“Right.” She turned from me again. “Let’s just go to dinner. I’m hungry and cold.”
“Angelina,” I said.
Before she turned to face me, a cloud of breath drifted from her mouth. She was almost too eager to get to the restaurant.
“You know the rules. You’ll be my wife, but what happens in my family is my business. Unless I tell you what’s going on, you’ll stick to your business, understood?” There was a reason why I knew her as a child, protected her even. I was molding her to be my wife. She had to have rules, or this life would slay the both of us.
“Perfectly,” she said, more than a bite to her tone. “But my business is yours.” The words were said underneath her breath. I didn’t bother contradicting them because she spoke the truth.
We walked next to one another in silence until I cleared my throat. “We’ll tell the family about the pregnancy when we get back from our honeymoon.”
“Fine,” she said. “At least I’ll be out of his house and away from him by then.”
She loved her father, but she feared him more. For her, an arranged marriage meant freedom. An arranged marriage for me meant that I’d be in even deeper, so deep that I’d never find a way out, unless it was in a body bag.
By the time we made it to the restaurant, the breath was coming faster from her mouth, and her feet showed no sign of slowing. Again, she was almost too eager. I went to put my hand on her lower back and usher her into the restaurant, but she shook her head.
“Let’s go through the back,” she said. “Gabriella and Bobby are having dinner. Mamma told me. I don’t feel like catching the gossip train tonight. Patrizio has our private table reserved.”
Bobby worked for my father, and Gabriella was one of Angelina’s many cousins. Every time we saw her out—or at family gatherings, or passing her in the hall—she had nothing to talk about but the wedding.Waa. Waa. Waa.The woman could talk for days without needing a glass of water.
As we turned the corner, entering into the dark and damp alleyway that ran parallel to the restaurant, the zippy sounds of Louis Prima met us, along with the smell of boiling pasta, roasting garlic, stewing tomatoes, and tonight’s already freezing trash from the dumpster.
Instead of stopping to let me open the door for her, as usual, she stood in front of it, staring at the metal handle. A second later her eyes darted up to meet mine before they returned to the cold brass.
“You’re stalling,” I said, calling her out on her odd behavior.
Louis Prima sang out “Angelina” from behind the door, and her eyes flew up, her body tense. When the realization washed over her that no one had called her name, she visibly relaxed, but I knew better. She was wound tight.
“You’re being foolish, Vittorio.”
“Am I, Princess?”
She whirled on me, and I caught her wrist before she slapped me across the face. “Fuck. You,” she spat at me.
“Touched a nerve?” Her father called her Princess, and she hated it. She hated it so much that during our private meeting to discuss the terms of our marriage—“this is what I expect from you,” I’d demanded; “this is what I expect from you,” she’d countered—she requested that I never call her that. But something was off tonight, and whatever she had locked down on her tongue, she needed to get it off of her fucking chest. It was unlike her to keep quiet.
She yanked her wrist out of my hold. “You know you did! You know exactly what you’re doing. At all times! You’re so cold. So…” She paused, like she was trying to collect her thoughts. “It doesn’t matter. There is no changing you! It’s useless to even waste my time and breath.”
I lifted my arm, making my jacket fall back, exposing my wrist. My expensive watch lit up the darkness and the wolf on my hand. “Time.” I motioned toward the Panerai. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
She narrowed her eyes at me when I spoke those last words. “What do you know—”
Before she could finish, two big goons I didn’t recognize stepped out of Dolce. Patrizio ran it, but it was just a front for the Scarpones. One of the goons smoked a cigarette. The other one had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket, collar pulled up to his ears. Each man took a spot next to Angelina.
“I’ll only say this once,” I said.
“Say what?” Cigarette said. His Irish accent was light, but I caught it.
“Move.”
“Or?” Leather Jacket said. He was Italian, but not a man I knew.
I said nothing, staring at them, giving them the chance to retreat without me having to use violence.
“The baby’s not yours,” Angelina blurted.
It took me a moment to break eye contact with the two goons and concentrate on her.
