Chapter 34
GINA
“I’m so glad you came to meet me, Angie,” I say, watching a nail technician painting my toenails a glossy, unapologetic red.
Beside me, Angie stretches her legs out on the padded footrest, wiggling her freshly painted toes.
She’s chosen something a deep burgundy for her pedicure. A color that reminds me of wine spilled on a white tablecloth or forbidden lipstick marks on a man’s collar.
It suits her.
“Visiting a swanky spa is no sacrifice,” she says, her eyes traveling over the spa’s cream-colored walls.
The place is swanky indeed. Orchids are positioned just so on every surface, and crispy dressed attendants move quietly around us.
Angie takes a sip from her cucumber water and sighs. “If I were you, I’d live in this spa full time. Massages. Facials. Lunch with the girls. Repeat.”
“You’d be bored,” I say.
“Of luxury?” She laughs. “Never.”
“Well, that’s you. I’m energized by everything happening outside this spa.”
I tell her what’s happened since we last chatted, especially about my project with Professor Washington at the Academy.
Angie’s eyebrows shoot up as she swirls her cucumber water. “Back to your schoolgirl days, eh?” She leans forward slightly.
“What’s this I hear about Dante buying you a restaurant?”
I sense from her tone that she thinks it’s some extravagant gift. Like a Hollywood celebrity buying his wife an island.
“The restaurant is a collaboration between me, Lorenzo, and Luca, not mine alone,” I explain, shifting in my chair as the manicurist moves to my other foot.
“So I’ve heard about this academy of yours and the restaurant, but what about married life?”
Angie’s voice drops to that conspiratorial tone she uses when she wants the real dirt.
“Great!” I chirp, a little too brightly.
Her smile widens, showing perfect teeth against her burgundy lipstick. “That good, huh?”
We both laugh.
I notice how the spa attendant pretends not to hear our conversation while she finishes my last toe.
I exhale slowly, feeling the weight of what I’m about to say.
“That’s the problem,” I admit, watching Angie’s perfectly shaped eyebrows lift in question.
“Explain,” she demands.
“Sex is the only time we connect,” I whisper.
The words hang between us, and I watch Angie’s face for a reaction.
Steam curls up from some hot towels just brought in, making the air feel thick and close.
“You married a don, Gina. He doesn’t exactly punch a clock at nine and come home for meatloaf.”
She says this like I should have known better, like I signed up for this.
“I just want him to see me outside the bedroom,” I say, my throat tightening. I stare down at my red toenails, embarrassed by how pathetic I sound.
“What are you talking about? Of course he sees you,” she says evenly. “I saw the way he looked at you at the museum party.”
“No. He manages me. There’s a difference.” I look directly at her now, willing her to understand what I can barely articulate myself.
Angie sighs, leaning back in her chair.
A spa attendant offers her more cucumber water, which she accepts with a nod.
“You’re living in a penthouse with a view of Manhattan,” she says, counting on her manicured fingers.
“You go to a prestigious art academy, you run part of a restaurant project, and you have a French bulldog with better grooming than most people in Brooklyn. Yet you’re complaining that your mafia-boss husband doesn’t come home for dinner every night?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“I know. You want intimacy,” she says, with air quotes around the last word.
I nod.
She reaches for one of the glossy magazines in the wicker basket between us. And freezes.
When I look over, Dante’s face fills the cover. ICEBERG OR EXECUTIONER?
The headline feels louder than the room.
“Did you read it?” she asks.
“Of course.”
“And? You’re not letting this nonsense get into your head, are you? You can’t believe Dante had a hand in her death.”
I look at Angie a long minute. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Gina, you can’t take these magazines seriously.”
“I don’t. And I can’t bring myself to believe Dante killed her. But the last time we were together, he was extremely forceful. Totally over the top. It doesn’t take too much to set him off. And I wonder if the night she was killed, Mary said or did something that pushed him too far…”
There, I said it.
Angie just looks at me like I was born yesterday.
“First things first. If you want to survive in our world, let sleeping dogs lie. Stop asking so many questions. And this,” she says, lifting the magazine, “is bullshit. Forget the article. Half the things the media says are lies to grab attention and make a profit.”
“Fine, fine. But how can I get Dante’s attention outside the bedroom?”
“Did your mother ever tell you that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”
“No. Did yours?”
“She said that, but about a different part of a man’s body,” Angie says with a sly grin.
We both break into laughter.
“But I’m serious. How are your cooking skills?”
I shake my head. “Non-existent.”
“Well, watch a cooking demo or buy takeout. Make a romantic dinner for Dante. You’re freshly married. He won’t deny you that.”
“I don’t know…”
“Give it a shot. He’s Italian. I know Italian men.”
“Well, it’s worth a try.”
We move on to discuss other things, but seeing Dante on the magazine cover has reminded me of the twisted way he took me that last night we were together.
He was almost unhinged. Not even almost…
I stop myself, refusing to engage in that kind of thinking any longer.
Angie’s right. I should let sleeping dogs lie.