Everything turns into a streaky blur. We’re in a black car, we aren’t speaking or acknowledging what just happened, and the outside looks like one hot smudge of color.
I still don’t know where I am. I still don’t understand, truly, what happened. Until I look down at my hands and see the ring, the dress, the veil, all still attached.
These can’t be mine.
Santino sits across from me. I know because I can see his feet, but I’m not looking up at him.
This is it. This is the rest of my life. Before God, I’m tied to a man who was owed me in exchange for…what? What debt could have possibly caused this?
What was my uncle up to? What hellish fury did he incite to sell his adopted daughter off as part of a debt repayment plan? And what kind of man is Santino to take a wife to settle it?
How is this even a thing at this day, in this age, in our society? This isn’t Italy, circa the eighteenth century. This is America. The land of the free. Home of the brave.
It’s right there. In the song. All over the place.
I, however, am anything but free and—after this—I’m sure I’m not brave.
Maybe I never earned being here in the first place.
I sneak another glance at the man who has barely spoken to me since he stole me. What does he expect out of me?
A fresh new wave of anxiety tightens me, and arousal finds a way in, filling me with a need I can’t place or ignore.
He’s more than beautiful. Elettra was dancing all over the kitchen just in his name alone. Something about him excites me in ways that can’t be possible.
What does he want from me? What happens tonight?
If Santino DiLustro thinks I’m going to smile for him and play the role of happy wife, he’s out of his damn mind. I won’t go through the motions of a loveless life.
Unless that’s the point. Maybe my utter misery is exactly what he’s seeking. Maybe God watched as—under His roof—I was bound to the devil.
We arrive at his house. I’ll never think of it as “ours.” His door opens and he exits before me. The suits silently come from the darkened abyss of his home and escort me out. Armando makes eye contact, and with a nod, tries to tell me everything’s going to be all right.
I believe he believes it.
“Come,” Santino commands.
I have no choice but to follow. Through this monstrous prison with its archaic furniture and still-life oil paintings. A poor man’s version of wealth. Too gaudy. Too garish.
It seems out of taste for him, the man living in the Lego brick house of clean lines and modern details. The man in black who steals people and issues commands with lightning.
What kind of man, what kind of king, stole me away?
Santino leads me to the living room, a bright space with too much heavy furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows lining the entire side of the house. The surface of the pool is as still as glass, reflecting the clouds moving over the sky. Freedom is just outside these windows, and I am so very far from it.
He clears his throat because my attention has wandered away from him. It appears he does not like that.
“Sit,” he says, stopping in front of a massive wet bar along the wall, lined with dark bottles, crystal-clear glasses, and shining lights. Even in the daylight hours, he looks illuminated. King of the Castle. Heartless bastard who owns people for debts they have nothing to do with.
I don’t sit. I’m still in my fucking wedding gown. I’m supposed to be dancing my first dance as husband and wife and drinking prosecco from a fluted glass.
“Care for a drink?” he asks.
“I’m not twenty-one.”
“You’re my wife. If my wife wants a drink, she may have a drink.”
This is a very strange first conversation to be having, and my oscillating feelings at hearing the word wife are no more clear than they were at the altar.
Part of this—if I pretend it isn’t me for a few short breaths—is exciting. This would be on television. Zia would watch this with me, and we would gasp over the beauty of the captor, how charming he is with his prisoner.
Those visions die with each breath. And again, they begin. Because it’s beautiful on television—charming, exciting, thrilling, engaging, enigmatic even. But the crushing reality is not what I expect.
“I do not want a drink.” I say no more. I’m afraid what may happen if my mental faculties are impaired even more.
“Your choice.”
“Is this what you thought your wedding would be like?” I ask as he pours himself a drink.
He scoffs. It’s a laugh without humor. The sound of a million unsaid words.
“No.” He caps the bottle.
“What did you think it would be?”
“When? This morning?”
“When you were my age.”
He slams back the drink, puts the glass down, and uncaps the bottle again.
“When I was your age,” he says, pouring, “I thought I’d take vows knowing my wife’s cunt was already sore from my cock.” He drinks, wincing as if the booze burns him as much as his words burn me. “You’d already have that dress around your waist, spreading your legs and begging for it again.” He pours himself a third. “But here we are.”
And that is the end of our conversation for the next several hours.
