Chapter 3
GABI
My heart pangs at the thought of my best friend, but I frown. I didn’t even hear her pick the lock on the gate. Surely, she isn’t here. With everything going on, she shouldn’t be.
She left the convent months ago when she turned eighteen with the promise to come for me when she’d sorted out her life. For weeks, I’ve waited for her, but then Randazzo died, and I supposedly left Potenza to work as a nanny for an anonymous rich family. She couldn’t know I’m hiding in here.
This wasn’t the plan.
I sit up quietly and shove the letters under my pillow, then glance around for any other evidence about the earthquake that hit my life today. Everything looks normal, as normal as a safe room could be.
Another scratch.
Chiara knows I’m the child of someone dreadful and that’s why I’m here, but that’s all she knows. We knew where to draw the line, and she has her own story I didn’t get to excavate.
But trust her to know about this secret chamber.
The roof, accessible via the bell tower, was always her smoking spot, and I bet she noticed the loose tiles and had a peek into this secret chamber.
She gave a dead fuck for the rules of the convent, making Mother Lucia’s life hell.
We’re polar opposites, but heavens she made me laugh, being a breath of fresh air in the coffin I was trapped in.
A coffin I finally get to escape.
I tiptoe to the door and lean against it. “Who’s there?”
“A friend,” she whispers back in mock terror, and I roll my eyes with a smile.
I reach for my key and unlock the door, open it an inch, peeking out. Chiara is standing there, in full nun regalia—stolen, no doubt—a lit flashlight held up by her chin. It casts her face in that age-old horror-story light.
“What are you doing here?” I giggle as I grab her by the arm and jerk her into the room. It’s Compline and prayer time and she could get caught, but why do I even worry? This is Chiara.
“I came to fetch you. As promised.” She switches off the flashlight and just stands there. A girl with a dream and a fuck-you-world attitude.
I pull her into a tight hug, and for a moment, we just cling to each other. Best friends with pasts so different, we have nothing in common but this place.
The day she came of age and walked out of the convent, she whispered to me in passing, giving my hand a last squeeze, “Watch how I fuck my parents over by becoming the most famous porn star in Italy.”
I can’t even imagine having sex. Never mind in front of a camera in a room full of strangers. But then Chiara did get dumped in Potenza’s convent by her parents for fucking her stepbrother—her words, not mine.
“How did you know where to find me?” I whisper, conscious we need to be quiet.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave Mother Lucia. Or her protection. So I broke in. Had to come see for myself where you’re hiding out…and my suspicions got rewarded.”
She hitches her eyebrows at me but my heart sinks. This is dangerous. And those are hard truths. Mother Lucia is my mom in many ways.
We let go and I hold her at arm’s length, nothing but admiration for her gutsiness.
She stole into the convent at night, broke into Mother Lucia’s office, and padded up the narrow stairs so softly I didn’t hear her coming.
She has a knack for sneaking around. For picking door locks without anybody hearing.
As we stare at each other, a knot tightens in my throat. I can’t tell her anything, not even discuss my new reality with her.
“Where have you been? What’s been happening?” I ask, letting go to close the door and lock it again.
“I’ve been in Rome. I’ve been making some videos… I got cast in a full-length porno. We’re starting to shoot next week—”
“What? Really?” I reach for her hand and make her sit on my cot, then slump down next to her. Her fingers are warm and soft in my hand, not a quiver in them. “That’s…awesome.”
Because that’s what she wants. What she always wanted. Imagine being touched everywhere and loving it and not being reminded only of trauma.
“You know this is not just to mess with my folks, Terese… I hope you’re happy for me.”
At the mention of my fake name, I glance at the stack of letters under the pillow. Nothing is peeking out. I’m not Terese. It’s Gabriella Scalera, not Gabriella Randazzo. Not that I ever had his last name. See? No clue who I am.
The need to tell her about everything that transpired today is almost overwhelming. I’ve guarded my secrets for so long, and there have been so many of them, but Chiara can never know. It’s simply too dangerous.
“Of course I’m happy for you,” I say. “But—”
“God, Terese, this body”—she swoops her hands down from her breasts to her thighs—“is made for fucking, and that was God’s work. He knew what He was doing, so who are we to judge?”
