7. Liana
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Liana
“Mama, why do you look so sad?”
Bianca was staring up at me from the breakfast table, her spoon frozen halfway to her mouth. Those sharp eyes missed nothing.
“I’m not sad, baby, I’m just a little tired lately.” I forced a smile and poured myself more coffee that I didn’t actually want. “Grown-ups get tired sometimes, that’s all.”
“You’re always tired now. And Papa is never home anymore and that church perfume lady keeps coming over and I don’t like any of it.”
“Bianca, I need you to stop calling her the church perfume lady.”
“But that’s what she smells like and I don’t like her.” She wrinkled her nose as she spoke. “Rina says the church perfume lady is trouble.”
I closed my eyes and counted to five. Rina and I were going to have a very long conversation about what was appropriate to discuss in front of impressionable children who repeated everything they heard.
“Just finish your cereal please, the bus will be here in ten minutes.”
“Is Papa coming home for dinner tonight or is he going to miss it again?”
“I honestly don’t know, baby, I haven’t talked to him about his schedule.”
“You always used to know exactly when Papa was coming home.” Bianca looked at me with those eyes that saw too much. “You used to tell me and I would wait by the window for his car. Now you never know anything about what Papa is doing.”
I didn’t have an answer for that because she was right.
The week since the café had been a special kind of torture that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Angela was everywhere now, her presence filling every corner of my life until I couldn’t breathe without smelling her perfume.
She was at the compound for meetings that ran late into the night.
She was in his study with the door closed while her low laugh drifted through the wood and made my stomach turn.
She was at dinner twice, sitting across from me with that cold perfect smile while she talked about operations I used to run and strategies I used to plan and a business that used to be mine as much as his.
And Dominic acted like this was completely normal. Like bringing another woman into our home and our business and our marriage was just what people did when they were fighting a war.
I caught myself doing things I hated, things that made me sick to my stomach when I thought about them later.
Hovering outside his study door with my ear pressed to the wood, straining to hear what they were saying.
Checking his phone when he left it on the counter, scrolling through messages and looking for proof of I didn’t even know what. Watching the way he looked at her, the way he leaned in when she talked, the way his whole body turned toward her when she entered a room.
I used to be the one he turned toward. I used to be the center of his gravity.
Now I was the wife who made breakfast and put the kid to bed and waited alone in the dark for a husband who came home smelling like her perfume and fell asleep before I could ask him where he’d been.
I hated who I was becoming more than I had ever hated anything in my life.
The jealous wife who couldn’t let her husband have a female colleague.
This wasn’t me. This had never been me. I had walked into Dominic Costa’s house at twenty-one years old with my chin up and my spine straight and my eyes clear.
I had never let anyone make me feel small or scared or less than what I was.
Now I felt small all the time. I felt invisible.
And I hated it. I hated Angela for doing this to me. I despised Dominic for letting her.
But mostly I hated myself for caring so much, for not being able to just let it go, for turning into this jealous paranoid version of myself that I wanted to scrub off my skin.
Angela hadn’t created the distance between us. She had just walked into it and made herself comfortable.
I got Bianca on the bus and came back to an empty house that echoed with silence. Dominic had left before dawn again, his side of the bed cold by the time I woke up.
I should have gone to the gym and worked out my frustration on a punching bag. Should have done anything other than go to his study and start going through the papers on his desk like I was still part of this operation.
Old habits. I couldn’t stop myself even when I knew I should.
I flipped through the stack of papers without really expecting to find anything interesting.
Shipping schedules. Authorization forms. Route maps. The usual paperwork that kept an empire running.
And then I saw it and my blood went cold.
The northern route. It was open again. Someone had reopened the route I had warned him about.
The paper crumpled in my fist before I realized what I was doing. The sight of her signature beside his made me furious.
How dare he.
I smoothed it out and put it back on the desk with shaking hands.
***
I waited until Bianca was asleep. Only then did I hear the car in the drive.
I did not knock. I put my hand flat on the door and pushed it open.
He looked up over the rim of his glasses, and the line between his brows deepened a degree. He set the pen down parallel to the ledger, squared it with one finger, and waited for me to explain myself.
Too bad for him.
“We need to talk.” I pressed my hands flat against my thighs so he would not see them.
“It’s late. I have calls in the morning.” He lifted his glass and drank without a glance at the chair across from him, without offering it. “Whatever’s bothering you can wait.”
“It’s already waited too long.” I crossed to the desk and laid the authorization form on top of his ledger, square in the pool of the lamp. “I found this. Explain it to me.”
He looked down at the page. Nothing in his face moved. He looked back up, and his eyes held mine without warming.
“I’m not sure what you expect me to say about a routine authorization form.”
“You gave Angela the authority to reopen the northern route that I flagged as dangerous.” I planted my hands on his desk and leaned in.
“Angela made a compelling case that the situation’s changed. I reviewed her proposal. I agree with it.”
“I flagged that route for a reason. You told me I was right.”
“That was months ago. Angela has people on the ground. They’re telling her the corridor’s clear now.”
“Her contacts are wrong, or they’re lying to her, or she doesn’t know how to read them.”
“You sound very certain, for a woman who stepped back from the work. Angela has been on the ground with this, Liana. She has current intelligence. You don’t have access to that anymore.”
“Because you cut me out and gave her my seat.” My voice climbed and I let it. “I don’t have the intelligence because you stopped handing it to me.”
