23. Vivi
VIVI
“No one.” I fist the sheets. “No one is trying to kill me, because I don’t know anyone.”
“You must have some idea.”
“Do you?” My voice pitches high. “I’ve been in bed for almost a week. Am I really supposed to believe you haven’t had men scouring the entire country to track down the person responsible for poisoning your wife?”
Giovanni’s jaw flexes. “You bet your sweet ass I have, bella. But I’m also asking you.”
“I have no idea!” I swallow, attempt to cling to some kind of composure.
“I don’t have friends, let alone enemies.
The only people I know in Italy are the nuns at the convent and, as a rule, they don’t go around poisoning people.
Besides, you know as well as I do—I’m a nobody. Utterly insignificant.”
Giovanni folds his arms across his muscular chest. “Not true. You are Signora Marchetti. You are the opposite of insignificant, Vivi.”
“I’ve only been your wife for a month, Gio.” If he’s going to use my nickname, it’s only fair I get to use his. I’m too tired to care if it bothers him or not.
I clasp my hands over my stomach, holding back the dull ache. “In the entire time we’ve been married, I’ve been on the mainland twice. Both times to the same place, Hotel Alba Dorata and Eclipse. I don’t know anyone there. Have barely spoken to a soul.”
“What about that woman?”
“What woman?”
“Dana Rhodes.”
Dana. Bathroom. Broken champagne flute. Turquoise toenails. Right, her. “How do you know her name?”
“As you already pointed out, you’ve been in bed for a week. I’ve been keeping myself busy. And she’s low-hanging fruit. Her personal information is easy to access.”
It takes a beat, but his comment sinks in. “Because she knows Elio.”
“Because she’s fucking Elio. But, yes,” my husband confirms. “I knew who she was before she walked into the party. There’s a guest list for a reason, Vivi.”
“So why did you ask?”
“Because I’m trying to understand.”
I sit a little higher in the bed. “Understand what?”
“The whole picture. The threat. You.”
“And…are you? Starting to understand?”
He’s quiet for a moment, thinking. Then Giovanni carefully adjusts my legs to the side, making space on the bed.
He sits, his weight depressing the mattress.
We’re cramped together, his side pressed into my legs.
He’s warm and sturdy, and I do everything I can to not lean into his strength. “Progress is ongoing.”
Something has changed between us. The chasm between us is still there, but it’s gotten smaller. Gio feels more accessible somehow. More human. Slightly easier to talk to.
A horrible thought crosses my mind. “Dana—she didn’t do it, did she? Is she the one who poisoned me?”
“She had the opportunity, but there’s no sign of motive. Elio’s been to her place plenty; there’s no evidence she’s ever been in possession of arsenic. So, no. We don’t think she’s responsible.” He pauses. “Why are you so interested in this woman? Dana?”
I turn away, let my vision go hazy as the curtains flutter in the breeze. “Because she was nice to me. Friendly. And I was hoping that maybe, eventually, she’d be my friend.”
He shifts, his voice dropping. “Is that what you want? Friends?”
“I mean, I guess…? I don’t know. I haven’t had one since I lived in Chicago. I’ve kinda forgotten what it’s like.”
Giovanni stiffens when I mention Chicago. Even the air around him seems to go still. I’m fading, my eyelids heavy, but the shift in his mood feels like a warning. Like he knows something I don’t.
No… Like he knows what I’ve done.
It’s not possible. No one does. No one except my parents and the nuns at the convent.
Instantly, I’m wide awake. On edge. “What?” I ask. “What is it?”
“Tell me more about your friend in Chicago.”
“Why?”
“Humor me, Vivi. What was your friend’s name?”
“Millie. Millie Russo.”
Giovanni sits with the information for a moment. If the name means anything to him, he shows no sign of it. “When was the last time you saw her?”
I flinch. I don’t know why. I’ve thought about that day a million times. It was one of the worst days of my life. But I can’t remember the last time I talked about it, let alone the last time anyone asked me about it.
“July twentieth, the day before my parents sent me to the convent. Ten years ago.” I can’t keep the hitch out of my voice.
Giovanni notices and surprises me by taking one of my hands in his. “Tell me.”
Not a request. Or a command. It feels like permission.
Maybe the poison has gone to my head.
Maybe the past month has finally taken its toll.
Not just this month. Years. Other than my single conversation with Father Luigi, I can’t remember the last time anyone showed genuine interest in my thoughts or feelings, and, despite how tired I am, I can’t stop from giving in.
