AllFreeNovel
Share Us
No one has dared to touch the food or drinks. The woman sighs loudly and reaches over the table to take a bottle of wine. The entire room fills with nothing but the soft glug of alcohol pouring into her glass, the minute stretching on and on. She doesn’t stop until it’s dangerously filled to the brim.
I am suddenly grateful for the empty seat between me and her.
“If you’re all this silent, someone better be saying grace,” Salvatore says, his strong voice filling up the room.
The mood shifts tentatively. Talking erupts at the other table. Low whispers run through the end of ours. But the head of the table, the people gathered around me and Salvatore, remain silent and still.
“If we get the introductions out of the way, maybe you can all close your mouths long enough to chew your food,” Salvatore says, and begins to motion around the table. “Contessa, this is Cecilia, my great-aunt,” he says of the ancient woman in the wheelchair. I smile at her.
She does not smile back.
“Next to you is my charming sister, Vera.”
Vera doesn’t acknowledge him.
“And those are her children—Nate and Lana.” The little boy waves at me, sweetly oblivious to the tension radiating around the room. Lana is older, sharper, and she simply looks at me with the same distrustful look everyone else is wearing.
“That’s Marcel, whose seat you took. My consigliere.”
Ava’s brother, I realize. At second glance, I can see the relation, though their age difference is obvious. Marcel is tall and strong compared to his sister’s short, mousey stature, but they share a similar warm complexion, the same high cheekbones and hazel eyes. Marcel lifts his drink in acknowledgment,
“The pleasure’s mine,” he says, the greeting warm amidst everyone else’s cold attitudes.
Like Salvatore, the tense atmosphere doesn’t seem to touch him, his smile professionally pleasant. “My sister talks highly of you. Thank you for keeping her in good company these past few days.”
It seems Marcel got all the confidence between the siblings.
“She’s wonderful,” I agree. “We always find some way to pass the time.”
I wish he was sitting closer, another barrier between me and all these hateful stares.
Further down the table, I spy Ava again, and even Noctus, wrapped up in conversation with a bunch of rowdy men. His little brother is nowhere to be seen.
“A Lovera at my dinner table,” Cecilia finally says, as if she’s been fighting the urge to speak for the last several minutes. The ridicule wavers in her high, posh voice. She reminds me of a buzzard, in those dark feathery clothes, her throat wobbling with every word. “We may as well open up the kennels and let the dogs have a chair as well.”
“Can we?” Salvatore’s nephew asks eagerly, the insult flying over his little head. Vera shushes him sharply.
“Mrs. Cecilia,” Marcel interrupts quickly, “I think you’re confused. Would you like to get some air?” He pushes out his chair, but Cecilia digs her bony fingers around the wheels of her chair, holding it firmly.
“Absolutely not,” she snaps. “I won’t be taken away from my own family table, so some Lovera brat can sit at it instead.”
I stare at my plate, trying desperately not to snap at this woman. It’s not as though I chose to be here! I didn’t want this! What right does she have to hate for me a decision that wasn’t even mine to make?
Before I can defend myself, Salvatore calmly puts down his cutlery.
It is the only motion necessary to make the table descend into a low hush again. Those in the middle fall silent, straining to hear the drama unfolding.
“Cecilia,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “You’ve always said I should rely more on the elders of the family for advice, that I would benefit if I went to them for direction. I’ll be honest, I haven’t done that as often as I should. So, what would be your advised punishment, for someone who directly and publicly insults the don’s fiancé?”
The air in the room is so thick, I could choke on it.
The old woman’s ruby red lips work around words that don’t come, so Salvatore continues.
“Contessa is, as you know, going to be my wife. An insult to her is an insult to me. How should I deal with someone who sits at my table in open disrespect for both me and our family?
Let’s hear it from the old ways.”
Cecilia’s teeth grind silently in her mouth, her face furious—but there is a fear there in those cold, blurry eyes.