God judges all He wants. I don’t. I know good and evil, though, and have learned both sprout from God’s hand. The knowledge left a bitter taste in my mouth and a tenuous grip on this thing called religion.
“I’m just wondering how you do it,” I say with a soft smile, pushing my thoughts aside. “I admire you being so free—”
“Easy. The best feeling in the world. Surely, you feel it…want it?”
I blush. Deeply. It’s not the first time we’ve had this conversation.
Chiara talks so openly, mostly shocking me with the joy she has for the subject, and I’ve grown accustomed to her sex talk and secretly wish just a bit of her sexual appetite could rub off on me.
But then, the desire I’ve been taught to suppress would be so much worse.
I know where to pick my poison and it’s not in the same fields her mind wanders in.
At twenty-two, I’m a hot mess of fighting opposites, a perfect convent girl with every religious paradigm barricading me from wanting things, but still wondering daily how it could be, yet guillotining the thoughts as soon as they take center stage on the scaffold in my mind.
Some women are made for the convent, for a life devoted to God. Some are not. As long as freedom wasn’t an option, I’ve been able to suppress it, but I suspect, as soon as I leave this convent with its rites and rituals, prayers and somber thoughts, this need might raise its ugly head.
When I don’t answer her, she shakes her head.
“You’ll rot in this place, and that’s a fucking waste.
Come, grab your things. Let’s go. I have an apartment in Rome now.
” She glances around the small, windowless chamber, shaking her head as she takes stock of my few belongings.
“It’s a palace compared to this shithole, and ours.
I’ll start on my life’s work of getting the convent girl out of your head. ”
“Good luck with that,” I say on a soft chuckle. Being a Convent Girl has mostly kept me safe.
I watch her go over to my small desk where the illustrations I’ve been working on are stacked. She doesn’t leaf through them but picks up my hand-bound book, The Princess and the Six Princess.
“Come, Terese. We don’t wait for men to save us, cara. We fight for what we want and save ourselves.”
Except that’s no longer a fairy tale. It’s now my reality.
And here she is, my only friend, offering me a real choice.
A life-changing decision I must make this very minute: take a risk with brothers I don’t know, but be ‘safe’ in America?
Or run away with her tonight, but be stuck in Europe, bloodhounds on my scent?
I’ve never had choices. Never had agency. But as much as Chiara offers me freedom, the price is too high. Rome is still Italy: Randazzo’s old playground and Franco Fiore’s stronghold. He will hunt me down, and the Russian will be hot on his heels.
They won’t hesitate to kill Chiara to get to me. She can’t know anything, and the last thing I can do is leave with her. It’s not safe for people to know me or be around me, and I’ve known this for a long time.
My heart is slowly breaking because I’ll never see her again and I can’t even say goodbye properly.
“I can’t come with you, Chiara. Not tonight, at least,” I whisper, my throat tight. “I— I need to sit it out here, see what happens.”
She stares at me and bites her lip, then chews it, harder and harder as we both contain our tears. She puts my book back on the desk with a sniff. “Fuck it. I knew it. All the same, I had to give it a shot.”
“And I will always be grateful for you…that you came for me.” She has no idea the risk she took coming here tonight, totally selfless.
“I’m not surprised, though, so I came prepared.” She winks at me, emotions back under control as she reaches under her wimple and pulls out a stack of crumpled pages. “I brought you some hot men to help with selfcare while you sit it out.”
I crack a giggle between my choked sobs. “You know I don’t do that.”
But my eyes glue to the images of sweaty, bare-chested men she’s spreading over the bed. I bet they’re from the same sports magazine she passed me pages from for inspiration for my six princes.
“Whatever. At least one of us is getting a life. I will pray every day that you get the hell out of here and get to fuck some boys to see for yourself what it’s like.”
Such wishful thinking, but I say nothing.
With a wicked, unrepentant grin, she nods toward the roof as she pulls out a packet of cigarettes. “Can we lift the roof tiles just enough to manage a smoke with a view? I must try to get you to take a drag for old time’s sake.”