Chisa
IT’S MY FIRST TIME to be this close to Marcello again. I’ve imagined this moment for years. But I never imagined it would happen because of this. My daughter almost abducted. And that’s why...
“Let me see your hands.”
I barely manage to keep my voice from shaking, and my heart’s still pounding against my chest. I can’t make myself care at all about being in the same car as my husband. How can I when Rica was almost...
“Mama—”
I smile at her, but my voice is firm when I repeat my request. “Hands, baby.”
She gives them to me with a sigh. Like what just happened is totally nothing to her while here I am, struggling to keep myself together as I turn her little hands over in mine.
I check both sides carefully then her wrists, then her elbows.
I push her hair back off her forehead and look at every inch of her face while the car goes up the ramp and out into the traffic.
There’s a scrape on the heel of her left hand. That’s all. One scrape, from where a man I have never seen before put his whole body between her and a van.
“Does anything hurt?”
“My hand a bit.”
“Anything else? Anywhere, even if it’s small.”
“No.” A pause. “My bag’s still in your car.”
“I know. We’ll get it back. I promise.”
She nods. Then she crawls into me the way she used to at three, all knees and elbows, her face pushed into my neck, and that’s when I feel it.
With my baby girl in my arms, I’m close enough to feel how her heart is beating faster than it should, but when I look down, and Rica lifts her head to look into my eyes...
No, she’s not pretending to be brave or anything.
She knows what happened wasn’t a good thing.
But because she’s with me...and him...it seems that’s enough for her. She believes with all her heart she’s safe, and I...I realize that’s what I believe, too.
I know there will always be people who’d think that we had this coming.
Marcello never lied about who he was when we first met.
I knew what I was getting into when I married him.
He wasn’t lying when he told me that his family was done with that life.
And I wasn’t lying either when I promised to stand by him, for better or for worse.
The day he threw me out of his home still haunts me to this day. It breaks my heart every time I remember it. But even so. No matter what Marcello feels about me, I know he’ll do everything to keep Rica safe and that’s why, when I see how our baby girl has fallen asleep...
“It’s not your fault,” I whisper.
Marcello jerks as my words shatter the silence between us like a sledgehammer. He hasn’t said a single word during the entire drive...or at least not to me. Earlier, Rica did ask him if those men were coming back, and he had answered without hesitation.
“No, piccola mia. Nobody’s coming back.”
He had said it the way people would say one and one equals two, and that had been enough for our daughter. And honestly, it had been enough for me, too. The only one Marcello failed to assure...was himself.
“I saw you, Marcello. You did everything possible—”
“Don’t.”
I look at him in confusion. What does he mean—
“This is my fault, and we both know it.”
The rage in his eyes finally makes sense. It’s nothing but a cover-up, his fury at those men masking his pain for what he sees as his failure in keeping our daughter safe.
“Those men came for her because of who I am—”
I’m already shaking my head even though I know it’s folly to go against a Bastianelli, especially when they’re not their usual calm self. “It’s because of who you were! It’s because of who your family used to be. All of you left that life behind you, and so you need to stop blaming yourself—”
“Then you do it instead!”
The sharpness of his voice, combined with the sudden thickness of his accent, makes me jump in my seat. Our marriage might have only lasted two years, but there are still a few things I remember about him, like how very little in this world can make him lose composure like this.
In fact, Curzio told me a little of how ice-cold Marcello had been in the past, even while risking his life. And so for him to look this violent—
“You have every right to blame me for this,” he says harshly. “So why not just get it off your chest—”
All I can do is shake my head and look at him helplessly. “I can’t force myself to feel what’s not there—”
“Then tell me,” he demands, “what’s there!”
And after that...
Silence.
Because the way he’s looking at me now...
I think he’s also realized just how loaded that question was, after eight years...
Eight long years of clause six.
That’s what it’s called. Clause six, on page four of the agreement I signed alone at my own kitchen table in Evanston, six weeks after he had me driven out of his gates.
In the event of an unscheduled encounter, and in the absence of the minor child, the second party shall not address, approach, or seek the attention of the first party.
The second party. That’s me.
It isn’t a restraining order. No court ever saw it. It’s just eleven pages of Mr. Brent’s very best work, and a pregnant woman too frightened to argue about anything except the money, which she didn’t want anyway.
I asked him once, on the phone, what would actually happen if I broke it. He went very quiet. Then he told me, in a pained sort of voice, that he was extremely good at what he did, and that I’d best take his word for it.
So that’s what my husband thinks of me. He hates the sight of me so much that he paid a lawyer to write it down, in a numbered clause, that I’m not to look at him.
Marcello Bastianelli always gets what he wants, and back then, what he wanted was for me to be completely erased from his life. And now?
Tell me what’s there!
He’s looking at me now like he completely regrets what he’s asked for. But since it’s too late for him to take the words back...
“There is something I need to get off my chest, and it’s something that I never had the chance...”
His jaw clenches.
“B-Because eight years, you...”
A muscle starts ticking in his jaw when my voice catches.
“You made a promise to me. R-Remember?”
And when he only looks at me—
“Answer me!”
It’s my first time to cry out like that, and I’m appalled and ashamed. I was never the type to raise my voice like this, but he...
“I do.”
He promised, you see.
Twelve years ago, on our very first date, when I was so scared of losing my heart to a stranger who was clearly out of my league, I made him promise that he’d tell me to my face if he ever wanted to get rid of me...
And he said yes.
He gave me his word that he’d tell me to my face.
And yet...
“Then why did you break it?”
His fists clench and unclench, and seeing this makes me want to...oh, I don’t even know what I want to do since my poor, stupid heart is just as confused. It’s torn between pounding against my chest at the fact that this is the closest I’ve ever been to him in eight long years...
But at the same time, my heart is also doing the best it can not to break into pieces because it still remembers that night...
No no no no no.
I think I would have jumped out of the car then and there if I didn’t have my little girl sleeping in my arms.
This can’t be true.
This can’t be.
This...this isn’t right.
But I know what I’m looking at.
I finally realize where the driver’s taking us.
And when my stunned, horrified gaze finally flies back to Marcello—
“Y-You can’t be serious,” I choke out. “Tell him to stop—”
But Marcello’s lips only tighten. “I can’t.”
I can feel myself starting to shake as the car turns off the Drive, then off the main road, the trees closing in over the top of us, bare and black in the October light.
“My home is the only place where I can keep both of you safe.”