Chapter 16 Isabella
Isabella
Dinner was an awkward, near-silent affair with a mix of angry and terrified staring that was far more blatant now. I kept my head up and didn’t curl into my chair, but it was a near thing.
Once the food had been cleared, and a variety of desserts had been laid out on the sideboard, Lorenzo asked the heads of the minor families to follow him into the living room so that the meeting could begin.
That was when my duties for the night would start: I was to play hostess for the wives and anyone else left out of the actual meeting. Amalia would be at my side to help, but Lorenzo was entrusting me to keep the group entertained.
I didn’t want to think of it as a test, but it was
“Could I get anyone another drink?” I asked. Crickets. More unfriendly stares. Glancing at Amalia, who seemed to be at a total loss, I tried to keep the panic off of my face. I shook it off and squared my shoulders. “What about dessert? I’d be happy to grab anyone a plate.”
More silence. And then, I heard a giggle at the end of the table: two women were whispering, but their eyes kept coming back to me.
Okay, maybe I should try the direct approach. “Look, if you have things to say, I want to hear them,” I said.
Amalia blanched. “Isabella, no.”
The woman beside her, I believe her name was Serafina, patted Amalia’s hand. “If the puttana wants us to say what’s on our mind, then we should do that.” She looked around the dining table, smile wide and cruel, and the women around us nodded along, excited by the prospect.
“It’s fine,” I said. “As the future matriarch of the Vitali family, it’ll be good for me to know what kind of people I will be forced to interact with.
” The woman directly to my right chuckled.
I had no idea who she was as no one bothered to introduce themselves.
She stood and crossed to the liquor cabinet and grabbed a bottle of whiskey and brought it back to the table with a glass.
Whoever she was, she had good taste. That bottle of Macallan would’ve covered the rent on my apartment for years.
Serafina blinked, a little taken aback by my demeanor. But she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to grill me either. “Where did you meet Lorenzo?”
That was an easy one. “He came into the clinic where I was working at the time.”
“Clinic?” another woman, further down the table, asked.
“An urgi-care,” I explained. “I was a CNA and working to get my RN. He came in because he needed stitches.” I didn’t add that he had come to that urgi-care specifically for me. It felt like a bad idea to tell anyone that I had been Lorenzo’s prisoner for months.
The news that I was working in the medical field took a little bit of the wind out of their sails. Like they couldn’t quite use that to insult me. One point for me. “How did you end up here?” Serafina asked, sharp eyes studying me.
Amalia tried to cut in. “Sera, that’s enough.”
But there was nothing for it. I could omit, and I could spin what really happened, but I couldn’t outright lie. That would only make an even bigger mess for Lorenzo.
“I came to work for Lorenzo,” I settled on. They didn’t need to know anything about my father’s debt.
“My father told me that she was sold to Lorenzo to pay off a debt,” a snide voice said from the far end of the table. I had to suppress a groan. I should have known Gia would be here: she was the daughter of Don Gallo, after all.
One of the girls near Amalia let out a scoff. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said because what else was I going to say? “Luckily, it worked out for both of us,” I said, putting my hand on my baby bump, showing it off instead of trying to hide it.
The women around me had a mixture of judgment and disgust on their faces, and I decided then and there that how they felt about me didn’t matter.
How Lorenzo and I met would have gotten around anyway, even without Gia’s big mouth.
“I don’t know how anything works in the Cosa Nostra, obviously, and I would love to get to know some of you and learn from you. ”
Amalia reached over and patted my arm. “Isabella has become a really good friend to me over the last few months.”
Serafina snorted. For such a pretty girl with bright blue eyes and beautiful lips, it was a really unattractive sound. “How could you do that to your family?” she asked. “Make friends with some doppelg?nger that Lorenzo is mooning over? You’re sick.”
It was like her words flicked a switch in my head. I was completely fine with being the target of their disdain. I had figured that would be their reaction to me, given what I’d learned about the Cosa Nostra in the last few months. But for her to speak to Amalia that way?
“I’m sick?” Amalia asked and smiled in a way that I had never seen before. Sugary but with a cruel edge to it. “Sera, you spent the summer in Italy because you kept sneaking that guy you met clubbing in through your window. Your father had his femur broken.”
