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“I didn’t expect that you would. I know the responsibility you have.” It still weighs heavily on me, though, even as I say it. I’ve built something of my own in New York, working with Luca, something that feels earned rather than given. Giving it up to take on Giacomo’s legacy feels like a loss—a feeling that adds additional guilt to the weight on my shoulders, because I know what it meant to him to give this to me. But I can’t have both—and the one thing that could tip the scales was Gianna’s safety.
If it had been nearly anyone else, I might have returned to New York. But I couldn’t give her over to Andre. There was no chance of that.
When the conversation with Luca is finished, I open the minibar, take out the first bottle I see without bothering to look at what it is, and pour it into one of the glasses sitting nearby. When I raise it to my lips, it turns out that it’s vodka—far from my first preference—but I swallow it down anyway, needing the burn of the alcohol. In one day, my entire world has turned upside down.
So has hers,the voice in my head reminds me, and I grit my teeth. It’s right, of course. Gianna’s world has turned upside down as well, and much more drastically than mine. Giacomo was the only father I ever knew, and I loved him, but we hadn’t been close in some years.
I wasn’t the one who found his body.
She needs your protection,I remind myself, when my thoughts threaten to stray back to what Giacomo and the Family had wanted me to do, back to the knowledge that, if I chose,Icould be the one who married Gianna.
My cock twitches again at the thought, a reminder of the unwanted desire that sprang up today out of nowhere. I reach down to adjust it, gritting my teeth against the swell of desire. I’m alone in my own room now—it would be easy to sink down into the armchair or the bed, undo my trousers, and have my cock in my hand in a moment. I rub my palm over the thickening ridge, considering—but after a brief struggle with myself, I pull my hand away, trying to ignore the now insistent throb.
If I touched myself now, I would think of Gianna. I have no doubt about that, as guilty as it makes me feel. And so I tip back the rest of the glass of vodka, doing my best to ignore my cock, and go back to the minibar in search of another drink.
I might not be able to control my desire, but I can control my actions. And if that means going unfulfilled, then that’s simply how it will have to be.
Gianna is under my protection now. My responsibility, myward.
Anything else is unacceptable. I remind myself of that as I sip my second drink, a whiskey that’s much better, and try to turn my thoughts to other things.
I can control myself. I have to.
I can live with nothing else.
Gianna
It’s hard for me to even fully take in what’s happened at first. It’s not until the last of the company has left the mansion—leaving me sitting in the living room with the staff milling around and cleaning up—that I’m able to try to think about what all of this has turned into.
I don’t know how to feel. The grief feels like a tide, ebbing and flowing, at certain moments gripping my chest so tightly that I think I might die from it, and then receding enough for me to think again. The moments when I can think more clearly, all I can think about is the decision that was made today—that Alessio is coming to live here.
Tomorrow.
My stomach knots with an odd, nervous excitement at the thought—and a twinge of disappointment, too, when I think about what was decided. I know now that my father wanted me to marry Alessio. Thathewas meant to be my husband—the thing my father always refused to talk about—and take over for my father after his death.
It feels overwhelming—like too much to absorb. I’m still fearful about the circumstances of my father’s death—as is the Family, if the extra security posted around and inside the mansion now is any indication—and I feel entirely unsure about what’s supposed to happen now. According to my father’s will—which I’m glad that I insisted on reading—Alessio was meant to marry me once I’d had time to grieve. But he refused, and now the compromise that he made with Don Fontana is something entirely different.
Hisward, he’d called me. An old-fashioned, sophisticated word, albeit one that feels fitting for the world I live in, and the entire situation that I’ve found myself in. Instead of being my husband, Alessio will choose one for me. Instead of marrying me himself, he’ll protect me until he can hand me over to someone he picks.
It’s not what I would have chosen for myself,I think, as I go up to bed, still feeling half as if I’m floating in a dream. If he’d agreed to marry me, I would have gladly accepted. I think back to a few years ago, when he’d come back to visit, when I’d developed that terrible and unreciprocated teenage crush on him. I’d wanted him so badly then, his handsome face filling dreams that were entirely inappropriate, too many hours spent in daydreams about what might be beneath those tailored suits, thoughts that I couldn’t entirely flesh out with so little knowledge about what would come after he slipped out of his clothing, and me out of mine. I didn’t even know how to picture him properly—I still don’t. I still don’t know what comes next…not really. I have some idea, from books I’ve read, but it’s hard to imagine it, exactly.
He could teach me.The idea stirs something warm and exciting deep within me, making my heart flutter in my chest. With it comes a flicker of guilt for feeling anything good at all, anything pleasant. Forwantinganything to make me happy, when I’ve just lost so much.
But my father had wanted Alessio to be my husband. He wanted me to be happy. I don’t know what his reasoning was, exactly—but he must have thought that Alessio would make me happy, that he was the best choice. And I feel a surge of frustration towards Alessio, for not going along with it. For defying my father even now, when it would have meant so much for him to agree.
He doesn’t want me.The thought feels worse than it should, the idea that Alessio is so off-put by the idea of marrying me,touchingme, that he’d rather hand me over to someone else.But after all, I think bitterly as I slide into bed,he still gets to be don. He’s not required to marry me for that, apparently.
It’s an unkind thought with no real reason for me to be certain that’s how he feels about it, but I can be forgiven a little unkindness, I think, tonight of all nights. I lay there in my bed, curled beneath the covers in the huge mansion that is now technically mine and also somehow Alessio’s, thinking of tomorrow, when he’ll come and live here. Thinking of the life I was meant to have—the one where I was free for a longer time, where I went to college, where I experienced more of life without the needs and desires of a husband to hold me back. I was supposed to be free of all of that, for a while longer.
The night feels very lonely. And as I think about the last dinner I had with my father, the last conversation we had, I turn my face into the pillow and let the tears fall.
He was the only person I had who I knew truly loved me. The only one who I knew for sure would keep me safe.
And now he’s gone forever.
—
In the morning, I feel tired and drained, my face swollen from crying in my sleep, and my eyes puffy. The best I can do before Alessio arrives is splash cold water over my face when I do my morning skin care routine, slipping into a dove-grey dress and flats, pulling my hair up in a loose bun so that I look somewhat presentable, and not like it’s been difficult to make myself do much of anything in the way of caring for myself in the past few days.If he cares,I think grimly to myself, going downstairs to meet the day.