“I didn’t cut you out of anything. You stepped back for the house, for Bianca. You’ve not taken an interest in years. Just because you dropped in a few days ago with some insight doesn’t mean you can run my business.”
“I stepped back because you stopped including me. I stepped back because you made it very clear you didn’t need me anymore.”
“That’s not what happened. I’ve been fighting a war. I brought in help. You’re standing there like I committed a crime against you.”
“I could help, Dominic. I’ve been helping for ten years.”
“Angela had a different approach. I found it more compelling.”
“More compelling.” The laugh that came out of me had no shine on it. “That’s what we’re calling it now. Her approach is more compelling.”
“Angela is helping me save this family. Whatever problem you have with her, you need to get over it.”
“My problem isn’t with Angela, my problem is with you.” I jabbed my finger at his chest. “My problem is that I can’t remember the last time you came home for dinner.”
He caught my wrist and moved my hand off his chest. “You think I want to be gone all the time? You think I enjoy coming home at midnight to a dark house and a cold bed?”
“I think you have plenty of time for Angela and none for me.” I pulled my wrist free.
“You’re jealous. Is that what this is? Angela is just a colleague. That’s all she is.”
“Then why does she touch you like she owns you? Why does she look at me like I’m temporary?”
“No one is taking your place, you’re being dramatic about a business arrangement.” He turned and walked back to the desk, put its whole width between us. “I don’t have time for this tonight. We can discuss your concerns when the war is over.”
“The war is never going to be over, Dominic. There’s always another war. There’s always another crisis. There’s always another reason why you can’t be here.”
“That’s the life we chose when we built this family together.”
“I didn’t choose to be invisible. I didn’t choose to watch my husband give another woman everything he used to give me.”
“I haven’t given her anything that belongs to you. I’m trying to protect everything we’ve built. And you’re standing here accusing me of what exactly?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, I’m telling you what I’m feeling. I’m telling you that I look at the man I married and I don’t recognize him anymore.”
“Be very careful about what you say next to me, Liana. Choose your words very carefully.”
“Or what, you’ll dismiss me again like you dismiss everything I say now? You’ll walk out the door and leave me alone again like you do every single night?”
“I’m warning you to think about what you’re implying right now.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this, Dominic. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
His face came apart by degrees. Whatever he had kept behind the flat surface all night surfaced and drowned again inside a single heartbeat.
“What exactly does that mean, you can’t take much more of this?”
“It means I’m tired of waiting for you to remember that I exist.”
“So this is about Angela after all, I knew it would come back to jealousy.”
“This is about the fact that you used to look at me like I was the center of your universe and now you look at me like I’m in the way.”
“I have never once looked at you like you’re in the way.”
“You want to know what Angela has that I don’t? Your attention. Your time. Your presence. That’s what she has.”
“Angela has nothing that belongs to you. You’re being ridiculous and I don’t have time for this conversation tonight.” He moved to walk past me toward the door.
I grabbed his arm and stopped him before he could leave. “I need you to give me a reason to stay.”
“What did you just say to me?” He turned to face me.
“I said I need you to give me a reason to stay in this marriage.” I didn’t let go of his arm. “I need you to tell me that I matter.”
“You’re threatening to leave me?” He barely lifted it above the hum of the lamp. “Is that what I’m hearing right now? My wife is threatening to walk out on me?”
“I’m telling you that I’m running out of reasons to want to be here.”
He moved fast, grabbing my shoulders and spinning me to face him fully, his grip hard enough to bruise.
“You think you can just leave me, Liana?” His face was inches from mine, his breath hot on my skin. “You think you can throw away everything we built because you’re jealous of a business partner? You think I would ever let you walk out that door and take my daughter with you?”
“Let me?” I held his stare with his hands still clamped on me.
“You’re my wife. You’re the mother of my child. You belong to me and I belong to you and that’s not a thing either of us gets to just walk away from.”
“Then act like it.” I shoved at his chest but he didn’t let go. “Act like I belong to you. Act like you want me here.”
“Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”
“I want you to choose me.” The tears went over my lashes and down before I could stop them.
“I don’t know how to fix this while Grassi is still out there trying to destroy us.” He sat on the edge of the desk. The fight had gone out of his shoulders. “I don’t know how to be everywhere at once.”
“I’m not asking you to be everywhere.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “I’m asking you to be here. Sometimes. Occasionally. Enough that our daughter stops asking why Papa doesn’t love us anymore.”
“She asked that?” His face folded and caught itself.
“She asks me every day when you’re coming home and I never have an answer for her.”
He was quiet for a long moment, staring at the floor, his jaw working.
“I’ll end it.” He said it to the floor. “The war with Grassi. I’ll end it this week. Whatever it takes.”
“And Angela?”
He did not answer right away. The pause ran half a second past where it should have stopped.
“Angela is useful for the Grassi situation but she can be phased out afterward.”
I picked up my wine glass from where I’d left it on his desk. “That’s not a commitment, Dominic.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me that I matter more than she does.” I met his eyes.
The silence stretched between us. One second. Two. Three.
I nodded slowly and turned toward the door.
“Liana, wait, I didn’t mean to hesitate, I just…”
“I’m going to bed.” I didn’t look back at him. “I’ll be in the guest room tonight. Don’t follow me.”
“This is our home, you can’t just shut me out like this.”
“Watch me.” I opened the door. “You’ve been shutting me out for months. Now you get to know how it feels.”
“Liana.” The word came out of him cracked. “Please. Don’t walk away from me.”
I kept walking.