His mobster friends from the chapel arrive shortly after, reverberating joy in stark contrast to how I’m regarded. I recognize some of them from the neighborhood. I crossed to the other side of the street when guys like this headed my way. I saw them in the stores and in cars as they waited for a light. They never had names, but I knew who they were.
“Drinks!” one hollers. “Drinks to celebrate the man of the day!”
This is more of a bachelor party than a wedding reception. I always thought weddings were supposed to be about the couple, but I’m not even here. I’m apparently worth nothing more than pretty garbage.
Does Santino not even find me interesting? Did he not even choose me? Apparently Elettra would be a suitable replacement, so there must be some sort of wish list. Or was it purely because I lived in the wrong house at the wrong time?
Does the most beautiful, most cruel man find me beneath him?
Suddenly, I need a drink.
As I peel off from my tiny corner, I hear my name being thrown around in rapid Italian. The pacing of this conversation is less serious, less intense, and stunted by alcohol. I can’t keep up with the different dialects. I can only understand a few toasts and my name, mentioned more than once.
I stop in front of the bar, expecting to hear another command like last night, terrified of what it may be, but nothing follows besides more drunk Italian.
I pour a shot glass full of amaretto and return to my corner, where I’m just as decorative as the glass balls in a coffee table bowl.
“Cheers, Violetta,” I whisper and swallow a mouthful of the terrible amber liquid. I’ve always hated booze and now I remember why.
If I am to escape or survive, I have to fit in. That’s what they do on television.
The liquor warms my belly and takes the edge off. It’s not so bad after all, if it has the power to do that. I drain the glass and get another.
“Careful,” a deep voice cuts through the Italian chatter.
“Your wife changed her mind.” The words feel stilted in my mouth. Wife feels like a slippery eel.
Santino slips away, as if appeased enough by my answer.
Point for Violetta.
The second glass sends fire licking through my limbs. It’s a nice change from the frost of fear. More of this is in my future.
One of the thugs says my name again. I study Santino carefully to see his response. Is he excited by me? Disappointed?
He looks devilish. Like a man who takes what he wants without asking. The upturned cheeks and deep timbres go lewd. Are they talking about tonight?
Different parts of me run hot, and the space between my thighs catches a fever. Tonight, our wedding night. A man who takes what he wants, including a wife he doesn’t know, will no doubt take everything else he wants, including things of the flesh. Sore from his cock. Dress around my waist. Me begging for it with my legs spread.
The room feels several degrees warmer. I’ve never been with a man, and my first time will now be with one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Also? The worst man I’ve ever seen.
My cheeks tingle in memory from earlier today, when he forced my cheeks together for a vow. How it made my heart race in both pain and pleasure, how it was so confusing and terrible and erotic.
Will that be what tonight is like? Will he be gentle, making our first time sweet and as painless as possible?
I stop seeing the living room full of gaudy furniture and mobsters in dark suits, and instead I see a room full of candles, soft music playing. This incredible sculpture of a man is naked, more beautiful than ever, with a heavy look of want and desire etched in his face.
Like he wants me and only me. Soft and gentle, tender and kind.
I take a shuddering breath and blink back into reality. Santino sits in an armchair as though he owns the world. The king. As if he felt me watching him, his eyes meet mine, and my body goes tight and flush.
A fleeting smile crosses his full lips, then he returns to ignoring me and entertaining his guests.
A king would not be gentle on the first night. A king would take what he owns for his pure enjoyment. He would use my body until his could no longer stay quiet. He would grab me tight, pin me down, and force me to worship him.
He would pull my hair back and part my lips so I could take all of him in my mouth. He would make me beg and plead for relief. Maybe he would even tie me up and refuse me pleasure until he came in a shuddering gasp.
My heart is in my throat and my panties are soaked. The morning is shot, and his friends are gone.
Suddenly, it’s just my new husband and me in an empty house.
The frat party of a reception was only two hours.
“Come.” Santino is standing over me, hand outstretched. The touch of the devil returns to his face, as if he can read my mind, see my thoughts like a projection. As if he knows I’ve been trying to picture the size of his cock and whether or not it would fit in the tightest of my spaces.
I hesitate.
“Come,” he says again, and it’s not a question.
He leads me upstairs. My ears are so full of my own pulse, I can’t hear my heels click against the granite steps. I’m not sure I can breathe. I’m not sure what I can do, or what I want to happen. The last twenty-four hours have been a roller coaster I’ve desperately wanted off of, but now we are rising high, suspense building, as if a drop is on the other side. Can I hold on? Will I be flung from the ride? Will it be anticlimactic and boring?
