I had almost become the king, but it seemed as though I was losing more than I was winning.
15
SICILY
I stormedout of the restaurant once the Ferraris had signed Milan’s contract, half-angry at Davide fucking Ferrari, half-angry at all men in general.I went to rip the car door open, but Milan caught up to me, snatching my wrist into his hand with a look that told me he was analyzing again. I knew he was confused, that he didn’t understand what he had done wrong, but even men who could feel emotions and understand anger wouldn’t get it.
“You are experiencing anger,” he stated.
I scoffed. “Obviously.”
“It is not obvious to me, Sicily. You must say it aloud for me to attempt to rectify my actions.”
He was trying, more than he had ever been willing to try.
He brought his thumb gently to my cheek, his brow furrowing at the tear breaking at his fingerprint. He didn’t understand and it was stressing him out, I could see that, but he couldn’t see thatIwas stressed too.
I shook my head. “It’s not—I don’t—” I groaned just as Adriano came to stand beside him, his face full of concern too. “I shouldn’t need your permission to speak, Milan!”
His hand stayed stroking my cheek as he said, “But I let you speak.”
“That’s the problem! I am myownperson. Being a woman doesn’t mean I need permission from a man to speak!”
Milan’s thumb paused. He stopped analyzing like this was too much to understand. His expression looked pained as he glanced over his shoulder at Adriano, silently pleading with him to help him understandme,and though he would never say it aloud, I knew that it killed him to have to.Milan was proud, his entire existence as an heir had been built on power, and to ask for help was a last resort.
“Sicily’s upset because you don’t need permission to speak, so why should she just because she’s your wife and a woman?” Adriano sighed but continued, “She feels there’s inequality, rules for women and not for men, and she’s right.”
“But I let you speak out of turn against my men,” Milan said. “That’s breaking the rules.”
His lack of understanding was the same as any man, and that bothered me.
“Fuck the rules!” I shouted. “Why can’t you get this? You treat everything like you did when the Camorra attacked the wedding; you bulldoze it all and then justify it by saying you were doing it for me!”
Milan stepped away, wringing his fists together. “I am trying, Sicily! This is illogical to the way I was raised, to the way society works, so I amtrying!”
‘For you’were the silent words at the end of his sentence, but I heard them.
“And, just so we are clear,” he continued, sucking in a deep breath and holding it. “I did torture the Camorrista who harmed you, yes, and that you cannot ask me to stop, but I had my contacts eradicate the Camorra for the better of us all; that blood is not on your name. They steal, and attack, and they do harmto everyone. You claim I do not understand your position, but you do not understand mine either. I had to cause unrest to have them taken out, I had to owe an ally which is not a good position to be in, and I risked everyone else thinking of me as unhinged just to keep us safe.”
Adriano didn’t stop Milan’s hands this time. He let, even watched, Milan’s fingers circle over and over, allowing his nails to catch against his knuckles.
I wanted to race forward and snatch them apart, to tell him it was fine, that I was grateful for what he’d done.
But it wasn’t fine.
The world wasn’tfine.
My husband took a deep breath that he didn’t release. “What do you suggest I do about this problem of inequality?” His unblinking eyes fixated on mine. “What doyouwant to do about it?”
What didIwant to do about it? He hadn’t asked me that before, nobody had. There was so much I wanted to do, but I blurted the first thing that came to mind, the biggest, most unachievable thing so he could understand that it started right from the very start. “We could open a school.”
Anyone looking at Milan’s face would’ve assumed I’d just suggested we detonate a bomb.
“A…school?” he echoed.
The world squeezed until it shrunk around me and I was small. “Girls can learn whatever they want, sports, or politics, or childcare. Boys can learn to be a Made Man if they want, but they can also learn languages or literature if they wish. Change startsthere, with the people who will one day lead after you, with the parents who are willing to let their children play tennis.”
Milan stayed silent, but his brows furrowed, his fingers wrung, and his quietly heaving chest screamed discomfort. He didn’t like change; it overwhelmed him, and this was a changeto the structure of the universe we lived in, not just to the way things were in our household now.
