Chapter 6
Enzo
Valentina returned later that day, her presence filling me with hope and pain.
On the one hand, she had come back. Her willingness to remain under the same roof with me had to mean something.
Even if she was mostly doing it out of mistrust. With the wedding looming, I needed to cling to hope that she secretly cared deep down.
I had to hold onto that hope. Because marrying her knowing the extent of her hatred would just fucking kill me.
And after finally getting the hell out of the hospital, I wasn’t ready to die just yet.
Despite her return to the townhouse though, I didn’t see much of her as the next several days went by.
It was her housekeeper who served meals, so I ate alone in the guestroom.
If I wanted to see Valentina, I’d arrange it by phone, despite us being in the same house.
I even chose to make my doctor’s checkup on my own without letting her know about it.
The whole setup was torture because I rarely saw her, but finally the evening of the rehearsal came, and we both got chauffeured to the church. The pair of us must have said a handful of words at most on the way there.
When we arrived, Valentina and I were both ushered into private chambers off to the side from the nave of the church. While we waited, the bridesmaids and the groomsmen were going through their part of the rehearsal.
We kept our distance from each other, with me standing by the door and Valentina seated further away.
Truth be told, I was respecting whatever she wanted because if it had been up to me, I’d be standing as close to her as she’d let me.
Though this stony silence between us right now in the private room actually was as close as she’d let me get to her.
I was about to get married and my bride fucking hated me.
Worst of all, Valentina likely hated me a lot more than she did when we first met—and she hated my guts back then.
This hatred hurt far more. Mostly because at least she’d talk to me back then, even if she was spitting venom and telling me how much she despised me.
I’d rather that than this pointed, painful silence on the day before my fucking wedding.
A man only experienced a handful of these at most and I intended to only experience it once. This was it. My one and only wedding.
The cold chill of her renewed hatred of me was enough to rip out my insides, leaving an ache that I had never felt before meeting her.
Valentina truly had the power to destroy me with a single glance.
End me with a single word. One woman having all that power over me could only lead to my destruction.
Soon, there was a knock on the door, the priest appearing to request Valentina’s presence with some bridesmaids in tow.
She left with them, the room feeling so much emptier in her absence.
Feeling agitated, I leaned back against a wall, wishing I could find a way to win her back.
Wishing I had all the right words to convince her that even though I had started out using her as a means to an end, I couldn’t imagine life without her.
Didn’t want to imagine life without her.
Life without Valentina in it didn’t seem like a life worth living.
There was no going back to the way things were.
No going back to my empty, meaningless existence where I did my father’s bidding while having no true sense of purpose outside of blind family loyalty.
Now, I fully understood what real loyalty meant.
It wasn’t mere obligation. A task to be done because I shared blood with the people who would most benefit.
Loyalty was complete devotion to the person you cared about.
The care one felt manifested in action. Feelings were what propelled genuine loyalty and right there in that church, I knew that I would do anything for Valentina.
I would lay down my life for her if she asked for it. That would be a death worth having.
As pain consumed me, there was another knock on the door.
Probably the priest again. I told whoever it was to come in, and to my surprise I found it was my mother, Calista.
“Hey Mom,” I greeted. “How’s the rehearsal going? Everything going well?”
“Yes, but your father hasn’t arrived yet.” My mother closed the door. “Right now, they’re going through things with Valentina, keeping her dress in mind.”
I raised a questioning eyebrow, slightly confused.
“There’s a difference between a long dress or a short dress,” my mother explained. “A train or no train. We have to rely on Valentina to tell us.”
“Right.” Back in the day, when my mother was leading an entirely different life before meeting my father, she had been a model.
Not famous, but a working model here in the city.
Which meant that she understood fashion in a way I sure as hell wouldn’t.
Now my mother was a mafia don’s younger wife.
Something of a trophy wife he could show off.
Yet another beautiful thing he had that others around him could covet.
“There’s also some issue with the sound so they’re working on that as well. You might have a bit of a wait,” she said.
I nodded. “Can’t be too interesting for the groom’s side right now.”
“We’ll have our turn when they call you up,” my mother said, gliding into the room with a controlled grace that could only come with model training.
She moved with a languid elegance, her pace leisurely, the expression on her face almost always one of boredom as if she were above it all.
Of course, anyone who knew her quickly learned that her apathy was a way to put her guard up.
My mother didn’t let on what was going on in her head unless she really trusted a person.
She was strangely intense for a woman, and since she didn’t reveal that side of her to many people, she often kept an emotional distance with outsiders.
As usual, she was dressed in designer, my mother so tall and statuesque that she towered over my father. Not that he minded. She was beautiful and even in her middle age, she was still twenty years younger than him. What did it matter if she was taller?
I got my dark looks from her—we shared the same brown eyes and jet-black hair. Though she was likely dying her hair by now.
“Are you ready for your big day?” she asked.
I shook my head, the pain of the emotional torment rushing through my bloodstream like poison. “She doesn’t care about me the way I care about her.”
“Then she is a foolish girl,” my mother said idly. “You are a good and loyal man. I’ve seen that first-hand.”
“It’s not enough and she’s not a fool,” I said firmly, defensively. “Valentina is no fool. She has good instincts and she’s right to be wary of me. I’ve let her down. I’ve schemed and used her.”
“Then you must remedy the situation,” Mom said.
“How?”
My mother gave a shrug. “It has to come from your heart, not some scheme.”
“My heart is cynical and bitter.” It was also probably broken or dead, but I didn’t tell her that.
“Men’s hearts sometimes are,” she observed. “You know, I did not love your father when I first married him.”
That didn’t surprise me. The old man would have been hard to love, even if he’d been a young and handsome groom for her.
Since he was neither of those things, I wasn’t stunned to learn that my mother hadn’t loved him on their wedding day.
What did surprise me was the fact that she was telling me.
It couldn’t have been an easy thing for her to admit out loud in a church of all places.
“He isn’t exactly likeable,” I said sardonically.
“Men seldom are,” my mother said smoothly.
I bristled at that, wanting to defend the male side of things but she was talking about my father for fuck’s sake.
With my father as her barometer for men, there couldn’t have been much to like.
This wasn’t like the marriage between Umberto and Bridget Romano.
By all accounts, Valentina’s parents loved each other.
Don Romano might have ruled the mafia underworld with an iron fist, but he didn’t run his family that way.
He knew where work ended and his personal life began.
My father didn’t believe in any kind of separation, which must have been hard for my mother.
“Anyway, your father protected me from a very harsh world,” my mom continued.
“Given that, it was understandable that you’d marry him even if there was no love there,” I said.
The modeling industry hadn’t been kind to her, and for a young woman it was a den of sharks.
Bad enough for her to seek refuge with the mafia.
Choosing a man as ruthless as my father made perfect sense.
He’d protected her and their children all these years.
She’d made the right wager, even if there had been naysayers trying to call her back to the industry.
What would a model have to offer a man that powerful?
Turned out, enough. Bored and aloof as my mother could be at times, her loyalty had never been questioned.
She stood by her husband and her sons with a ferocity that Valentina would admire, if the two women ever got the chance to get acquainted.
My mother and my bride on the same team seemed like a real danger to anyone who ever got in their way.
That thought nearly gave me the false hope that our two families really could come together and finally bury the hatchet.
Not just when it came to our blood feud, but when it came to actual family relations.
What might we become if they all decided to be one family instead of enemies on two opposing sides?
“The love came later,” my mother said. “It came after we stopped pretending with each other. We had wasted time pretending to be strong and it got us nowhere. Yes, I learned to stand strong against enemies and threats, but it became clear I couldn’t do that with my own husband.”