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I will never get what I wanted. I’ll never have a husband who loves me, who desires me, who gives me passion and romance, and all the fantasies I once had. The best I can hope for is a family. And even then, Salvatore has as much as said that he doesn’t see himself as a part of that family. Not with me.
Because he can’t let himself feel about me the way a husband should feel about his wife. And truthfully—it’s not fair to either of us.
But he dug his own grave, and now I have to lie in it with him.
I cover my face with my hands, sobs spilling out of me. I never expected losing my virginity to feel like this. I feel robbed, just like I did that first night—robbed of a passionate wedding night, robbed of the marriage I planned for, robbed of love and hope and sex and everything that I thought I was getting out of the marriage my father arranged for me.
And Salvatore can’t even try to give me what he took for himself. I can’t believe any longer that he took me out of lust, because if he had, he should have been ravishing me every night. If he had, he shouldn’t have been able to control himself while I lay there in our bed, naked and moaning for him.
He acts like it’s a chore, and now I actually believe that it is one for him. It hurts more than ever, knowing that I’m nothing but a burden. A duty. I could hate him for lusting after me, for stealing me—but this just makes me feel crushed. Hopeless. This is something I can’t fix. Something that won’t be made better by anything I can think of.
Emotions wash over me like a tide as I sit there and cry. Anger and hurt tangle up in knots in my stomach, and I regret ever trying to understand him. All I wanted was pleasure and affection, and he can’t give me either of those things. All he can give me are attempts to spoil me, and vague tries at meeting me halfway in conversation.
Nothing that I actually want.
I hear the door open, but I refuse to look up. Even when Salvatore says my name, I keep my gaze firmly fixed on the deck, wiping at my swollen eyes.
“Gia.” He repeats my name, his tone more tired than anything else. I let myself look up just enough to see that he’s put on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, as if covering himself will help at all. As if anything could help now. “What’s going on?”
I shake my head, rubbing my hands over my face again. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.” There’s a tense note to Salvatore’s voice. “We’re sharing a house right now, Gia. When we go home, we’ll continue to share a bedroom. Even the mansion isn’t big enough for all of this, if you’re sobbing this way. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I feel—” I don’t even know how to begin to explain how I feel. I don’t know if I want to. But the idea of bottling it up and refusing to say anything at all feels equally terrible. “I feel unwanted. Heartbroken. Disappointed. Angry—” I bite my lip. “You took everything I wanted from me. And you won’t give any of it back. I can’t even have a good sex life with my husband. I can’t find out what it’s like to really be a wife, when it comes to that. All I get is—” I wave my hand towards the bedroom. “I might not know everything, and a lot of it might come from books, but I know it’s supposed to be better than that!”
I look up defiantly then, glaring at him. “I know that much, at least,” I repeat stubbornly, and Salvatore lets out a sigh.
“Any desire I might feel for you is wrong, Gia. You were my goddaughter. You were entrusted to me. I married you to make good on that trust, on that responsibility, not to have you for my own selfish desires. If I want you, if I let myself do the things to you that you’re asking for, if I truly treat you like a wife in every way—that’s taking advantage of that trust. I’m supposed to look after you, not?—”
“Not fuck me?” I can hear the bitterness in my own voice, so I know he can.
“You’re right that we have a duty to make an heir,” Salvatore continues, as if I haven’t even spoken. “With any luck, you’ll be pregnant from tonight, and I won’t need to touch you again. You’ll have the child you want, and I’ll have the heir I need.”
Every word feels like a slap in my face. I push myself up to my feet, all my tears forgotten in the rush of anger that I feel at how easily he’s dismissing my wants, my needs. “So that’s it? You decide to marry me, you decide where I live, you decide when I get to have sex, you decide how much pleasure I get out of it, you decide, you decide!” I shout it into his face. “And what are you going to do? Go out and fuck whoever you please when you get horny, so you can pretend like you’re some honorable man for not going to bed with your wife? Just because once upon a time you had an entirely different role in my life? Don’t fling that godfather shit in my face either—that’s nothing but a title. But you should understand that, since you seem really fucking stuck on making sure that husband is just a title, too!”
“Gia—” There’s a warning note in Salvatore’s voice, but I ignore it. I’m in no mood for a lecture, in no mood to be told to calm down.
“You’re not more honorable for cheating on your wife instead of fucking her, just because you feel guilty that you want me!” I fling the sheet to the deck, letting it pool around my feet as I stand there naked in front of him, under the moonlight, as bare as I was earlier underneath him. “That’s your definition of a good man? One who is unfaithful?”
“For fuck’s sake, Gia!” Salvatore grabs my arm, a little more roughly than usual, and pulls me back into the villa. “Stop it! You’re letting your emotions get the better of you, instead of thinking. You’re acting like a child.”
“Well, you married an eighteen-year-old, so what the fuck did you expect?” I shout it at him, trembling with rage, not even caring any longer that I’m naked and he’s clothed. His face is flushed with anger, and I can see his pulse beating hard in his throat.
“I never said I was going to cheat on you.” His voice is deep and rough, nearly as angry as mine, but I don’t care. I do my best to ignore the shiver that runs down my spine at the sound of it, at the dark look in his eyes. “I never said anything about that at all.”
“So, what? You’re going to be celibate for the rest of your life?”
The moment I fling the question in his face, I can see that he hasn’t thought through the consequences of marrying a woman that he can’t bring himself to fuck. I see the flicker of uncertainty, the knowledge that the rest of his life is a long time to go with a cold bed. I know then and there that a faithful husband is yet another thing that’s going to be stolen from me.
“I’ll add that to the list,” I grind out between my teeth. “A marriage I didn’t want. A husband who won’t fuck me the way I deserve. A house I didn’t ask to live in that I’m not allowed to leave when I please. A child oh-so-begrudgingly given to me, eventually, that you don’t want to be a father to, because I’m its mother. And now an unfaithful husband, on top of that.”
“You really think Pyotr would have been faithful to you?” Salvatore’s voice rises, his own anger spilling over. “You think he wasn’t out there getting his cock wet every night he pleased while you were engaged? That he’d have kept his pants zipped up unless it was you he was fucking? You’re more goddamn naive than I knew, if you really believe that, Gia. And as for the rest—” He shakes his head angrily. “Pyotr wasn’t going to dote on your children. He wasn’t going to play the adoring husband. He was going to use you and lock you away and make your life a living hell, while pretending that he was keeping up the agreement he made with your father. And you can believe me or not, but for god’s sake, stop pretending that I’ve robbed you of some fucking fairytale!”
He’s shouting so loudly the glass door next to us vibrates. I see the cords standing out in his throat, his teeth clenched, so much anger balled up in him that he’s holding back.
“We’re both in this, Gia. I kept your life from being a hell you couldn’t have come back from. I don’t care anymore if you believe me. You’re my wife now, whether you like it or not. And I’ll decide what my goddamned honor means to me.”
“I don’t like it,” I hiss, and Salvatore scoffs, shaking his head.
