big, glowing restaurant. I squint, locating the heap of black on the grey gravel that is my shoes and tights, and I toss my dress over to it, taking care to note exactly where that pile of stuff is in relation to the fountain. The last thing I want is to need to make a hasty exit and not know where the hell my clothes are.
Dressed only in black panties and a bra, I’m tempted to sit right down in the water. Let it soak me completely. Rinse some of this day away. The water’s even deep enough to sort of swim around. I love swimming. I always have. It made me feel like a mermaid when I was younger.
I’m not a mermaid now. I’d just be a half-drunk mafioso’s daughter dragging herself back to her family with soaking wet underthings seeping humiliating wetness through her dress.
With that in mind, I merely wade around the fountain, watching moonlight catch on the silken ripples. My bare toes encounter coins along the bottom, and I wish I’d brought one myself. Does it count if you make a wish on a fountain while you’re already standing in it? Or do you have to be standing on the outside?
I guess it doesn’t really matter, since I don’t have a coin to begin with.
And what the hell would I even wish for, anyway?
None of my desires have ever really felt like my own. My life is forever shaped by the men around me. Papà, cousins, eventually a husband. I had a narrow escape with Dario, but there will be another to replace him.
I wonder who it will be. I wonder how long until he’s chosen for me. I rub my left ring finger reflexively, as if to check and make sure there’s no ring there.
I’ve travelled halfway around the fountain and I’m now standing behind the angel. Not quite ready to get out yet, I sit on the edge of the basin, holding the stone with my hands and gently kicking my feet through the water. I feel the satiny, cool roll of it over my calves, ankles, and toes as I trace the angel’s stone wings with my eyes.
It’s a perfect, breathless sort of moment. I feel soothed. I feel free. I feel like… myself.
But moments like this never last long.
A footstep behind me shatters the calm and sends every muscle in my body tensing.
And when a voice follows that footstep, I know exactly who it is without even turning around. Because this is a voice that bled through my oxygen starved thoughts on a roof two weeks ago. A voice that’s haunted both my waking thoughts and my dreams. A voice I’ve tried so desperately to recreate inside my head, only so that I could remember exactly what it said.
Smoke and whiskey. Ink and blood.
Goosebumps explode over my exposed skin.
I haven’t felt cold in the water until this moment.
“Hello, pet.”