5. Cat #2
“Cute,” she says. “But words don’t win wars. Actions do.” Her hand comes up fast, an open palm aimed at my face, designed to mark, to humiliate, to prove a point.
I catch her wrist mid-swing.
The impact jolts through both of us. Her eyes widen, she didn’t expect me to be fast enough, didn’t expect the girl who sits in her room writing in journals to have actual reflexes.
“I told you,” I say quietly. “Don’t underestimate me.”
For a moment, we’re frozen like that: her wrist in my grip, her face inches from mine, the fitting room silent except for our breathing.
I could break it. The thought moves through me like lightning, one quick twist, a satisfying crack, and Marcella Greco would learn exactly what a Romano is capable of.
But a donna breaking the old second’s daughter starts fires. It would be a declaration of war, not against Marcella, but against her father’s entire faction. It would give them exactly the excuse they’re looking for.
And besides, it wouldn’t be fair. She’s not a fighter, not really. She’s a schemer, a manipulator, and those are different skills entirely.
I set her wrist down gently, like I’m releasing a child who’s misbehaved.
“Get out,” I say.
Marcella rubs her wrist and looks at me the way she’d look at a lapdog that turned out to have teeth.
“This isn’t over,” she says.
“No. I imagine it isn’t.”
She leaves without another word, the door clicking shut behind her with a soft finality.
I make it approximately thirty seconds before I start crying.
The tears come from nowhere and everywhere, spilling down my cheeks in hot streaks that I can’t seem to stop. I sink onto the velvet chaise Marcella vacated, still wearing the half-pinned dress, and I let myself fall apart in a way I haven’t since those first weeks after the freeze set in.
Placeholder.
Line item.
Nothing to show for it.
The worst part isn’t the cruelty. I expected cruelty. Marcella’s never exactly hidden her contempt.
The worst part is how much of it rang true.
A year married, and what do I have? An empty bed most nights. A husband who can’t stand to be in the same room with me. A seat at alliance tables that I’ve never actually been invited to fill.
I think about the private terms she mentioned, the exit clauses, the conditions she stripped of their safeguards. Did Max tell her about those? Does he really call her at 2 a.m., confide in her, trust her with the details of our marriage?
It would explain so much. The ease between them at family events. The way she knows things she shouldn’t know. The cold that settled over my marriage like a frost and never lifted.
Maybe he’s been hers all along, and I was just too stupid to see it.
I press my hands against my stomach, feeling the slight swell that Marcella noticed. Stress, I told myself. Too much late-night eating, not enough exercise.
I can’t think about anything except how thoroughly I’ve been played.
You actually fell for him, didn’t you?
Yes. God help me, yes.
The chess games, the late-night conversations, the way he laughed when I beat him.
I thought it meant something. I thought we meant something.
I let myself believe that this marriage could become real, could become more than a treaty obligation, could become the kind of partnership I’d always secretly wanted.
And now I’m sitting in a fitting room in a half-finished dress, crying over a man who apparently tells his mistress everything while telling his wife nothing.
The tears keep coming, and I let them.
But even as I cry, something else is rising underneath the grief. Something harder, colder.
Anger.
Not at Marcella, she’s a symptom, not the disease. My fury isn’t even for Max, though God knows he’s earned it a thousand times over.
At myself.
I did this. I let myself care, let myself hope, let myself forget the first rule of survival in families like ours: never give anyone the power to hurt you.
I gave Max that power. I handed it to him willingly, eagerly, and now I’m paying the price.
Never again.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand, smearing mascara across my skin, not caring. The tears slow, then stop. The grief settles into something quieter, something I can pack away and deal with later.
Right now, I have a christening to survive.
Right now, I have to walk back into that house and pretend I’m fine, pretend Marcella didn’t just eviscerate me, pretend my marriage isn’t a smoking ruin.
Right now, I have to be strong.
Standing, I catch my reflection in the three-way mirror. The dress is a disaster, pins everywhere, hem uneven, bodice gaping where it should cling. My eyes are red, my makeup ruined, my hair escaping from its careful updo.
I look like exactly what I am: a woman who’s been crying alone in a fitting room while her whole world falls apart.
I look like a victim.
No.
I’m a Romano. I’m strong. I don’t break, not for Marcella Greco, not for Massimo Moretti, not for anyone.
I straighten my spine. Lift my chin. Let the cold settle into my bones like armor.
This isn’t over. Marcella was right about that much.
But she’s wrong about how it ends.