Sicily paused her chewing, swallowed, and the smile that appeared was one I had not seen before. She looked like my mother when she had smiled at me, but Sicily did not have children, and she never would, yet this was still amaternallook.
“You did?” my wife asked, leaning closer to the girl. “Well, fairy princesses arereallyimportant. What did your fairy princess like to do?”
The sudden urge to smile was unwanted and inopportune.
The child reminded me of Siena with her dark curly hair and intense imagination, but I forced myself to note her blue eyes; Siena’s had been brown, like mine.
Adriano shot me a brief look from behind Sicily’s back, but I did not look at him, not fully. He was likely thinking the same. He noticed Siena’s absence as much as I did, and malfunctioning was not an option right now.
The girl gasped and looked up at her big sister who grinned. “The fairy princess likes to do sports.”
I raised a brow.
Sports were a unique choice, though I nodded as though this was an extremely important hobby for a fairy princess to partake in.
Davide rolled his eyes and turned to his mobile under the table instead. The Don did not appear to care about his daughter’s interests. This made my chest hurt, but it was unsurprising and that made it worse.
“What kind of sports?” Sicily asked, exaggerating every syllable, which the child seemed to respond to as if it was another language entirely.
“Tennis.” The child nodded sternly, manhandling a piece of bread into her mouth. “She is allowed to do tennis; her papa did not say ‘no more tennis at school.’”
“Arianna,” Davide growled, still not looking at her.
Sicily sucked in a breath, taking my glass of red wine and staring into the liquid as she swirled it around the bottom.
I placed my palm on her tense, slightly cool spine; something in my body required me to because it was highly likely that my wife was about to say something that she should not.
That, and her spine was exposed right beside me, and I could not stop myself.
I wished badly that she would touch me again.
“What’s wrong with tennis?” she asked Davide sweetly, with a small head tilt that was anything but sweet.
Davide remained silent for a long second, his eyes flicking upward and onto Sicily. Finally, he barked, “Who gave you permission to question my parenting, woman? Do you see my wife speaking out of turn? You have a lot to learn,Mrs. Lucca.”
“I did.”
The attention of the table turned to me as I leaned back in my chair, pulling Sicily’s closer to run my hand down the length of her back. It reminded me of touching her skin on our wedding day, though I had not known back then that I would find her skin so soft.
“Igave her permission to speak,” I continued. “You will not refer to my wife as ‘woman’,and you will respect her questions as you would mine. Am I understood, Davide?”
He nodded once, barely an action, and that was how I knew that we were already following the social cues of a Don to his Capo dei Capi.
Some signs were more important than the contract itself.
“Step outside and allow my wife to speak with your daughter about tennis without your unnecessary interference.”
He paused, evidently unsure what to do with that order.
“Now.”
He rose tentatively, only leaving once he realized I was serious.
The table breathed in his absence, but Sicily gave me a glance that I could not determine the meaning behind, but that I knew she believed I had errored somehow, that she was angry. I leaned back in my chair, and she moved hers away, engaging with Arianna again but not me.
She was ignoring me.
Silence meant anger, yet I did not know what I had done to invoke this reaction.
