My father knew my mother was my only weakness. He still made asinine wisecracks about how beautiful I was, just like her family in Italy, just like she was.
Arturo would never say it to their faces, though. My mother had ties to the powerful Faustis, and unless my father had an immediate death wish, he respected them. The last thing he wanted was for them to come sniffing around. They didn’t, unless you included them in your affairs. Even though Arturo was the King of New York, he couldn’t touch the Faustis. They ruled his world.
After I told my father that I’d rather be dead than let Achille have what was rightfully mine, he laughed like lunatics do and then went to the room he shared with his wife Bambi. Not my mother. Bambi was Achille’s mother.
My father always felt that Achille was better suited for the ruthless part of the business. He was harder in the face, but that was about it. I had proved my worth, despite the reflection that stared back at me in the mirror. My blood and heart was made from the same flesh and bone. I killed just as savagely as he did.
Angelina had never spoken about it before. I had never shared it with her. How the fuck did she know?
“Achille is giving you private information now.” I took a step forward and she held her ground. “Why is that, la mia promessa?”
She laughed, the breath coming out of her mouth in a cold fog. “That’s all you ever call me. Your promised.”
“Would you like me to call you something different? In a month, I’ll call you my wife.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Her teeth clenched and her jaw tightened. “All that matters is, I’m yours. I belong to you. You own me.”
“Your point?”
She laughed even harder and then sighed. “I’m pregnant, Vittorio.”
“Good,” I said. “That pleases me.” It seemed the warnings about protection not being a hundred percent were spot on. I’d always protected myself with her. But there were a few times we were rough and things got shady.
“If my father finds out that I had—”
“He won’t touch you.” If her father found out that I had sex with his daughter before marriage, it could cause some tension. Angelo had a bad temper. He’d go as far as pulling down her pants and whipping her ass with a belt if he found out that she had disgraced him. She was only eighteen, but as the old saying goes, age is just a number. She was mature beyond her years. She had to be.
Her phone rang and she turned from me, searching in her purse. A moment later, the phone was up to her ear and she was talking quietly. Whoever she was talking to, they were talking about where we were headed.
My maternal grandfather’s first cousin, Tito Sala, was in town, and we were supposed to meet at the restaurant Angelina and I planned on going to. While she was busy changing our plans, I sent a quick text to Tito letting him know where he could meet me. Earlier, he said he had something to discuss with me, and it was important. He was married to Lola, a Fausti by blood.
My phone was back in my pocket before she turned around.
“Change of plans,” she said, telling me something I already knew. “Mamma ate at Rosa’s tonight, and not only was it packed, but Ray ran out of veal. I want veal parmigiana.” She touched her stomach. “We’ll go to Dolce instead.”
I nodded but said nothing else. I refused to move. She knew why, so she went on to explain.
“What I repeated to you, I overheard in a private conversation, Vittorio. Your father and Achille were having dinner, and as I passed the dining room, I overheard. You never told me that before.” She shrugged. “It made me curious.”
“It’s none of your business,” I said.
“Right.” She turned from me again. “Let’s just go to dinner. I’m hungry and cold.”
“Angelina,” I said.
Before she turned to face me, a cloud of breath drifted from her mouth. She was almost too eager to get to the restaurant.
“You know the rules. You’ll be my wife, but what happens in my family is my business. Unless I tell you what’s going on, you’ll stick to your business, understood?” There was a reason why I knew her as a child, protected her even. I was molding her to be my wife. She had to have rules, or this life would slay the both of us.
“Perfectly,” she said, more than a bite to her tone. “But my business is yours.” The words were said underneath her breath. I didn’t bother contradicting them because she spoke the truth.
We walked next to one another in silence until I cleared my throat. “We’ll tell the family about the pregnancy when we get back from our honeymoon.”
“Fine,” she said. “At least I’ll be out of his house and away from him by then.”
She loved her father, but she feared him more. For her, an arranged marriage meant freedom. An arranged marriage for me meant that I’d be in even deeper, so deep that I’d never find a way out, unless it was in a body bag.
By the time we made it to the restaurant, the breath was coming faster from her mouth, and her feet showed no sign of slowing. Again, she was almost too eager. I went to put my hand on her lower back and usher her into the restaurant, but she shook her head.
“Let’s go through the back,” she said. “Gabriella and Bobby are having dinner. Mamma told me. I don’t feel like catching the gossip train tonight. Patrizio has our private table reserved.”
Bobby worked for my father, and Gabriella was one of Angelina’s many cousins. Every time we saw her out—or at family gatherings, or passing her in the hall—she had nothing to talk about but the wedding. Waa. Waa. Waa. The woman could talk for days without needing a glass of water.
As we turned the corner, entering into the dark and damp alleyway that ran parallel to the restaurant, the zippy sounds of Louis Prima met us, along with the smell of boiling pasta, roasting garlic, stewing tomatoes, and tonight’s already freezing trash from the dumpster.
Instead of stopping to let me open the door for her, as usual, she stood in front of it, staring at the metal handle. A second later her eyes darted up to meet mine before they returned to the cold brass.
“You’re stalling,” I said, calling her out on her odd behavior.
Louis Prima sang out “Angelina” from behind the door, and her eyes flew up, her body tense. When the realization washed over her that no one had called her name, she visibly relaxed, but I knew better. She was wound tight.
“You’re being foolish, Vittorio.”
“Am I, Princess?”
She whirled on me, and I caught her wrist before she slapped me across the face. “Fuck. You,” she spat at me.
“Touched a nerve?” Her father called her Princess, and she hated it. She hated it so much that during our private meeting to discuss the terms of our marriage—“this is what I expect from you,” I’d demanded; “this is what I expect from you,” she’d countered—she requested that I never call her that. But something was off tonight, and whatever she had locked down on her tongue, she needed to get it off of her fucking chest. It was unlike her to keep quiet.
She yanked her wrist out of my hold. “You know you did! You know exactly what you’re doing. At all times! You’re so cold. So…” She paused, like she was trying to collect her thoughts. “It doesn’t matter. There is no changing you! It’s useless to even waste my time and breath.”