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Sofia
Idon’t know what to do with myself all day. I take a shower after Luca has left, lingering in there for as long as I can until my skin turns pink and my fingertips wrinkle, trying to push our argument and everything he’d said out of my mind. I try to focus on the good things—the luxurious herbal scent of the shampoo I’d brought into Luca’s bathroom from mine, the vanilla honey shower gel, the dual showerheads that make it feel as if I’m in the fanciest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. I’d thought my bathroom was ridiculous, but Luca’s is even more so. The tiles are heated, the bathtub massive, the shower just as big. I try to focus on that pleasure, enjoying washing the lingering smell and feel of the hospital off of me until I feel refreshed physically, at least.
And then, not an hour after he’d left, I wander into the living room to find an iPad left for me on the coffee table just as he’d said, with a sticky note attached to it that has a passcode written in bold letters.Someone already dropped this off. Is there anything he wants done that doesn’t happen immediately?
I type in the passcode to find the internet access and text messaging is disabled and only a single app for documents, with everything Luca must have asked Carmen to send over downloaded. A quick glance shows that they contain family trees, names of high-ranking members and wives and children, the mistresses of the men who were brought to events instead of their wives, everything I could possibly need to know about the family in order to politely converse at events and nothing else. Nothing interesting, no private information, no business dealings. Just the most tepid details for me to recite if need be, like Luca’s pretty little puppet.
Just looking at it makes me burn with resentment.Luca’s gone back on everything he promised,I think bitterly. He’d promised to leave me a virgin, and here I am, deflowered and insulted on top of it. He’d promised to give me my own apartment, and now not only am I stuck in his penthouse for an indeterminate amount of time, but I’m forced to share abedwith him. He’d promised me we’d hardly have to see each other after the wedding, and now nothing could be further from the truth.
Now he’s handed me homework.
I’m not fucking doing it.Rebellion rises up in my gut, hot and bitter, and I toss the iPad aside on the couch.Luca can go fuck himself.I don’t want to learn the names of the men in his organization, all of whom have controlled my life since I was a child without my even knowing it. I wonder how many of those men were the ones in suits who used to come to our apartment; if any of them were the ones who came to take my mother away for questioning, who bruised her face and threatened her.
I hate them. I hate every last fucking one of them.I wouldn’t care if they all died,I think, and as awful as the thought is, I let myself bask in it for a minute, because it feels good to be angry. It feels good to be petty, to let myself think the worst thoughts I could conjure. After all, those men get to do whatever they want, without consequence.
And the women, like Caterina, like me, like our mothers, pay the price.
It should have been Rossi who died in that blast, not Giulia. It should have been any of the men.Even Luca.
The thought surprises me. I don’t mean it, I know that, but it feels good to let myself think it, just for a moment. I’m so angry that it feels l like I was boiling over with it.
I glance over at the discarded iPad. If I’m going to do what Luca instructed me to—and just thinking of it in those terms makes me even angrier—then whatwill Ido with the day? I have the penthouse to myself, and I might as well make the best of it.
In the end, I decide to spend the afternoon on the rooftop, by the pool. Rebelliously, I go behind the wet bar and proceed to do the one thing I haven’t done before—drink. There’s every imaginable kind of top-shelf liquor and mixers in the stainless-steel, glass-doored refrigerator behind the bar, and I dig out a bottle of tequila and watermelon margarita mix. If Luca is going to leave me here and insist that I can’t go anywhere on my own, I’m going to make him pay for it.
Even if that just means drinking up as much of his expensive booze as I can and ordering out the priciest food I can imagine. Carmen usually checks in sometime in the late afternoon to find out what I might want for dinner since Luca and I have yet to eat together. Apparently, it’s been assumed that I can’t cook, and even though Ican, I’m happy to let Luca foot the bill for me to eat without having to prepare it myself.
With a watermelon margarita on the rocks in hand, complete with a sugar rim, I stretch out on one of the lounge chairs poolside, closing my eyes and soaking in the sun. Late spring in New York is rarely this warm, but we’ve had several hot days these past weeks, and I’m not going to complain. At least out here, on the rooftop, I feel like I can breathe just a little better. Luca’s penthouse is undeniablyhis, all of it carefully curated to ooze power and masculinity, and it makes me feel as if I’m suffocating.
Having my own room, with my own things that he’d given me the night before the wedding, had made it slightly more tolerable. And now, even that space has been taken away. Sure, I can spend time there during the day, it’s only at night that I have to sleep in his room. But it’s not the same. It no longer feels like my escape, a place where I can sleep in peace and feel almost safe again.
The thought of spending every night beside Luca makes my stomach clench with anxiety. How many nights will pass before he gets tired of sleeping next to a warm body that he can’t fuck? How long before he brings a woman home? I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. Where would he do it? In a guest room? Inmyroom?
It’s not even really mine,I remind myself. I tip my glass back, drinking the margarita fast enough to give me brain freeze and make me wince. Still, I get up to make another almost immediately. I want to stop thinking about Luca. I want him out of my head, even if I have to get blackout drunk to do it.
But I can’t. I drink three more margaritas on the rooftop as the afternoon passes, getting into the cool water of the pool and back out again to stretch out in the sun like a cat, trying to think of anything other than my cold, confusing husband. But it’s impossible. Every time I look to my left, my ridiculously massive ring glints in the sunlight. Every time I look around, I’m reminded that none of this is mine, it’s all his, and I only have it at all because of the vows I took forty-eight or so hours ago.
There’s nothing else to think about because everything I had before is gone. My education, my career, my travel plans, my hopes. I don’t know what my future will be like. It hinges on Luca’s uncertain dealings with the Bratva and their willingness to back down. And if they don’t?
Who knows what will happen then.
I’m supposed to be safe. Marrying Luca was supposed to keep me safe. But I still feel as uncertain and afraid as I did that night that Mikhail dragged me out of the nightclub.
After a while, when I can feel my skin starting to get a little too pink and I’ve exhausted my ability to drink another margarita, I wobble back down to the penthouse and put in my order for dinner with Carmen. Still seething, I order the most expensive four rolls from a nearby sushi restaurant that I can find on their menu and then go in search of more alcohol.
I’d expected Luca to come back at some point. After all, he’d said that the funeral wasn’t until tomorrow. But as the evening wears on and the clock goes from eight to nine, nine to ten, then I start to wonder if he’s coming back at all tonight. I ate my dinner in the movie room, lounging in one of the recliners with my sushi arrayed out on the pull-out tray, a gin and tonic sitting next to it. I’m barely paying attention to the movie, some bloody slasher flick that fits my mood, my thoughts still consumed with Luca as I pick at my sushi.
If he’s not coming home, there’s a reason for it. And I can only think of one reason that makes sense to me at the moment.
He’s with another woman. Maybe more than one. He didn’t want to deal with the drama of bringing someone back to the penthouse with his wife there, so he’s probably gotten a hotel room somewhere to do exactly what he said he would—fuck someone who will do what he wants and be good at it. Someone who can please him. Maybe several someones.
Maybe my husband is having a fucking orgy right now in some luxurious Manhattan hotel suite.
To my horror, I feel tears burning at the back of my eyelids. There’s no reason for that. I shouldn’t be upset; if anything, I should begratefulthat Luca is with some other woman and not bothering me.
But I don’t feel that way. I feel hurt, which is stupid. I don’t want Luca in my bed, so I shouldn’t care if he’s in someone else’s.
I don’t want him. Right?Right?