I actually want to tell Giovanni about Millie. Get this horrible burden off my chest.
“We were best friends. The three of us. Me, Elena, and Millie.”
“Vivi, Elena, and Millie,” he repeats. “You, your sister, and…”
“Actually, it was Ana, Elena, and Millie. My parents called me Ana when I was little. They hate the nickname Vivi. If I wanted to go by anything shorter than Viviana, it had to be Ana.”
Gio sweeps a thumb across the inside of my wrist. “Ana. Vivi. Viviana. I like them all.”
There’s an odd tightening in my throat. An emotion I can’t identify. I stifle a cough, retreat to my story. “Millie was our housekeeper’s daughter. She and her mom lived with us. It was like having another sister. Millie was the oldest. Elena the youngest. I was smack dab in the middle.”
There is so much wistfulness in my voice. An ache that grips my heart. Giovanni notices. “If you were so close, like sisters, why has it been so long since you’ve seen her?” He squeezes my hand. “What happened to her, Vivi?”
“I lost her.”
Giovanni leans closer. “What does that mean?”
I’m hit by a fresh wave of exhaustion. It’s getting harder to make my brain work, but I don’t want to stop.
Not now. If I stop, I doubt I’ll ever start again.
“Have you ever made a mistake, like a really big one? A mistake that takes your entire world and wrecks it until every single part is unrecognizable?”
Giovanni’s fingers stiffen in mine. He nods, the movement stilted. “Yes. I have.”
“And you wish you could go back and do the whole thing over again? You wish with every tiny bit of your soul that, somehow, you could make it right?”
Real sadness passes through those dark eyes. Giovanni has lost so much. Isn’t that what the priest said?
“Yes. Exactly,” he answers.
“Millie is that mistake for me. I saw something I shouldn’t have and told someone I thought I could trust. And it destroyed everything.”
“What happened?”
I swear there’s genuine earnestness in Giovanni’s expression, and it tugs a thread, unraveling what’s left of my self-preservation. I spill everything. The guilt, the shame, the horror.
“We’d had the best day,” I begin. “Like, one of those magic days that feels too good to be true, when the weather is perfect, and everyone is in a good mood, and the air feels lighter somehow. Elena and I didn’t have a lot of those days.
Our parents weren’t very happy people. Not with each other. Not with us.”
Giovanni’s expression tightens. “In what way?”
“They didn’t abuse us, if that’s what you’re thinking.
” The tension in his shoulders starts to loosen, only to snap back into place when I continue.
“Not physically, at least. But they weren’t kind or forgiving.
We weren’t allowed to mess up or make mistakes.
They expected perfection from the start, every single time.
In our lessons, in our hobbies. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I think they liked the idea of children as a status symbol.
Two little girls they could parade in front of their friends and associates.
Well,” I bite my lip. “More like one, with me trailing behind.”
“Meaning?”
“Elena was always the prettier of the two of us. They liked showing her off more. She was the thoroughbred Salviati, and I was the pack mule they’d rush out and hide away before anyone got too close a look.”
“Excuse me?”
“Her hair is this gorgeous auburn color, not my bright red,” I explain.
“She tans where I freckle. And she’s always been smaller than me.
Thinner. My mother always put us in matching dresses, and somehow the dresses fit Elena perfectly.
But on me, they’d pull in all the wrong places.
The skirt would be too short, the chest too tight.
At the time I thought it was just a mistake.
That there’d been a mix-up in the store or the wrong tags had been put inside the dress.
I was a kid. Clueless, trusting. But I know better now.
My mother refused to buy a larger size for me.
She was punishing me for being ’too big’.
For not meeting her expectations of what her eldest daughter should look like. ”
I don’t realize I’m crying until Giovanni brushes a thumb across my cheek, catching something warm and wet. Embarrassed, I move to swipe them away, but he holds my hands in one of his and uses the other to catch every tear that falls. Silently, patiently, until they stop.
As the last one drops into his palm, his long fingers cradling the curves of my face, he leans in. Presses his lips to my cheek. The kiss is light, gentle, and is like jumper cables to my heart. It stops, sparks, races.
He pulls back, our noses almost brushing, his eyes locked on mine.
With one hand, he holds me exactly where he wants me and murmurs, “Fuck her. Fuck your father too. You are beautiful, Viviana. Every bit of you exactly as it should be. Fuck them for ever making you think otherwise. Especially as a kid. Fuck them.”