3. Adriana
— · —
Adriana
The Vitale estate is bigger than my father’s house.
That shouldn’t surprise me. The Vitales have more money than the Costas, more influence, more of everything.
But knowing it and seeing it are different things.
The car pulls through iron gates and up a long driveway lined with old oak trees, and the house rises up at the end of it like something out of a period film.
Stone and glass and perfect landscaping, every hedge trimmed to geometric precision, every window gleaming.
Rafael hasn’t said a word to me since we left the reception.
He’s sitting on the other side of the car, scrolling through his phone, occasionally typing something. I don’t know who he’s texting. I don’t ask. The silence between us feels too fragile to break.
The driver stops in front of the main entrance. Rafael gets out first, and I follow, stepping onto the gravel and looking up at the house that’s supposed to be my home now.
It doesn’t feel like home. It feels like a museum.
“Come on,” Rafael says. He’s already walking toward the door.
I follow him inside.
The foyer is all marble and dark wood, with a staircase sweeping up to the second floor and hallways branching off in multiple directions. It’s beautiful in a cold way, built to impress, not to welcome.
I think I’m going to be allowed to slip upstairs unnoticed. I’m wrong.
Dante and Cecilia are already here, in a large sitting room off the foyer, and the open doors mean there’s no walking past without being seen.
Dante is pouring himself a drink. Cecilia is arranged on a couch with a glass of wine, scrolling something on her phone, and she doesn’t look up when we come in.
At the reception they’d kept the worst of it behind a closed door, the screaming about contracts and the wrong daughter.
Here, in their own house, they don’t bother with the door.
Dante turns when he hears us. His eyes go to Rafael first, then slide to me, and they travel down the length of the borrowed dress and back up in a way that makes my skin crawl.
“So this is what we’re left with,” he says.
Not to me. About me. Like I’m a piece of furniture that arrived in the wrong color.
I’ve spent my whole life being looked at this way, by my father, by the people in his circle, by anyone deciding whether I was worth the trouble. I know how to stand still inside it. I keep my eyes somewhere over Dante’s shoulder and I say nothing.
“Dad,” Rafael says, and for one stupid second I think he might say something for me. He drops onto the arm of the couch instead and pulls out his phone. “Can we not do this tonight?”
“The Costa girl can stay out of the way,” Dante says, still talking past me like I can’t hear it.
“I won’t have her embarrassing this family further.
We’ve had enough of that for one day.” He takes a sip of his drink.
“Your sister at least understood what she was for. I suppose we’ll see if you’re even good for that much. ”
Cecilia laughs softly at something on her phone. I don’t think it’s at me. I don’t think she’s been listening at all. Somehow that’s worse than if she were, that there’s a woman in this room who’s supposed to be my new mother-in-law and I’m not interesting enough to earn even her cruelty.
Nobody tells Dante to stop. Nobody ever does.
“Understood,” I say, because it’s the word that ends things fastest.
Dante studies me a moment longer, like he’s surprised the furniture talked, then turns back to his drink and forgets me entirely.
I take the stairs.
A woman in a gray dress is waiting at the top of them, maybe fifty, her hair pulled back in a neat bun, her expression giving nothing away. She must have heard the whole thing from up here. Her face says she’s heard worse.
“Mrs. Vitale,” she says, low. “I’m Elena. I look after the house. I’ll show you to your room whenever you’re ready.”
Rafael comes up a moment behind me and peels off down the west hallway, loosening his collar, done with all of us for the night.
“Rafael.” It comes out smaller than I want it to.
He stops. Doesn’t quite turn around.
“I’d prefer my own room,” I say. “Separate from yours. If that’s all right.”
He looks back at me then, and for a moment I can’t read him at all. Then he shrugs, like I’ve asked him whether I can use the kitchen.
“Do whatever you want,” he says, and disappears down his hall.
Elena doesn’t react to any of it. “This way, Mrs. Vitale. I’ll put you in a guest room tonight, and we’ll arrange something more permanent tomorrow.” She turns down the opposite hall from Rafael’s, and I follow her, grateful she didn’t make me explain.
The room she takes me to is at the end of the hall, well away from Rafael’s side of the house.
It’s clearly a guest room, not personalized, decorated in neutral colors that don’t offend anyone.
The bed is large, covered in white linens.
There’s a sitting area, a vanity, a door leading to a private bathroom.
It’s nice. It’s fine. It’s nothing.
“I’ll have your things brought up,” Elena says. “Is there anything else you need tonight?”
“No. Thank you.”
She nods and leaves, closing the door behind her with a soft click.
I stand in the middle of the room and I don’t know what to do.
I’m still wearing the wedding dress. Viviana’s wedding dress. It’s wrinkled now, stained with sweat, the bodice still digging into my ribs. I need to get it off. I need to breathe.
My fingers fumble with the tiny buttons running down my back, but I can’t reach them. There are dozens of them, each one smaller than my fingernail. I twist and strain until my shoulders ache, but I can only get the top three before my arms give out.
I could call Elena back. Ask her to help.
But I can’t. I can’t stand there while a stranger undresses me, while I explain that my husband went to his room without a backward glance.
I sink down onto the edge of the bed, still trapped in this dress.
This is my life now.
