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I lift the candy to my mouth, and when the mixture melts on my tongue, I like it much more than I know I should.
CHAPTER 33
________
Gabriella Matos
My stomach growls again and I look, for the fifth time, at the clock hanging in the hallway. It's half past eight and Vittorio is way too late to get up from the breakfast table. An unusually loud noise from my stomach agrees with this, and I bite my lip, about to start squirming.
When another fifteen minutes go by and he doesn't get up, I give up. I tried to spare him from the invasion of his space, the only one this man can blame for being forced to share the breakfast table with me is himself.
“Good morning,” he greets, looking up at me the moment I set foot in the room. “Am I such bad company?” he questions, and I raise my eyebrows, blinking my eyes several times after sitting down.
“Sorry?”
“Every morning, you wait for me to get up to come out from behind the wall, and even though I spent almost the last hour waiting for you, you still seemed to rather go hungry than share the table with me.” Despite the words, his face doesn't have its usual serious tone, and I tilt my head, wondering if this is another one of the times the Don is having fun at my expense.
“I wouldn't want to invade your space,” I admit. “I don’t want to bother.”
“Ah, what a relief!” he says without any real apparent relief. “I was really started believing that having dinner with me had traumatized you.” I suck my lips into my mouth until I can't hold it back. I burst into laughter.
That's what he's talking about, then. About me insinuating that he was bad company at dinner. Oh, he has no idea.
“I didn't know you made jokes.” I wipe the corners of my eyes.
“And who said that was a joke?” The smile on my face is immediately erased, and my spine stiffens. I open my mouth, worried, because my God! I just laughed, and he was serious? Vittorio's lips gather on a single side of his mouth.
“Eat, Gabriella” he orders, leaning back in his chair.
“It's not funny” I grumble and start serving my plate.
“You can stop hiding behind walls, when I don't want your company, I will make that clear.” I scratch my throat.
“I'm sure you're perfectly capable of doing something like that,” I murmur in Portuguese, and the Don narrows his eyes at me, either not having heard what I said, or not caring enough to comment.
“How was your walk yesterday?” He surprises me by asking, and I smile immediately when I remember.
“It was amazing! I went to the beach.”
“Did you go into the sea?”
“No.” I could never, because I don't know how to swim and I'm terrified of drowning, but I don't tell him that. “I just sat on the sand and stayed there, watching.”
Leaving the property was not an easy task, the idea of leaving safety within these walls terrified me on an inexplicable level. Maybe it was the awareness that, to do so, I would need toget into a car with five men I don't know but thinking that the opportunity to leave could disappear before I had built up the courage necessary to take advantage of it was even scarier.
I repeated the Don's words over and over in my mind, finding the same absurd comfort they brought me the first time they were spoken: “No one but Vittorio can hurt me.” It's the price, I let the thought echo in my head like an infinite echo, it's a small price.
The men chosen to escort me took me along the same road that brought me here weeks ago. But yesterday, we arrived at the city center. Curiosity grew in me as we got closer to it and, at a certain point, I found myself eager to walk along the streets that I had previously only observed from a distance.
However, when the car passed the beach, I couldn't help it. The request to stop the vehicle came out of my mouth almost in desperation. The sea in Catania is beautiful.
I got out of the car, took off my sandals and stepped onto the sand. I walked a few steps on the beach, just enough to sit and watch the endless sea. I cried there.
Quietly and in complete silence, I let tears wet my face, because even though I lived in the city that the whole world calls wonderful, I had never had the opportunity to do this, simply sit on the beach and admire the sea.
There was no time for that in my life. There was always something to do, someone to care for, some money to earn. While it belonged to me, my time was never really mine. It was this thought that made me return here with a light heart.
They can stick newspapers and magazines that call me a prostitute all over the walls around me if they want, I don't care. It really costs me a lot less than what I used to pay to have absolutely nothing.