We don’t go to his bedroom. He stops in front of the one I was unceremoniously dumped in the night before. Maybe I haven’t earned access to his room. Well, he’s not the fucking Beast and I’m not Belle. I have no talking servants to keep me company, so that’s bullshit.
He opens the door and walks in. I follow like a woman on a leash. I have never before been so aware of the presence of a bed, but my God, it’s all but glowing with a blinking neon sign that says: Fuck Here.
I don’t think I can breathe.
“I am not going to fuck you.” His voice slaps against me.
Good. I won’t be forced to bite his dick off.
Except, why do I feel so strangely disappointed?
“Don’t misunderstand. You will have duties to fulfill and you will be punished for not fulfilling them.”
Wait. What? The implication wakes me from a haze.
“Duties?” The word squashes any feeling other than repulsion. “I’ll be punished? This isn’t just archaic, it’s inhumane.”
He stares at me. Perhaps a threat. Perhaps a challenge. Who the fuck knows what’s flying around that head of his, because I haven’t understood a single thing he’s done from the moment he walked into Zio’s house.
Zio’s house.
If my parents hadn’t been shot in the street, this wouldn’t be happening. My father would never, ever allow something like this. He was a powerful man and he loved me. He made me safe.
“Why?” I feel like a petulant child playing dress-up, wearing a wedding gown, throwing a tantrum. The heels are a little too big. Whoever prepared for me got that wrong. It only added to the vision, which infuriated me. “Why are you doing this? Why are you treating me this way? I’ve done nothing.”
“If you want to know what’s expected of you, you’ll be downstairs for dinner at six. There are clothes in the closet for you.”
Terrible clothes. Horrible clothes. Expensive clothes a monkey wouldn’t wear.
“Brush your hair. Wash your face. Just don’t look like”—he gestures at me—“this.”
Like this? Like a child in a fucking wedding dress? “Like I’ve been kidnapped?”
“You were not kidnapped. You were sold.”
Because that’s a million times better way to view it. No big deal, Violetta, just a little forced marriage to close out your adolescence.
King Moody walks to the wall of windows where—the night before—I left handprints on the pane as I tried to block him out. He touches one of the prints, aligns my tiny fingers with his massive ones.
It stirs something in me, the way he’s almost touching me by touching where I watched him. It’s intimate in a weird way, and I’m again split between pleasure and fury.
I hate him, I decide. I hate him a lot.
“You cannot sell a person. That’s. Not. A. Thing.”
“Traded then.” He’s still studying my handprints. “Call it whatever you like. You’re no less mine.”
“For what then? What was I traded for?”
His quiet pause is screaming loud. I hear the lies stacking up slowly as he sorts through which bullshit to tell me. What garbage he’s going to feed me as an excuse for stealing me and my livelihood after threatening to kill the only family I have left. Even if they couldn’t protect me the way my father could have, they were all I had.
“Love makes a man weak,” he says. “And a weak man cannot keep what he owns.”
“Being cryptic doesn’t make you mysterious. It makes you a coward.”
The last word comes out of my mouth before I can think better of it. I should be more afraid. He might be waiting until he’s pissed off enough to rip my wedding dress away.
But he puts his hands in his pockets and looks down at the pool. “I am a coward.”
“Then set me free.”
He turns to me, and though his power is still in every fiber of his being, it’s now laced with sorrow and maybe…just maybe a little compassion. “I cannot.”
“Then get out of my room.”
He nods and comes toward me. “I’ll see you at six. Clock is right there.” He points at a gaudy gold travesty next to my bed. “You can read analog time, yes? Or do you need me to send in a digital?”
I’m so goddamn offended I can’t speak.
He stands over me, this time clearly as a challenge.
Is this a battle I actually need to win? He acts as if I’m his idiot child bride and that’s got to stop. But there’s more to gain by answering this stupid question right now and saving the fights for later?
“Analog’s fine.”
He nods and leaves abruptly, signaling the end of the conversation. As the door clicks, I race to it. This could be my chance to escape, to stop the door from locking and get the hell out of here when he’s brooding on one of his baroque chairs.
But the door locks swiftly behind him. His footsteps echo down the hall, taunting me with their freedom.
I’m again his prisoner. Trapped in a room, trapped in a dress, trapped in a life I had no say in.
The American Dream is a filthy lie, and I grieve for it with tears.