“The whole family is completely off their tree. Cardi’s sisters are Quila, short for tequila, Brandy, this one is self-explanatory, and Grey, short for Grey Goose. Her brother is JD, which stands for Jack Daniels––with an S, but no apostrophe. Their mom is Margarita and their dad is Rusty––”
“As in the drink rusty nail?”
“I’m guessing.”
She’s right. Those people are off their tree.“I don’t even know what to say.”
“Oh, it gets much better. Cardi’s cousin, Temperance––which means virtue––is in the adult entertainment business. She’s fifteen years older and she’s been doing this for a long time. She has a popular website with several hundredsof thousands of paid monthly subscribers. You can also see her business all over the major porn sites. So I’ve been told. Stefano’s father warned him years ago,‘You keep seeing that piece of trash, Cardi, and I’ll disown you’.He wanted his son to be with a respectable girl. That’s where I fitted in.”
“Sounds like Stefano didn’t listen to his dad.”
“He didn’t.”
“Was Cardi also in the adult entertainment business?”
“She’s a video editor. She doesallthe editing for her cousin.”
“That’s disgusting. And disburting.”
“Pretty much. In any case, I called off the wedding. After that, things blew up.”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t.”
“That bad?”
“My brothers started arguing with Stefano’s siblings. Fists were flying. My grandmothers were insulting his in Italian. My grandfathers were nose-to-nose with his. My cousins were in a brawl with his. My parents were so infuriated Stefano’s family knew and did nothing to warn us, they threatened to sue them for the exorbitant cost of the wedding?—”
“No wonder they were spitting mad.”
“Stefano’s family told them to fuck off. No way they were going to give my parents a dime. Unfortunately for them, they forgot one of Dad’s cousins is a fierce lawyer. Donohue Callahan owns his Irish name.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Donohue, means dark fighter.”
“Oof.”
She nods. “The Stefano family had a quick change of heart. They reimbursed my parents their money in full—including the expensive wedding dress I shredded to pieces. They also paid for Uncle Donohue’s exorbitant fees. They even threw in anextra eighty thousand dollars of ‘saving face’ money because the joke of a wedding made the neighborhood’s paper and website. It was a fiasco for them financially because a lot of their customers boycotted their shops after the drama became public knowledge.”
“Uncle Donohue doesn’t fuck around.”
“No, he doesn’t,” she says. “My parents placed the money in investments for when I get married to a man with balls and self-respect—both grandpas on both sides agree on that front.” She blinks. “I was so humiliated.”
“Did you love Stefano?”
She looks at me surprised.
“What?” I glance between her and the road.
She blinks once, twice, three times. “Why do you ask?”
“You never mentioned it. You said you were humiliated—not you were heartbroken.”
She lets out another long sigh. “Stefano was part of this whole notion of my family’s expectations in regards to what they envisioned for me and how vastly different that vision is for my brothers. It’s my fault for not understanding I wanted more. I liked Stefano. Maybe I loved him in some strange way. Things were comfortable between us, but I wasn’t in love. I was too young at the time to figure it out. Cardi was a blessing.”
“She was. Not only was Stefano not good enough for you, but neither was his family. They betrayed you by keeping his affair a secret. A baby with another woman? How can they let you walk into that fucking mess? Shame on them.”
