20. Vivi
VIVI
At some point, I give up and take off my shoes. I don’t know if it’s after my third glass of champagne, or my fourth, but it’s before I start nibbling at the endless array of food Giovanni’s staff keep delivering to my table.
I can’t eat more than a few tiny bites. I’m too anxious to put anything solid in my stomach, but I need to do something with my hands. I feel so ridiculous standing here. At least if it looks like I’m eating, I have an excuse to ignore the people constantly glancing my way.
This is what I’ve been dreading since Giovanni told me I had to come to the club’s opening party. There are so many people here, strangers, and most keep casting me openly curious looks. I can practically hear what they’re thinking.
Did he really marry her?
Is that Giovanni’s wife?
I might be off the island, but this is a cage of a different kind. I’m a specimen under too much scrutiny.
I’m toying with a tower of cheese and tomato and pastry when a woman joins me. She points at my food. “Good choice. Those are delicious.”
I smile nervously. She seems vaguely familiar. “Are they? I just thought they looked pretty.”
“That too.” The stranger’s smile stretches. “Sorry, but—don’t I know you?”
She is tall, slender, with long dark hair and friendly eyes. Her white dress glints against her tan skin and the long gold earrings she’s wearing shimmer every time she moves.
I can’t place her until I look at her toes—turquoise-painted nails peeking out of silver heels. “Oh, yes!” I exclaim. “We met here a few weeks ago. We literally ran into each other.”
“Oh, my God! You’re the woman from the bathroom! The one with the really scary husband.”
“Right. Giovanni. He does, um…have his moments.”
“You’re telling me. Christ. I mean, the man is hot. And has the whole dark and dangerous aura going on, but…” She studies me. “You’re okay, right? He didn’t freak out at you or anything, did he? He seemed pissed.”
“No. He didn’t freak out.” He did lock me in a villa on a private island, but I can’t tell her that. Not with Giovanni’s threat hanging over my sister.
“That’s a relief, especially since it was all my fault.” She gives me an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, again. I was such a klutz. I promise to keep my drink to myself tonight.” She offers her hand. “Hi. I’m Dana.”
“Hi,” I echo, shaking her hand. “I’m Viviana. Well…Vivi. I like to be called Vivi.”
“It’s nice to officially meet you, Vivi.”
We grin at each other for an awkward moment, then Dana laughs.
“Sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just—I’m remembering how tipsy I was that night.
Tipsy and horny.” She slaps a hand across her mouth, holding back a peal of laughter.
“I know I made a mess, and everything, and Elio was very clear that if I was going to visit him at work I needed to fly under the radar—” She hauls in a breath.
“Dropping champagne all over his boss’s wife is definitely not flying under the radar, but I was having so much fun, and it felt so good to take a break from studying, and I must’ve had a few too many drinks?—”
“Dana. Dana.” I touch her arm. She stops mid-ramble, mouth still open, and next thing I know, I’m giggling. She really doesn’t have a filter, and it’s just as disarming as it was the first time.
That’s when I notice another detail about her that I missed before. “Are you American?”
That earns me another laugh. “Shit, how can you tell? The accent? The fact that no matter how hard I try to speak Italian, whenever I open my mouth English still comes out?”
“No, no, I’m the same,” I assure her. “I’m just curious—what are you doing here?”
“Oh, that’s easy.” Her smile is delightfully mischievous. “I’m expanding my education.”
“In what?”
Her eyes drift over my shoulder, scanning the dance floor until she finds what she’s looking for. “Oh, you know—culture. Life. Men.”
I follow her gaze to where Elio is standing on the far side of the room. He’s staring back at us. Even from this distance I can see the predatory curl of his lips when he spots Dana.
She swishes her hips in her flattering little dress and sends him a look that draws the attention of about a dozen men on the dance floor.
“How do you know him?” I ask.
“Elio?” Dana is talking to me, but can’t tear her eyes off him. “We met in a club. Spent all night dancing. Then fucking. How do people say holy shit here… Oh, right—che roba!”
She fans a hand dramatically in front of her face. “Che roba, Vivi. I know we’re practically strangers and this is TMI, but the things that man can do with his mouth, and his hands, and, good Lord, his dick.”
Dana bites her bottom lip. If I had to guess, it’s to stop herself from drooling.
She’s already drifting away in Elio’s direction when she pauses, giving my arm a friendly squeeze.
“I’m sorry to bail, Vivi, but higher ed is calling.
It’s so awesome to see you again. You know Elio, right?
Obviously. Married to his boss and all. He has my number—have him give it to you.
Drop me a DM. We can get drinks! Oh, and”—she flicks her eyes to a different part of the room—“be careful. Your husband has finally started mingling, and the women have noticed. Leave it to a dangerously drop-dead gorgeous man to get us foaming at the mouth. Stop hiding here against the wall and put that ridiculously expensive dress you’re wearing to good use. Make sure they know he’s taken.”
“Ridiculously expensive…?”
“Sweet child, that gown is designer. Eight grand at least, before you count the shoes you’ve already abandoned. Now swish your stunning ass over to your husband and stake your claim.” She gives me another squeeze and a wave. “Good luck! Byeee!” Dana dances her way into the crowd and away from me.
As soon as she’s gone, my energy level plummets. Without her cheerful conversation, the music is back to being too loud, the crowd too close. My dress is way too freaking tight.
Eight-grand, huh? For that much money, it could at least fit properly.
I turn in the direction Dana pointed. She’s right. Giovanni is deep in conversation with a beautiful woman. She’s glowing from the top of her perfectly coifed hair to the tip of her elegantly painted toes.