I’m married to a man who told me to do whatever I want like I’m a guest he’s tolerating, in a house where I don’t know where anything is, and I can’t even get out of my sister’s dress by myself.
I should cry. I feel like I should cry. But the tears won’t come. I’m too tired, maybe. Or too numb.
Eventually I give up on the buttons. I find a pair of scissors in the vanity drawer and I cut myself out of the dress.
The blades catch and tear through the delicate fabric, and I know I’m ruining it, this expensive thing my father paid a fortune for, the dress Viviana was supposed to wear.
I don’t care. I’m so far past caring it’s almost funny.
The fabric falls away from me in pieces, silk and lace pooling on the floor. I step out of it and leave it there.
Someone brought up my suitcase while I was struggling with the buttons. I find a nightgown and pull it on, then climb into the bed.
The room is dark and quiet. Somewhere in this house, Rafael is in his room, living his life. Somewhere, his parents are probably discussing the disaster of a wedding, the wrong daughter, the embarrassment.
And I’m here. In a bed that isn’t mine, in a house that doesn’t want me.
I should sleep. Tomorrow will probably be worse.
But I lie awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling.
***
The first weeks are better than I expected.
I barely see anyone. Dante leaves early for work every morning and doesn’t return until evening.
Cecilia is away more often than she’s home, attending luncheons and charity events and whatever else society wives do with their time.
Rafael comes and goes on his own schedule, sometimes disappearing for days.
The house is mine, mostly. Empty and quiet and mine.
I explore it slowly, room by room. The sitting room with its uncomfortable furniture, the library with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the dining room that echoes when I walk through it.
I learn which hallways lead where, which doors are always locked, which rooms feel lived in and which feel like stage sets.
Elena checks on me daily. She’s not warm, exactly, but she’s not unkind.
She makes sure I eat, arranges for my things to be moved from the guest room to a proper bedroom in the east wing, far from Rafael’s rooms on the west side, and answers my questions about the house without making me feel stupid for asking.
I spend a lot of time in the garden. It’s beautiful out there, carefully maintained, with paths winding through flower beds and hedges. I walk the perimeter every morning, learning the shape of my new cage.
I spend even more time in my room. Reading. Thinking. Trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with myself.
Do whatever you want, Rafael said.
But I don’t know what I want. I’ve never been allowed to figure that out. My whole life has been about what my father wanted, what Viviana wanted, what everyone else needed from me. Nobody ever asked what I wanted.
I start to realize that this emptiness, this neglect, might actually be a kind of freedom.
***
I find the piano by accident.
It’s a Tuesday afternoon, three weeks after the wedding. Dante is at work. Cecilia is at some charity luncheon. Rafael left this morning and won’t be back until late. The house is completely empty except for me and the staff.
I’m wandering, the way I do most afternoons, and I find a room at the back of the house I haven’t explored before. It might have been a music room once. There are windows overlooking the gardens, and in the center of the room, sitting in a pool of afternoon light, is a grand piano.
I stop in the doorway.
I haven’t played in years. My father made me take lessons when I was young, something about well-rounded daughters being more marriageable. But I actually loved it. The music was mine in a way nothing else was. When I played, I could disappear into the notes and forget everything else.
Then my father decided it was a waste of time. The lessons stopped. The piano in our house was sold. I was fifteen.
I walk toward it slowly, sit down on the bench, and lift the cover from the keys.
My fingers find the notes automatically, muscle memory kicking in even after all these years. I start with something simple, a piece I learned when I was twelve. The melody fills the room, soft and hesitant at first, then stronger as I remember how to do this.
I play for hours. I lose track of time completely. The music fills the empty house, and for the first time since the wedding, I feel like myself.
I don’t hear Rafael come in.
“You play?”
I stop abruptly, my hands freezing on the keys. He’s standing in the doorway, jacket slung over his shoulder, looking at me with something I can’t quite read.
“I used to,” I say. “When I was younger.”
He walks into the room, and I tense, waiting for him to tell me to stop. To say the piano is off-limits. To find some way to take this away from me too.
Instead he sits down in one of the chairs by the window.
“Keep going,” he says. “I want to hear.”
I stare at him.
“I don’t bite, Adriana.” He almost smiles. “Play something.”
I don’t know what to make of this. It’s the most attention he’s paid me since the wedding. But I turn back to the piano, because playing is easier than talking, and I start again.
I choose something more complex this time, a piece I loved as a teenager. My fingers stumble in a few places, rusty from years without practice, but the bones of it are still there. The music fills the room, and I forget Rafael is watching, forget everything except the keys under my hands.
When I finish, there’s silence.
“You’re not bad,” Rafael says.
It’s not much. Three words, delivered in his usual casual tone.
But it’s the first compliment anyone has given me in longer than I can remember.
“Thank you,” I say.
He stands up, stretching. “I’m going to shower. Dinner’s at seven if you want to join.”
Then he leaves, and I’m alone with the piano again.
I sit there for a long time, replaying those three words in my head. You’re not bad. It shouldn’t mean anything. It’s barely a compliment at all.
But it does mean something. It means he noticed, that he listened, that maybe, possibly, this marriage doesn’t have to be completely empty.
I start playing again, something softer this time. The notes drift through the empty house, and I think about Rafael sitting in that chair, actually paying attention to me for the first time.
Maybe I can survive this.
Maybe it won’t be so bad.