11. Milan #2
I stepped closer, shielding her barely covered body from the boys passing by as I said, only to her, not even so Adriano could hear, “One day, Fiorella, you will marry. Do you know what will happen if your husband finds out you are not a virgin?”
She stared at me with narrowed eyes until she realized I would stand here all night and shook her head, her swallow inaudible over the music.
“He has every right to blacklist your name, so nobody will want to marry you, and your father will be disgraced worse than he already is. Your husband could also hurt you, and there would be nothing I could do to stop him.”
“You’re Capo dei Capi,” she hissed. “You can do anything you want. Just change the rules!”
“I am trying, because I would not subject my wife to cruelty over the state of her virginity, but things take time, and you are of marriage age.” I stepped back, my eyes catching Oratio and forming the only idea that would protect Fiorella.
“You will wed Oratio Gioffre, and you will do so within the year.”
Fiorella stayed silent as her jaw dropped open, and just like when her sister committed me to silence, it did not make me feel better.
“Now,” I bit out, not willing to hear her quiet protest any longer. “Where is Sicily?”
Before she could answer, Fiorella stormed toward the door, screaming something immature about hating me.
“Find her and return her to her father, Adriano,” I ordered my Consigliere.
“She is drunk and angered, and I doubt the combination will have a positive outcome.” Once Adriano had left to follow Fiorella, I turned to Oratio, who was as white as my kitchen counters.
“Where is my wife?” I shouted, cringing at my own volume.
“I don’t know! I thought I saw someone come in, but—that way.”
I followed Oratio’s pointed finger, taking the stairs two at a time. The first door at the top of the stairs was open, and I peered my head inside, not expecting to find Sicily, but I did, and I could not make sense of what I was seeing.
Sicily’s body was…almost bare. Her shirt was sliced down the middle, and it was none other than Matteo Bonafede who was looking at her and assisting her with wearing his sweater.
Of course.
She had escaped our home to engage in sexual contact with the one man I had told her was off-limits.
Sicily had asked me who was allowed, and I had not known what to say for the first time in my life, because although I did not want to have sex with her, I also did not want anyone else to, especially not that delinquent Bonafede.
I bit into my knuckle, my head shaking. I did not feel in control. I did not know this place with loud music and bright lights. My brain could not recognize Sicily as my wife any longer.
“Milan.” She shook her head. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“And what might that be, Sicily?” I spat, stepping inside and slamming the door that appeared to have been blown off its hinges. “Are you inebriated?”
She shook her head again, shrugging Matteo’s hands away from her arms, and tugging the sweater over her torso.
My chest rose and fell heavier. “You engaged in sexual intercourse with Matteo Bonafede, and you are not drunk?”
It was worse than her being drunk. There was no excuse other than her choice.
I could not delete this from my mind.
“Hold the fuck up.” Matteo laughed, but this did not appear to match the shocked expression on his face. “We’re not fucking—”
Typically, I thought about every choice before I committed to it, but when it involved Matteo and Sicily, I appeared to lose all reasonable cognitive ability. My fists grabbed Matteo by the collar of his shirt and thrust him against the wall, hard enough to cause a framed photograph to fall.
Sicily screamed as I struck Bonafede, his nose cracking, his jaw spluttering blood over me. “Milan, stop!”
I ignored her, though I still registered her words and contemplated them for a brief second because she had asked.
“He’s innocent!” she cried, hanging from my shoulder. “We’re not together!”
I turned to face her, leaving Matteo to slump onto the ground in a choking fit. “Do you expect me to believe those lies?”
She backed away as though afraid of me, and I did not know what to do or where to go. I had not given her any reason to believe that I would harm her, though perhaps she simply did not like the blood on my knuckles.
“They’re not lies,” she whispered desperately, her hands trembling beneath Matteo’s sweater. “I swear it, I promise, just—just please don’t hurt us.”
“You?” I questioned.
I did not hurt women. I had only broken the rule once, and I would not repeat it.
“I’m not lying.”
My jaw ached from how hard it clenched. “I do not believe you.”
Sicily was headstrong and had fought me on every decision I had made in her presence, but all I saw now was somebody different. She was demonstrating all the attributes that I had seen in torture sessions.
She was truly terrified of me.
Matteo’s wet cough reminded me he was behind us, but it was as he stammered, “Not her… It’s not her I-I love” that I whipped around, frowning at him.
As far as I knew, Tommaso had not arranged a marriage for his son despite him having recently turned twenty-five.
“Not her,” he repeated, stumbling as he tried to find his feet.
Sicily made a small sound, a whimper of sorts. Clearly, she felt rather emotionally about whomever it was that Matteo loved, probably because it was indeed her.
“Who?” I demanded.
Matteo clenched his eyes closed before he found mine and said, “Elena.”
My mind began to race through all the Elenas that I knew, and there was only one noteworthy Elena in the Famiglia, and she was on the opposing side of his family’s war.
Sicily had known about this betrayal and had acted as a middle ground between them.
Punishment was applicable for such an offense and for not informing me of this indiscretion, but I wished nothing less than to harm Sicily or to teach her a lesson.
My wife may have acted as though she was tough, but she had tears on her cheeks, and she had been a loyal friend to them.
Sicily Bianchi was a lot more sensitive than she had allowed me to see, and this caused a rift in my understanding of her. I was beginning to realize that this understanding was limited to say the least.
She sniffled. “I can prove it.”
I believed her without this proof because lying about a relationship between him and his enemy would be incredibly foolish of everyone involved, but I felt a niggle of intrigue at the prospect of such proof.
Sicily reached for the door handle, but as the broken piece of wood creaked open, I slammed it shut before she could leave. “Remove Bonafede’s clothing first.”
She gestured to her torso. “But my shirt is—”
I removed my jacket instantly, holding it out to her for the second time in our short marriage. I was vaguely aware that my five-thousand-dollar jacket was about to be sullied with the thick scents of her perfume, but that thought did not cause the expected malfunction.
I turned briefly back to Bonafede. He could not drive a vehicle with his face marred the way that it was. “I will call my driver for you. Inform him that I instructed him to drive you home.”
I followed Sicily from the room and then the building. It crossed my mind then that she could have been about to lure me to my own death, but then I recalled how frightened she had been of me, and I doubted she was brave enough to do so.
It made my chest hurt that her terror originated with me.
I would have to fix it, but I was unaware of how to do this when she despised me as she did.
It soothed me slightly within when her face re-lit into an obvious display of happiness when she spotted the pink car that we would have to take considering Adriano had taken my car to drive Fiorella home.
“You are not driving,” I said, moving to the driver’s seat.
“Why not? I just drove like an hour through New York,” she argued, regaining some of her fire as she threw herself into the passenger seat.
Why was she so short? And why was she so afraid of me except if it involved driving a hideously colored vehicle?
I clicked the fob, igniting the engine as I said, “Yes, and we will have to discuss that later. Now, where are we going?”
She shuffled in her seat, taking a moment of silence before saying, “To my studio.”