Glowing, and gorgeously pregnant.
Giovanni has one hand on her lower back, his head tipped close to hers, and is saying something that makes her smile. Her whole face lights up, and my stomach drops to my toes.
Francesca appears beside me. “I wouldn’t get too worried, ragazzina. Giovanni isn’t going to seduce her. At least, not until she’s had the kid and has lost some of the baby weight.”
Her comment is as cutting as her expression. Skillful, too. It slices right beneath my ribcage, knocking over the row of dominoes that ring my heart.
My husband and another woman.
That other woman and her baby.
A mother with her baby. Her family.
Family, baby, motherhood.
I’ve had too much to drink. Not enough food. I can’t stop the vicious loop from going around and around in my head. The things I want and might never actually have.
Family, baby, motherhood.
The dominoes crash and crack against my organs. “Who is she?”
“A wife of an associate,” Francesca answers dismissively. “No one you’ll ever meet.”
“But Giovanni knows her.”
“Of course he does. He is the Marchetti Capobastone. He is a god to these people.” Her tone takes on a reverence that’s impossible to miss.
“He is a god to everyone, Viviana. And you should be down on your ungrateful, undeserving knees every day, because out of all the women he could’ve crowned his queen, he chose you. ”
She spits out that last word with so much vehemence her body shakes.
“You don’t deserve him, ragazzina. You never will.”
But what about a baby? I want to ask. Or a family? Do I deserve one of those?
The pain around my heart expands as I watch the pregnant woman guide Giovanni’s hand to her swollen belly.
She shifts his palm until she’s found the right spot, holds it there.
Their heads are together, both of them silent in anticipation until…
they glance up at the same time, both grinning. Giovanni felt her baby kick.
It’s a kick to my gut. I’m dizzy and way too hot, unsteady on my feet despite being barefoot. The champagne sloshes in my glass, and Francesca grabs it before I drop it, muttering something nasty under her breath.
Whatever she says next gets lost beneath the hurricane ripping through my head. Thought after thought, image after image compounding until I can barely see straight.
The video of Tino touching his girlfriend. Fucking her on the day of our wedding…
The way my body responded to Gio in his bathroom. The feel of his skin beneath my fingers, the intensity of his stare when he was touching my mouth…
Snippets of my conversation with Dana, her comments about Elio and his various body parts and the things he can do with them…
The scene that just played out in front of us. The woman, her pregnant belly, my husband waiting in anticipation to feel her baby kick…
I’ve got so many emotions and sensations rolling through me I can feel them from head to toe. Confusion, jealousy. Longing, attraction.
Under all of it, a persistent need, an ache that makes my skin too tight and my nipples too hard and the hidden spot between my thighs tingle. Desire that hits so hard I sway.
Francesca grips my arm, stops me from hitting the floor. “What is wrong with you?”
I don’t care how much she hates me, or how inappropriate it is to have this conversation here. I have to ask someone. I’ll go insane if I don’t ask: “Francesca, how does a man get a woman pregnant?”
Her nails bite into my bare arm. “Come, prego?!”
“I just realized I don’t know. Like, don’t actually know.
Not really.” Desperation overrides embarrassment, and words just tumble out.
“The nuns made sure I knew my bible verses and how sinful it is for a man who isn’t my husband to touch me, but they didn’t explain anything else.
I know bodies are involved, usually naked ones, but… but that’s it.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
I ignore her cutting tone. “But I’m not.
That’s the problem. I’m about to be twenty-one, and I’ve spent the last decade entirely cut off from the world.
Obviously, I’ve seen TV and movies and social media and things like that, but all of it before I hit puberty.
I lost access to the outside world—the real world—when my parents put me in the convent.
The nuns didn’t allow anything like computers or the internet, and the one time Tino came to visit, he wouldn’t let me touch his phone.
I had books, sure, but nothing that even remotely talked about physical relationships or sex.
And when I went to Chicago for the wedding, there wasn’t time to talk to anyone, to ask my mom any questions?—”
The world is spinning faster and faster, nausea bubbling in my stomach when I realize how stupid I am.
Clueless, ignorant. Such an idiot. “Even though my sister is younger than me, I’m sure she knows everything about sex, and if I was able to talk to her I’m sure she’d explain it to me.
But I haven’t seen her in years—haven’t been allowed to talk to her in so long—so there hasn’t been anyone I’ve been able to ask. And, and?—”
My voice gives out. Unshed tears coat the back of my throat.
“I was raised to be a dutiful wife, Francesca. That’s what the nuns taught me.
To be dutiful and obedient. To be a good wife, a good mother.
But they never explained how. How am I supposed to become a mom if I don’t even know how to get pregnant? ”
Francesca stares at me. Some of the people on the edge of the dance floor do too.
The fire I felt in my face earlier has turned to ice. Sweat slicks my forehead and chest. Saliva pools in my mouth. I’m minutes from vomiting. No, make that seconds.
My stomach is cramping violently, but I can’t stop asking Francesca one last time. “Tell me, please. What do I need to do with Giovanni to have a baby?”
“Nothing,” she hisses, wrenching her arm out of my grip. Funny, I don’t remember reaching for her. “Let me go, you stupid girl. You’ll never have his child.”
The intensity of Francesca’s hatred is a slap to the face. But it’s nothing compared to the pain violating my stomach.
With no one left to cling to, I fall.
My knees give out, and I vaguely hear my dress rip, and then I’m face down on the ground, vision dimming, desperately reaching in Giovanni’s direction as I vomit all over his club’s brand new floor.