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“So where does that leave us?” I ask quietly. “You say you understand, but it doesn’t change anything. I’m still your wife, and not his. I’m still trapped in your mansion, instead of living in a Bratva penthouse. I’m still—” I start to say a virgin, but my cheeks heat a little as I wonder just how true that is. I am in the most technical sense, but after some of the things Salvatore has made me feel—and some of the thoughts I’ve had—I don’t feel very virginal.
Salvatore looks at me for a long moment. He’s set his fork down, too, as if the conversation has also ruined his appetite, and I feel a small flicker of guilt. For all of the contention in our brief marriage, it does seem as if he tried to do something nice. Like this dinner really was planned to give us a chance to talk on neutral ground. I think of the dress and jewelry that he sent today, the carefully curated meal, all of which I saw as a more high-handed means of choosing things for me.
Or, alternatively, he’s trying to spoil me. To make up for the situation. Designer clothes, jewels, a five-star meal put together by a private chef. That’s another way to look at it—a nicer way.
But that might be giving him too much credit. Don’t let it soften you too much, I warn myself. It doesn’t change what he’s done.
“Where does it leave us,” Salvatore repeats the sentence carefully, reaching for his fork as I take a bite of my food. The noodles are butter-soft, the veal rich and perfectly spiced, the sauce full of flavor. It’s exquisite, all of it, and I reach for my wine, trying not to let myself soften too much. This could be a perfect night, if I wanted it to be. The temptation is there, to accept my circumstances. I don’t like being unhappy. I don’t want to be angry.
“You might be right about a honeymoon,” he continues. “Perhaps it would be a good thing, for us to get away. After all, it’s not as if I don’t have a means of handling things here, even from a distance. It could be good, to put space between you and the Bratva. And perhaps some time alone, elsewhere, could put us on better terms.”
My immediate instinct is to lash out, to tell him that we’ll never be on ‘better terms,’ not when he’s undone my life so completely. But I wonder, as I twirl another bite of the bolognese around my fork, whether or not that’s true.
He listened to me. He could have refused the idea altogether, just because I was the one who proposed it. He could have dismissed it as my being silly and spoiled, wanting a honeymoon for a marriage I’ve bucked against. But he took me seriously instead. Maybe it isn’t all bad.
I push the thought away as quickly as it enters my mind. I can’t afford to let myself soften towards Salvatore now. Because I only have two options. Either he’s telling me the truth, and everything since my father arranged the marriage for me has been a lie—not an intentional one on my father’s part, but on Pyotr’s—or Salvatore is the one who’s lying, to make me feel exactly what I am right now. To make me trust him, believe him, that all of this—tonight, the possibility of a honeymoon, his willingness to consider what I’m saying—is the truth.
It’s easier to believe that Salvatore is a selfish man who stole me for his own desires than to believe that my father was tricked by the Bratva, and that all his efforts to do right by me would have only ended up hurting me in the end. So that’s what I cling to, pushing the small voice that wonders otherwise to the back of my mind.
Salvatore finishes his food, sitting back in his chair as the server comes to take away the plates. “You’re not arguing with me,” he points out, and I force myself to smile, to paint that mocking, taunting curve on my lips that I know he’s expecting from me right now. I don’t want him to see how conflicted I am.
“Why would a girl argue about a honeymoon?” I tilt my head. “I’ve never been out of the country before. I wouldn’t say no to that. Or to a luxury hotel, or five-star meals?—”
“I get the idea, Gia,” Salvatore says dryly. “I’ll plan the trip, then. We’ll leave in two days, if you have no objections?” The tone of his voice implies that he expects me to object, on principle, if nothing else, but I don’t.
The trip will take me further from Pyotr, it’s true—but a part of me wants to get away from all of this. From the grief of losing my father, the shock of my altered marriage plans, the loss of what I’d planned for my life. I don’t think Salvatore’s mind will be changed on this, now that he’s agreed—and if I do argue, he’d likely say I’m being contentious on purpose and use it to discredit any argument I make in the future. So, I see no point in trying.
Maybe going somewhere new will help me heal from all of this. And if Pyotr really loves me, I reason, nothing will stop him from getting me back.
If he doesn’t, then none of this matters anyway.
“I need to go shopping.” I toy with my dessert fork as the server delivers an artfully plated piece of tiramisu, setting it between us. “I’ll need some new clothes for the trip. New bikinis. I assume we’re going somewhere tropical?”
Salvatore chuckles, a rare moment of humor appearing on his normally stern face. “I think I’d enjoy some sun and heat as well. Early spring here can’t exactly be depended on to be comfortably warm.”
“When was the last time you took a vacation?” The question comes out before I realize it. I didn’t mean to ask him something personal—to sound like I actually give a shit. But as the words slip out, I realize something else.
I am actually curious.
I’ve known this man my whole life—in the sense that he’s always been there, on the fringes of it. My father’s best friend, his voice, his right hand. Before my father died, I saw Salvatore often in passing—at dinners where I was excused after the dessert course, before the men really started talking—as he was leaving the house after meetings with my father, at christenings and weddings and funerals, every event my father was ever required to go to that was also appropriate for me to attend. I’ve spoken to him casually a thousand times over the course of my life—a hello, a goodbye, a how are you? But before this, before my father died, he was never anyone of any consequence to me. I never thought of him as a person, only as a fixture in my father’s life.
Like the bar cabinet in the living room, or a comfortable sofa.
But then my father died, and he became my guardian. And now, he’s my husband.
He’s no longer a silent fixture. He’s a living, breathing, flesh and blood man. A man who is meant to share every intimate facet of my life.
And I truly have no idea who he is.
Salvatore considers my question, as if it’s something serious, rather than what could conceivably be considered small talk. “I’ve never been on a vacation,” he says finally, and my head snaps up, my eyes narrowing.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple statement.” His mouth twitches, a little of that rare humor glimmering through again. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I actually amused him.
“I don’t like being laughed at,” I sniff, dipping the tines of my dessert fork into the creamy, spongy slice of tiramisu on my plate. “Forget I asked.”
Salvatore lets out a slow breath. “Your father was not a man who took vacations. Or rather, not in the sense of what you would likely think of one. I told you we went fishing together, in upstate New York, once a year.”
