Page 3 of The Strength Of A Woman

I’d be the other half of his heart.

I’d be his everything.

Too bad, reality sucks sometimes, and it can be such a letdown.

The sound of clinking plates from outside makes me think people are sitting around the table having lunch.

A muffled conversation unfolds in the background.

I bet they’re still comparing notes on how to find a suitable husband for me.

I’d rather paint old houses and take out the trash than live in a palazzo with guards at the door, not to protect me but to ensure that I wouldn’t run away, or worse, I wouldn’t kill my husband.

I scrunch up my nose.

Hmm, that’s an option, isn’t it?

If they push it, and I have no way out, I could do that. The joke would be on them.

See how they’d like that.

See how they’d need to recruit an army of people to clean up the mess their darling princess had created.

A smile curls my lips.

They’re quite dumb in some respects, considering how clever and conniving they are otherwise. They truly think I’m a tool. They just tell me what to do, and I dutifully comply.

Really?

Maybe my mother wasn’t the rebel that I thought she was. She talked a big talk, and we all believed her.

It’s just that Giorgio and Sylvia had different plans for her and let her be, whatever those plans were.

It’s impossible for me to say.

Their frustrations with their daughter are now baked into what they’ve planned for me.

I refuse to think about it for a while.

Let’s behave like nothing happened. Maybe they’ve changed their mind.

Even if they have, it surely hasn’t happened because of what I said to Sylvia.

You can count on many things in this family, but forgiveness is not one of them.

Every little word that flew out of my mouth when I spoke to her last night has made a tiny, ugly home in her head. At least we don’t have to pretend we’re friends anymore.

My phone rings quietly, shattering my thoughts.

I flick my eyes in that direction, trying to gauge how I feel about answering that call.

Is it the time to have my first crappy interaction of the day, or should I just ignore whoever that person is?

My phone quivers again.

It can’t be my family.

If I know anything about them, they would barge in, ask me to pack my things, and take me to a new meat market, some fancy place where crude cavemen get into a bidding war, buying new wives.