Tilting my head to the side, I shoot her a disapproving look.
She sucks in a clipped breath and makes an honest effort to give me a smile.
“I mean it. We’re all talking. You don’t have to act like a savage. No one’s marrying you against your will. You’ll have the final say in this. Trust me, no one will gain anything if you aren’t happy.”
She sounds so genuine that it makes my stomach twist at the hypocrisy of it all.
Why would we be here if not for them to do just that? Force me into doing something I don’t want to do.
Why would they send me here if not to keep me under their thumb and dictate how I should live my life?
I don’t believe this woman in the slightest.
“Why do I need to get married anyway? I don’t get it.”
Broadening her smile, she curls her arm through mine and pivots with me to drag me back to the dining room.
“We made a few mistakes with your mother,” she starts softly. “As you may as well know, we didn’t interfere when she hooked up with a new man. Sadly, it wasn’t the right move. Things didn’t work out in the end. Not for her. Not for you. And obviously not for us,” she says, pushing a door open and walking me down the corridor. “You must know by now that with great wealth comes great responsibility, and you must follow the rules of this world. As much as I could say, go out there, find agardener, and make beautiful babies, this is not how our world works. You know how I met Giorgio. There was no love between us in the beginning. Only my family’s word, and his. I was young. We made it work. We’re still together, happily married.”
I give her a side–eyed look that she misses altogether.
Yeah, I know that part of their story. I’ve heard it––like everybody else––many times.
What she conveniently omits to say is the dark side of that story.
Her struggle to keep Giorgio away from other women, her failure to raise a sane daughter, and also to prevent the things that happened in the house under her nose.
We may not be much different from other families––there are good things and bad things about that––but we are different in that regard.
“Tonight is all about meeting some of these men. You don’t have to get close to them.”
“They’re here to see me. It has nothing to do with me getting friendly with them or not,” I retort, and her smile dries up and falls from her face.
“Calm down,” she says, her arm sliding off mine. “You’re not the only young woman in Sicily. They come, they take a look, they leave,” she says nonchalantly, trying to lessen the importance of this meetup.
First, they highjacked this party, and now she’s trying to convince me it’s all happenstance.
Right.
“Go inside now and finish your dessert. And stop being such a drama queen,” she goes on, invalidating my feelings and gaslighting me as she always does.
Gesturing dismissively, I turn away from her when I stop and spin back.
“Why is he here?” I ask when my eyes meet hers.
She stares at me, poker-faced.
“He?”
“Callum O’Hara.”
Strangely, my voice doesn’t tremble. Everything else inside me does.
She gives me a strange look.
“What kind of question is that? He was invited to your party."
"Not by me, he wasn’t. He shouldn’t be in that room anyway. He’s not part of our family.”
