“What?” I whispered. I’d been told that big, strong families were what dreams were made of and always wanted one for myself. He stood up and turned me around so my back was to him and began unzipping my dress.
“I didn’t have the best childhood. My birth parents were shitty. My brother practically raised me, but he died when I was thirteen. My adoptive parents died when I was at Harvard. Relationships, as I view them, are messy and redundant. I try my best to avoid them unless they are professional, in which case, I do not have much choice. Kids, by definition, are the messiest, and therefore the lowest on my wish list. However, I do understand your need to reproduce, and I will not stop you if you wish to have children. You will just have to take into consideration two things. One—they will not be mine. You can get pregnant through a sperm donor. And two—I will not play a role in their lives. If you choose to have kids, I will make sure to provide for you and them, and house you somewhere nice and safe. But if you choose to be with me—really be with me—we will never have children, Francesca.”
I bit down on my lower lip. I didn’t know how many heartbreaks I could endure in one day, let alone one month. I still hadn’t opened the wooden box and took out the last note, and I knew exactly why. Every note so far indicated that he was the man for me. But his actions proved he wasn’t. The truth was, I didn’t want to know whether he was the love of my life or not, simply because my heart was undecided, too.
When I said nothing for a while, he walked over to my girly pink closet, returning with a nightgown and a robe. He gave them to me, and I realized in my drunken haze that while I was deep inside my head, pondering our relationship, he had undressed me completely. I was naked, save for my panties.
“I’ll be back in five minutes. Be decent.”
I did as I was told. A part of me—a small part of me—didn’t care anymore. Perhaps not having kids was the right thing to do. We sure didn’t love or respect one another enough to reproduce. He wasn’t going to come to my OB-GYN appointments. He wasn’t going to care if it was a boy or a girl, or pick out furniture for the nursery, or kiss my swollen belly every night like I’d dreamed of Angelo doing.
Angelo.
Nostalgia prickled my heart. Angelo would have given me all those things and more. He came from a huge family and wanted one of his own. We talked about it when I was seventeen with our legs dangling from the dock. I said I wanted four children, and he answered that the lucky man I’d marry would have fun making them with me. Then we both laughed, and I swatted his shoulder. God, why did the notes point to Wolfe? Angelo was the man for me. Always had been.
I decided, as I wrapped my silky robe around my waist, that I would visit the clinic first thing next week and get on the pill. I would adopt Wolfe’s way of life. At least for the time being. Study, and have a career. Go out and work every day, the entire day.
Or maybe we would decide to divorce, and I’d be free. Free to marry Angelo, or anyone else.
I snapped out of my reverie when the door opened, and Wolfe walked in with none other than my father. I lowered myself to the bed, sitting on its edge as I took in the scene. Arthur’s lower lip shook, and he swayed from side to side when he walked. Wolfe held his elbow firmly as though he was a punished child.
“Say it,” my husband spat out, throwing my father to the floor underneath me. He fell on all fours, scrambling up quickly. I sucked in a breath. I’d never seen my father like this. Vulnerable. It was hard to decipher what was happening.
It was even harder to believe what left his mouth.
“Figlia mia, it was never my intention to hurt your pretty face.”
He sounded surprisingly genuine, and what was even more sickening was the way my heart thawed to his voice for the first few seconds. Then I remembered what he did today. How he’d acted the entire month. I stood up and walked over to my window, giving them my back.
“Now let me go or by God…” My father snapped at Wolfe behind me. I heard them shuffling behind my back and smiled grimly to myself. My father stood no chance against my husband. Neither did I.
“Before you go, there’s one matter that needs to be settled,” Wolfe said as I produced a pack of cigarettes from a drawer, flicking my Zippo and inhaling deeply. I cracked the window open, allowing the black night to swallow the blue smoke.
“Save me the riddles,” Dad barked.
“The matter of the bloodied sheets,” Wolfe finished.
“Of course.” My father snorted behind my back. I didn’t have it in me to turn around and watch what was written on his face. “I figured you milked the cow before you bought it.”
I heard a sharp slap and twisted on my heel. My father tumbled backward, holding his cheek, his back hitting my closet. My eyes widened, and my mouth went slack.