Serafina’s cheeks turned a brilliant shade of red. “That’s not…” She floundered. “Why would you even bring that up?”
Amalia shrugged. “If you’re going to imply that I’m betraying my family by befriending my cousin-in-law’s fiancée, I thought it would be prudent to remind you that on the scale of betrayals, at least I didn’t fuck around before my marriage.
” She leaned on her elbow, casual as anything. “How old are you, anyway?”
I touched Amalia’s hand. If she kept talking, I was fairly certain that Serafina’s head would explode. “Thank you,” I murmured to her.
“You don’t even look that much like Sienna anyway.” This was from Gia, who apparently, hadn’t warmed up to me at all since her visit. Her eyes met mine, and she sneered. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.
My lack of a reaction seemed to incense the women around me with the exception of the whiskey drinker, who only looked amused.
Serafina’s cold eyes pierced me; her lips twisted into an ugly frown.
“I always thought Lorenzo had a discerning eye, but I guess he’s not too picky.
” Her eyes traveled from my face to the sheer paneling of my dress.
“Or maybe he just has a thing for freak shows.”
I fully expected someone to bring up my scars. It was the exact reason that I didn’t want to wear this dress anyway. But her words didn’t sting as much as I would have thought. Instead, it was like a wall of ice came up in my mind and I straightened my back.
“Serafina, what’s the worst thing that your father ever did to you?” I asked in a voice so deadly calm that she jerked back, blinking over and over.
“That’s none of your business, fottuta puttana.”
“Sera!” I guess the meeting is finished, I thought as the men came filing back into the dining room. “I thought that summer with your aunt and uncle would be sufficient to teach you some manners.”
It was fascinating to watch the girl go pale as she apologized to her father and swore that she didn’t need to go back.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. She whipped her head around to glare at me.
I held up my hands. “Sorry,” I said. “I just…is that the worst thing he’s ever done? Sent you to some relatives in Italy?”
If she could eviscerate me with her stare, I would have been in pieces all over the room. “They made me work on their farm.”
I hummed. “That’s rough,” I said agreeably. The whole of the dining room was staring at us now, and I had that feeling, again, like this was a test, and I wasn’t sure if I was passing or not. “I’ll bet they took your phone too, huh?”
“Do you have a point?”
I pushed out of my seat so that she had a good look at my scars again.
“You noticed these, right?” I raised my arm so that everyone knew exactly what I was talking about.
“Get a good look, everybody.” I kept my tone light, almost singsong-y, and I smiled, full of faux sweetness, at Gia and Serafina in particular.
“My father ran up a debt, and when that debtor came for the money, he offered up my kidney.”
The color slowly drained from Serafina’s face, and a savage part of me was glad for it. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Too bad,” I said with that wide smile, which made my face ache.
“Since you’re all just dying to be in my shoes, I can hire someone to pin each of you to a cold tile floor while I try to dig out one of your organs.
Since I went to nursing school, maybe I won’t botch it.
Maybe you won’t end up passing out from blood loss and having your heart stop while someone tries to save your sorry, pathetic lives.
” My voice was getting louder and louder as I spoke, and all of the women were staring at the table or the wall now.
Any place but at me.
A hand slid around my waist, and I didn’t have to look to know that it was Lorenzo. “You’ve made your point, dolcezza,” he said and dipped down to press a kiss to my throat. “And I think, on that note, it’s time for everyone to get the fuck out of our house.”
The woman who had bypassed the carefully chosen wine for the whiskey stood, practically smirking. She patted Lorenzo on the shoulder, but her eyes were on me. “I’m Alessa Vitali,” she introduced herself. “Lorenzo’s black sheep cousin. You sound fun. We’ll talk sometime, yeah?”
“Go, Less,” Lorenzo commanded.
Lorenzo kept his arm around me as everyone filed out of the house. Once the front door shut for the final time, Elio blew out a harsh breath, then laughed. “Well, that went well,” he said and Damien scoffed.
“What the fuck are you talking about, stronzo?” Damian asked.
Elio shrugged and reached for the half-full glass of Macallan and drained it, smacking his lips. “At least, no one died this time.”