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It takes over in the next moment.
My arms fly out and I throw myself at him in an affectionate embrace, my face angled into his neck and my lips kissing the stubble of hair that’s already started growing from the last time he shaved.
“I love you so much,” I whisper. “You’re the only person who understands me. And you don’t quit on me. You never quit on me.”
He hugs me back, his arms warm and comforting along my naked spine. “I could say the same about you, Phi. That’s what makes us belong together—we’re the only two who see the other for our real selves.”
I pull back and peer up at him, so in love and in awe I’m speechless for a second.
I want everything with Salvatore Jonathan Mancino.
Marriage. Babies. Long lives growing old. Many nights sleeping in each other’s arms.
The gravity of it makes me lightheaded and grateful we’re embracing. Otherwise I might need to sit down somewhere.
Almost as if he’s reading my mind, he slides a hand up my cheek and drops a soft kiss on my mouth. “Soon, Phi. Just a little bit longer. Then our future can begin.”
Soon.
The word echoes inside my head as its own form of motivation. Soon we’ll be through the thick of it, the darkness we’re facing, and we’ll be on the other side.
I smile up at him with my heart full in the best way. “Soon.”
salvatore
Most nights Delphinenods off after a couple minutes. Even when she waits up for me, on nights I’m working at Nirvana and I come home late, she’s out once we’re settled in bed.
The opposite happens for me—my brain decides it wants to run rampant. I lay alert in the dark and stare up at the ceiling. I slip out of bed and stand by the window for some fresh air.
The lows hit the thirties many November nights, so I don’t crack it open much. Just enough for a quick brush of cold air, then I ease it shut.
Delphine sleeps undisturbed as I leave the room. I’ve moved on from after-hours gym sessions. My latest middle of the night hobby is studying Stefania’s photo albums.
Shutting the door to my office in the loft, I resume where I left off the other night. Florina and Marsia weren’t kidding when they said it had a lot of photos. Many basic portrait-type photos taken of Stefania when she was younger.
These make me roll my eyes and turn the page. Leave it to Stefania to fill her photo albums with glamour shots from the days she modeled.
I’m more interested in the other photos that come in the years after. One in particular catches my attention. It’s a candid polaroid, wrinkled from age, of some private dinner. From the looks of it, the affair seems to be in honor of Marsia’s birthday. The redhead sits at the table beaming behind feathered bangs, posing for the camera.
At first glance, this photo seems boring. It seems out of place—the only one where Stefania’s not the focus. The background reveals why she’s kept this photo for over thirty years.
I reach into the laminated sheet and pull the picture out for a closer look.
A handful of couples slow dance. Stefania being one of them. She’s standing close to a man with black hair and a black suit that’s jarring against his pale skin.
Because he stands with his back to the camera, his face is out of view.
But I know one thing. That’s definitelynotLucius.
Stefania’s smiling up at him. I’ve never seen her look so happy… and sober.
It’s almost unsettling, like I’m seeing a different woman entirely. Some sort of alternate universe version of her—what she could’ve been if she hadn’t been chained to Lucius for the rest of her miserable life.
He really is a cancer on everybody. Stefania wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. She never would’ve won any mother of the year awards, and she was always vapid and irritating, but she was mostly harmless.
Lucius has always been another story. Exactly why I must destroy him.
My jaw tenses as I turn over the wrinkled photo and read what’s scribbled on the back. One single word:
