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He served Ricardo well, but that’s what happens when two men are as close as they were. Fredo backed every decision Ricardo made. He turned a blind eye when he witnessed his boss lay hands on his wife. He was party to more than half the times my husband took a mistress.
Fredo is a good man to have around, but only if he’s on your side. He might have stood beside me after my husband’s death, but I know the first person that will vie for my spot should Alessandro snap my pretty little neck, as he said.
I smooth out an errant wrinkle in my dress before meeting his gaze in the mirror. “It’s dinner, Fredo. It is a public place.”
He radiates with anger as he takes a threatening step forward. “It’s his own restaurant, Willow. All he has to do is snap his fingers and his waiters will pretend they never saw you and ignore your pleas for help.”
With a sharp twist of my heel, I turn to face the man who’s been guarding me for the last three months. When I took over my husband’s empire, it was to ensure that I did not lose everything I had. I didn’t want to wind up some lower man’s forced wife, taken to ensure the rest of the family knew that Ricardo stood behind their decision to step up. I didn’t have the stomach for ruling with the same iron fist as my husband, but I could lead this family in another direction. “Would you have questioned Ricky?”
For a second, Fredo’s eyebrows raise as if this was something he never anticipated me asking. Then he hardens his gaze. “Ricardo knew what he was up against. He knew what the other families were capable of.”
“Then why did he start this war?” I ask sharply. “I nearly lost my life eighteen months ago because he didn’t account for stupidity. Someone put an explosive device on my vehicle thinking it was his. Who underestimated who that day?”
Fredo scoffs before rolling his neck and listening to the bones crack and pop. “He didn’t start this war, Willow. Get your facts straight before you accuse the dead.”
I hate him. I hate Ricardo for lulling me into our marriage. I hate every day that I was forced to be his bride. I hate the men he employed. I hate their insolence and disrespect. I hate everything that has happened to me. “Take heart, Fredo, if you’re right and Giovanni kills me, then the family is yours. You can rule over the Parodis while I rot in hell, for all I care.” I sweep past him and draw the hem of my dress in so as to not touch his shoes as I pass. It is a scorching insult.
His pride is wrapped up in my anger as he follows me through the door. “You should have let me take over the day Ricardo died,” he whispers the poison in my ear as he follows me through the halls. “You should have wed yourself to me and imbued Ricardo’s dying wishes that I run the family.”
I acknowledge his wishes with a snort of derision. “Ricky’s last wishes were to not let the Giovanni family take over. He didn’t even mention you, Fredo, he didn’t even remember your name.”
“Women,” he cajoles, “always hitting below the belt. I am the best bet to stop the Giovanni family. You were nothing more than a rich, wet hole to stick his cock in. If it wasn’t for the fortune your father paid to marry you off, Ricardo would have settled for someone that wasn’t quite the frigid bitch.”
I stop in my tracks, my jaw opening like a hinge. I knew that my husband took our marital problems beyond the doors of our bedroom, but I didn’t know that he painted me as the villain. “Did he tell you that the only way he could get off was by tightening his fingers around my throat and imagining me dead?” Fredo struggles to meet my eyes. “Did he tell you that after being tender and loving on our wedding night, he fucked me like a dog for nearly a year straight? And when he could finally stand to look me in the eye, it was only because he’d blackened it first?”
Venom pours out of me. Six years of abuse and violence have taken their toll. I am not a tall woman. Even in these heels that make me feel like I’m teetering on top of the world, I am only 5’6”. But I draw myself to my full height and pretend that I’m bigger. I pretend to be 6’7” with shoulders like a linebacker. I pretend that I’m not afraid of Fredo. “I know you were there when my husband took other women. He liked to tell me about it when he was inside me. Tears rolled down my face, a face that he shoved into the mattress because he said I was so ugly it made his dick soft. So don’t tell me I’m a frigid bitch. Don’t tell me to get my facts straight before vilifying the dead. I am only alive because Ricardo’s dead. If that fucker had his say, he’d have choked me to death on his cock and thrown me out with the garbage. That’s who your boss was. I’m sorry I’m nothing like him.”
My dress whips behind me as I start walking again. The deep red material is the color of blood, it’s the color of my face. I will not cry because I had to admit to someone what my husband did to me. I spent enough of the last six years in tears. I will not be brought low by my husband’s best friend. I will not be forced to grovel and plead for help from a man who would have treated me the same, if not worse, than the one I married.
4
ALESSANDRO
There is bent and there is broken. Willow is the former.
I am addressing the staff when she walks through the front door of Bella’s. The restaurant is named for my mother, an homage to the woman that my father loved his entire life. As her fingers release the wooden door and it slams shut behind her, darkness curls up in my chest.
She is more mature than the woman I met at fifteen. Willow Carbone was lithe and beautiful, the picture of a maid in springtime. Willow Parodi has been hardened by marriage. She is no less beautiful, but premature worry lines her face, stealing her youth.
Her eyes adjust to the dimly lit interior of Bella’s. Each table has long-stem candles dripping with wax from the night before. Red and white checkered cloths blanket the dark wood. Classic jazz drifts over the speakers filling the room with a magical sensation.
I gesture to the manager with a nod of my head before tearing myself away from the staff meeting. The crowd of individuals makes their way to the kitchen to finish convening their pre-dinner pep talk. I meander over to Willow with a genial smile and a twitter in my chest. “Cara mia,” I take her hand in mine and bring it to my lips, “thank you for coming.”
Blush stains her cheeks almost as deep as the color of her dress. Her fingertips are cool beneath the brush of my lips. “Alessandro?” Her head tilts as she tries to recall where she’s seen me before.
I let her hand fall away from my mouth but not out of my grasp. “Yes. The last time I saw you was nearly a decade ago. I visited your father, yes?”
She struggles to recall but after a second recognition lights her gaze. A smile spreads across her lips and the age bored into her from years of persecution under her deceased husband seem to fall away. “You brought the table wine for dinner,” Willow says with a chuckle. “That was the first time my father let me have a glass. I said it tasted like sour grape juice and the two of you laughed.”
“You never finished the glass,” I remind her. “Do you like the sour grape juice more now?”
Willow’s smile softens. “I do. I prefer whites, but I’ve grown accustomed to the taste and prefer it to many of the other beverages offered at the dinner table.”
Without releasing her hand, I lead her through the restaurant. “That was my great-grandmother’s recipe you were deeply offended by all those years ago. She made it in the old country before passing it on to her daughter and her daughter’s daughter after that.” The room leads to a wide corridor with bathrooms on both sides and a few open doors at the end.
“You’ll have to serve it to me again now that my palette has developed. I’m sure I would find it much better.” Willow’s eyes widen as we reach one of the rooms at the end of the corridor. It is meant for a small party and it’s often where I meet with members of the family. Tonight it is strewn with roses and romantic music plays over the speakers. The carpeted floor is plush, silencing the sound of Willow’s stilettos as she crosses the threshold. “This is cozy.”
I release her hand to pull out a chair for her. I am every bit a gentleman. “It’s one of the three meeting rooms we offer for our guests. My father proposed to my mother in this room.”
