“It is my wish that you stay away from your quarters tonight,” he interrupted me, and I whirled on him.
“What do you mean?”
“Your mother was Catholic.”
Talk about a non sequitur. “Yes, I know that.” I had to work to keep my tone respectful.
“So, you should not be tempted to lay with the woman who will tomorrow become your lawfully wedded wife.”
Very deliberately, I cleared any expression from my face. While I doubted that my father believed that I had been keeping myself chaste throughout all of my twenty-four years, he was behaving in an extremely peculiar manner. Even for him. Still, surely he didn’t think I’d moved Lucia into my quarters only to keep her on my couch rather than in my bed.
Besides, not only had we never been a religious family, we doled out life and death on a regular basis. Why should he care if I engaged in some premarital sex with my fiancée? There was such a bizarre cast to Angelo’s features. I didn’t know how to read them.
“Where do you expect me to stay tonight?” I asked him, cautiously.
He crossed in front of me to the wet bar and poured two glasses of scotch whiskey. He handed me one. “Here. Consider this your bachelor’s party.”
* * *
The morning of my wedding,I sat with my head resting on my father’s desk still wearing the suit I’d put on the day before. My head hurt not only from the awkward position I’d been in, but also due to the copious amounts of alcohol I’d imbibed. Worse, my father was nowhere to be found. The last thing I remembered was him guzzling his scotch like it was Gatorade.
Shouldn’t he be passed out somewhere?
I rushed out of our headquarters and toward my rooms, only to find two of my father’s goons standing guard outside my door. The two closed ranks as I approached as if to hinder my entry.
“Let me pass,” I commanded them, but they shook their shaved heads in unison.
“Cavetti said no dice,” the bulkier and shorter of the two informed me, his mouth held in a grim and stubborn line.
“These aremyquarters, and my fiancée is waiting inside for me. Stand aside.”
“You’ll have to speak to your father about the arrangements. He said you’re not allowed in until the lady, her maid, and her sisters have been taken to the church,” the tall one said, watching me with a dark beady gaze.
“And where exactly is my father?”
“Don’t know,” Shorty said.
Just then the door rattled and Philippa appeared, holding a sizable garment bag over her arm. The twins came out next, followed by the woman I most wanted to see.
“SignoreAngelo said you must prepare at thechiesa.” Philippa said, talking to Lucia about the church. “He said we are to leave now.”
“But where’s—” Before she could finish, she glanced up and caught my eyes. “Romeo.” Lucia smiled at me, but her features were more relieved than excited.
“Are you all right?” I asked her immediately.
“Yes. I was just…” She looked down as if ashamed.
“Just what?”
“I was just worried that you might not wish to go through with the ceremony anymore. When you didn’t come home, I…” she trailed off.
“Nothing in heaven or on earth could keep me away today,farfalla,” I told her, disproportionately pleased at hearing her refer to my quarters as her home. And despite the grunts of disapproval from my father’s two guards, I reached out and took Lucia in my arms. Someone had done something to her long black hair, swirling it into some sort of updo that had pearl-encrusted roses at the center of a high twist. It made me yearn to lick her exposed neck. “I’ll follow in another car in just a few minutes.”
She nodded, and Philippa led her off and out of the house. It took a great deal of discipline on my part not to insist on riding with her. Not because I was that needy for her—though I had missed her last night—but more because of how my father kept mandating the strange rituals around our wedding. He’d been acting almost as if he’d started to believe in the old superstitions, that if we didn’t abide by them, something about either the wedding or the marriage wouldn’t go to plan.
And that, in this day and age especially, was absurd.
Quickly, I jumped in my shower, trimmed my beard into a fine layer of scruff, and put on the wedding suit I’d commissioned for this special day. I was more than ready to make Lucia mine in both word and deed.