“Francesca is not ready yet,” Wolfe announced in his metallic tenor, his brooding, calm movements a sharp contrast to what he just did. He took one step toward him, erasing all the space between them, and yanked him up by his dress shirt. “And, unlike others, I will not touch a woman against her will even if she has my ring on her finger. Which really leaves us with no choice, does it, Arthur?”
My father narrowed his eyes at him, spitting a lump of blood on Wolfe’s loafers. He was a tough man, Arthur Rossi. I’d seen him in some stressful situations but never as out of sorts as he was now. It soothed me to know that I wasn’t the only one helpless against my husband, but it also frightened me that he had that kind of hold on people.
Wolfe strode to a black duffel bag near the foot of the bed and unzipped it, producing a small Swiss knife. He turned around. Papa stood tall and proud despite his dire situation and being completely wasted and in desperate need to support himself. He leaned against my old closet, his nostrils flaring.
“You’re dead. Both of you.”
“Open your hand.” Wolfe ignored the threat, flipping the knife open and producing a sharp edge.
“Are you going to cut me?” my father taunted, his lips twisting in revulsion.
“Unless my bride will do me the honor.” Wolfe turned his head around to look at me. I blinked, puffing off my cigarette to buy time. Perhaps it was true that I no longer felt despair and anger toward these two men. They’d ruined my life, each of them, in his own unique way. And they succeeded in such a way that I had felt positively damaged. Enough to sway my hips nonchalantly on my way to them. Whereas my father looked content with Wolfe cutting him open, when he saw me nearing him, his teeth slammed together and his jaw locked.
“She wouldn’t dare.”
I arched an eyebrow. “The girl you gave away wouldn’t. Me? I might.”
Wolfe handed me the knife, leaning back on the wall as I stood in front of the man who created me holding a weapon in my hand. Could I do it? I stared at my father’s open palm, outreached and staring back at me. The same palm he’d used earlier this evening to slap me in the face. The same palm that was directed at my mother.
But also the same palm that braided my hair during bedtime after Clara washed it. The same hand who patted my own not too long ago at the masquerade, belonging to a man who stared at me as though I was the brightest star in the sky.
I held the Swiss knife with quivering fingers. It nearly slipped from between them. Dammit. I couldn’t do it. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.
I shook my head, handing Wolfe the Swiss knife.
My father clucked his tongue in satisfaction.
“You will always be the Francesca I raised. A spineless little lamb.”
Ignoring him and the churning in my stomach, I took a step back.
Wolfe took the knife from my hand, his face placid, grabbed my father’s hand, and sliced it open vertically, cutting shallow and wide. Blood gushed out, and I winced, looking away. Papa stood there, staring at the blood pouring from his open palm, oddly tranquil. Wolfe turned around and pulled the linen from my bed, then threw it into my father’s hands. His blood soiled the sheets as he clutched them.
“Bastardo,” my father mouthed. “You were born a bastard, and no matter your shoes and suits—you will die one, too.” He stared at my husband with sheer hate in his eyes.
“You were the original bastard.” Wolfe grinned. “Before you became a Made Man.”
Whoa. My eyes ping-ponged between them, shooting to my father.
Instead of gracing the accusation with an answer, my father had told me that his own parents died in a car crash when he was eighteen, but I’d never seen any pictures of them. He pinned me with his narrow, indigo eyes.
“Vendicare me.”
Avenge me.
“Take the sheets and get the hell out. Tomorrow morning, you may present them to your very close family members. No friends. No Made Men. And if this leaks to the media, I will make sure to personally put that knife to your neck…and twist hard,” Wolfe said, unbuttoning the first buttons of his dress shirt.
My father turned his back on us and stalked out of the room, slamming the door in his wake.
The thud of the door banging still rang in my ears when I registered my new reality—married to a man who did not love me but enjoyed my body frequently. Betrothed to a man who did not want to have kids and hated my father with passion.
“I’ll take the couch,” Wolfe said, grabbing a pillow from the bed and throwing it over on a settee by my window. He wasn’t going to share a bed with me. Even on our wedding night.
I scurried into bed and turned off the light.
Neither of us said good night.
We both knew it was just another lie.