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"I don’t want to get into any trouble with her, you know?"
"You seem almost as wary of her as you are of Michael."
Cass tosses her hair over her shoulder. "Don’t underestimate her."
"I know better than that." I grimace. "Still, considering she asked you to help out with the preparations, it means that she trusts you, right?"
"More like she knew I couldn’t refuse her and that I’d know how to keep a secret."
"Hmm…" I arch an eyebrow. "Now you definitely have my curiosity piqued; you sure you can’t tell me more about what she has planned."
"Trust me, she takes this almost as seriously as the Don takes his Mafia affairs." She firms her lips. "She’d probably have me punished if I so much as breathed a word about it."
"Oh, please," I wave my hand in the air, "surely, you exaggerate."
"Okay, so maybe I won’t be killed or tortured, but she’ll definitely not be happy with me, and you definitely don’t want to be at the receiving end of Nonna’s anger."
There’s another knock on the door; both of us turn to find Theresa peeking inside. She glances between us, then stares down at the floor. "Okay if I join you?" she asks in a soft voice.
Cassandra and I exchange glances before Cassandra rushes toward her. "Of course, Theresa," she murmurs. "Come in; we were just chatting about the next few days."
Theresa shuffles inside the room. She’s wearing an elegant black dress, her hair is coiled in a bun at the base of the neck, and on her feet are wedge-heeled boots, which are stylish but also black. Her face is pale, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She looks like a young woman who is still in mourning. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, then shoots us a glance from under her eyelashes. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Oh, no," Cass shakes her head. "The chalets come with their own staff, and this one, the main one where Nonna is staying, has a team to cook and clean and help with the activities being organized, so all you have to do is enjoy the skiing."
"Xander loved to ski. It’s one of the activities we loved to do together. Every winter, we came here to ski. He said it was the closest thing to flying..." She swallows, and a tear squeezes out from the corner of her eyes. Her features seem to crumble before she composes herself.
Cassandra pulls out a handkerchief and offers it to her. "I know how tough it must be for you, now that he is gone."
She laughs as she accepts the handkerchief and dabs at her cheeks. "It was tougher when he was alive."
"It was?" I walk over to the settee and motion for her to join me.
Theresa crosses the floor to take a seat. She wraps her arms around herself and lowers her chin to her chest. "He was always conflicted about our relationship. I knew he felt something for me, but he was never honest about it. Every time I thought he’d break down and confess his feelings, he always pulled back. It was like he couldn’t quite decide if he wanted me or not."
"Maybe it wasn’t you," I say gently. "Maybe he was just trying to decide about what he wanted in life."
"You mean the fact that he was bisexual?"
I blink. "Ah…" I bite the inside of my cheek, "I didn’t think—"
"That I knew?" She firms her lips. "Just because I look fragile doesn’t mean that I am fragile. I am tired of people underestimating me, you know? I wish they’d stop hiding things from me. Everyone—Xander when he was alive, his brothers, even my own family—feels they need to protect me. But I am tougher than I seem."
"Amen to that, sister." I lean forward in my seat. "And now that you are here, you’ll have a little time away from everything, and you can use the space to regroup."
"Except I don’t know what to do with myself." She wrings her fingers together. "For so long, my identity was tied with Xander’s. I guess I had built up a future for us together. Now I know I was the only one thinking that way." She chuckles in a self-deprecating manner. "Still, for so long, he was my future, and now that he’s gone, I don’t know what to do with myself."
"I am so sorry." I move closer to her. "Truly, I wish I could do something to make it better."
"You come from a Mafia family; you know how it is." She firms her lips. "From a very young age, you are taught that your self-worth is tied to that of the man you marry. And even though there was never a formal arrangement in place, I always knew that I would marry him. Our families, too, expected it, and then … this happens."
"Maybe it happened for a reason?" Cassandra comes forward to sit on Theresa’s other side. "Maybe he wasn’t right for you?"
"How do you know that?" Theresa fumes.
"Maybe it's because I thought that I was in love, but later realized that I was fooling myself." Cassandra says in a low voice. "Sometimes we want something to be true so much that our feelings deceive us into creating a reality that doesn’t really exist."
Theresa’s cheeks flush. "Just because your experience turned out to be far from perfect, doesn’t mean the same holds true for me," she snaps.
