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Dario froze, his hand suspended in the air. After a beat, it dropped, and he turned on his heel to go to the bedside table and flicked on the lamp. Golden light illuminated the room, thin fingers reaching me in the far corner but not enough to bring me into stark relief.

I found I appreciated the drama.

“My entire family is dead,” I said, still soft, the words a quiet hiss like the first warning from a serpent in the grass. “When did you plan to tell me this?”

Dario’s back was to the lamp, his huge body a black stain against the halo. I wished I could read his expression.

“Dead or alive, they ceased being your family when you accepted my ring and my name as your own. What does it matter if they breathe?”

I sucked in a gasp and tried to settle the fury that lurched inside me.

“What does it matter?” I repeated flatly. I had never felt such anger. It filled up the sorrow-carved emptiness inside me like kerosene just waiting for a lit match to ignite me. “It matters very much that the only people I have ever loved are gone to me forever.”

“They would have been regardless,” he stated blandly. “I had no intention of letting you stay in contact with Sicily, Fiammetta, and it was naive of you to think otherwise. A bride becomes part of her husband’s family, not the other way around. It might be better this way. You can bury any illusions you might have harbored about one day returning ‘home.’ This is your only home, and I am your only family.”

“I must go back for the funeral,” I said, trying to keep my voice firm and steady even though my heart was racing and I could taste metal on the back of my tongue. “You can’t keep me from saying goodbye.”

“I can and I will.” He finally moved around the bed to turn on the other lamp.

I could see his face, then, and it was carved in granite. Not a single feeling illuminated the depths of those translucent eyes.

What kind of animal had I married?

“Do you really care so little about me?” I whispered, forcing the words through the constriction in my throat. “It would eviscerate me to miss their funeral rites, Dario. They are gone, but I can still have closure. I need it.”

“You are young, so you cannot understand, perhaps, that we don’t often get everything we want,” he countered.

“I’ll bargain with you,” I tried, thinking of what Carla had said that afternoon. Knowledge was power. But what knowledge did I have that Dario didn’t? “I-I can tell you about Papà’s plans with Niccolo and his father.”

“And we arrive at the real reason you want to return home,” Dario snarled, suddenly in my space, looming over me with both hands braced on the arms of my chair. His teeth were white and sharp in the shadows. “To mourn your dead lover.”

“He wasn’t my lover,” I snapped, but the devastation of realizing he, too, had died that day ran me through like a lance. “But yes, I’d like to say goodbye to my old friend too.”

“Too bad.”

“Dario,” I tried again, clutching his hard arm when he tried to pull away. “There must be something I can give you in exchange for sending me to say goodbye. Please. I’ll do anything.”

It didn’t hurt my pride to beg, not about this.

I could endure a lifetime of an unhappy marriage if I could weep with my aunts and cousins as we gave a proper send-off to Papà, Ricco, and Beppe. If I could just see Niccolo one more time, even if it was in an open coffin.

Dario leaned so close, I could feel his hot breath on my tongue.

For a moment, I was shocked to think he might kiss me.

Instead, he spoke. “There is not a single fucking thing you could give me, Fiammetta. You will stay here, you will learn your place as my wife, and I will not hear another word about returning to Sicily. That place is closed to you. Forget it and focus on your future. If you do not, you won’t like the consequences.”

“You’re a fucking monster,” I breathed as grief clutched my lungs in both hands and squeezed.

His smile held nothing but malicious smugness.

“I am your husband,” he said. “For better or worse. You’d best get used to it. Now, get out of my room. And, Fiammetta? If I find you in here again, you won’t like what I do to you.”

I caught the sob that bubbled up my throat in one hand and pushed out of the chair with the other, darting around Dario as I rushed for the door. It crashed behind me as I sprinted down the hall to my own room and tore inside, flinging myself onto my bed with such a violent cry, I choked on it.

I cried, then, for so long that dawn was creeping pale fingers under the curtains when the moisture in me dried up and I lay panting like a fish out of water on my back in the bed.

The crying jag left me feeling oddly floaty, a strange kind of faux peace that quieted the wailing rage and sorrow that had consumed me since Carla’s visit.