We’ve been married a week and nothing has changed. He spends most of his time ignoring me, issuing commands, and showing random tiny acts of kindness that make me resent him all the more.
In my childish dreams, the first week of marriage was something worth celebrating. “Look, we did it!” Champagne toasts and looking at photos and eating cake. Celebrating the first week, the first month, the first six months. Enjoying each other’s company.
Instead, I jumpy-clapped when my books arrived, because it’s the first thing that’s made me happy since I was shoved into a car.
My marriage, though I cringe to use the word, is anything but the fantasies I’ve been dreaming up since being trapped in this house like a listless lab rat. Celia won’t even let me cook. She doesn’t say “no” exactly. She just gets this disappointed curl in her voice whenever I tell her I want to.
I can’t even be domesticated properly.
“Let’s go for a swim,” Santino says one evening when he gets back from whatever he does all day. I’m instantly wary. He’s rarely home, and when he is, he barely grunts at me. Even when we eat together he ignores me.
“Why?” I ask, thinking maybe he’s bored already and wants to drown me.
“It’s hot out.” He says it like it’s obvious, and if anything about our situation was normal, it would be.
He holds his hand to the pool I’ve yearned to splash in but have refused to touch. He swims every night. It’s like his private chambers, despite being out in the open. I’m so taken aback that he’s offered it up, I seriously wonder if he intends to use the pool as a murder weapon.
“There should be a swimsuit in the closet,” he says over his shoulder, walking out—as if he’s done stating the obvious and needs action, immediately.
Oh, there is a swimsuit in the closet all right, and it’s as outdated and terrible as everything else in it. I put it on anyway. It’s an old lady suit, designed to hide in.
Maybe that’s for the best. I don’t want him to kill a lustful security guy, and I don’t know what I’ll do if he suddenly rakes his demonic eyes across my body, the way he did when I was on my knees with my breasts exposed.
The suit has blue flowers all over it, like a couch. I’m wearing upholstery.
Still, it is hot, and I’m tired of the house. A dip in the pool, even with the devil himself, sounds refreshing. I could use the fresh air and the sun. Maybe work on a tan. Pretend I’m in Greece instead of prison.
Standing by the diving board, fully dressed, Santino laughs as soon as he catches sight of me walking onto the concrete patio. His face splits open, like another face taking over. Gone is the asshole, and in his place, a beautiful charmer.
I’m not supposed to like my captor.
“This is what you left for me up there.”
“Get in.”
“Not yet.”
Not ever, is what I want to say. The water is his, but he can’t keep the sun from me. He doesn’t own the afternoon sun, the breeze, the cloudless blue sky. Those I can keep. Those I enjoy.
“You women and your tans,” Santino scoffs, but it almost sounds playful.
He sheds his shirt, revealing a light line of hair in the center of his chest that continues between tight, beautiful abs where it disappears under his waistband. He slides out of his pants to reveal the same tight suit I see from my room, and dives into the water like a knife gutting a fish.
As I do upstairs, I hold my hands out to try to block him out, erase him, imagine a world without him in it. But my hands are the wrong proportion this close. Santino is too big, too powerful, too enigmatic to hide behind such small palms.
My world is too full of Santino DiLustro and I hate it.
He does a few laps, and I would rather stare directly into the sun than continue watching him. He moves like a shark—silent, deadly, efficient.
I was never much of a swimmer—never had lessons. Rosetta joined the swim team when we were kids and encouraged me to do it with her, but I would rather read poetry than feel like I’m fighting against the water in a gross community pool.
The heat of the day pushes me closer to the immaculately cared for pool with a very well-washed owner.
Or so I assume. His hair usually has a nice just-been-washed quality, and he always smells of soap and cologne. Not that I’ve noticed. Often.
I dip my legs in and my body relaxes. All the tension from being held here for the longest week of my life fades a little.
Santino never forbade the pool. I should come out here more often.
“You are deep in thought.” Santino swims up to me, water glistening off his skin, droplets clinging to his hair and eyelashes.
I look back up at the sky.
“I am enjoying the weather.”
“Very studiously.” He splashes some water at me. “Come in. It’s hot out.”
“No.” I shake my head and refuse to look at him.
“No?” He sounds playful and dangerous all the same. “Are you afraid of the water?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
I take too long to answer. “No.”
The silence between us grows heavy. I don’t want him to know I’m afraid of him, even if all signs say I am. I want to stand up to him. I want to feel powerful. Admitting fear is not the way to go about it.
“We didn’t swim much in Napoli.” I change the subject. “Our apartment complex didn’t have a pool. Instead, there was a fountain in the courtyard where all the kids would play. I remember it being huge, the courtyard and the fountain too, I guess…but I was like five, so maybe I’m not remembering right.”
“To your very small eyes, it would seem enormous.”
“Maybe.” It annoys me that he’s probably right. “We used to play ball and tag and hide-and-seek. There were so many of us. It was like having twenty brothers and sisters. We would run and play until nightfall. There’d be a chorus of moms calling for their kids in the middle of the courtyard every night. Like music.”
I have no idea what I’m doing right now, other than trying to make him forget about my fear. But the way he’s nodding in agreement, like he’s been there. It almost feels nice. If I drop everything else away and focus on just this moment, here’s another person, who I’m not related to, that I can talk to about the old country, and they’ll understand.
My American friends don’t and never will.
“Dinner was always the best time, anyway,” I continue. “There was so much bustle and activity. Singing. Always singing. I wanted to help my mom so much, but I was too little to do anything other than stir the sauce. My mom always made that feel like such a big job.”
“A good mom does that.”
It’s very weird, having a conversation with this man. One where he isn’t ordering me around, threatening my family, or ignoring my existence.
“Papa sometimes had his friends come to dinner. Big men in big black shoes. They took up all the women’s seats in the dining room, and we had to eat in the kitchen.” I shoot him a look. “Much like that night at my zio’s.”
“Our customs make us strong.” He starts to swim across the short length of the pool. “You know that.”
I make a face at him when his back is turned. “Anyway. The men always stared at my sister. She was five years older than me. Way too young to be gawked at. One time, my papa beat a man bloody for staring too long.”
I’d do anything to have my papa back at this exact moment.
“Treasure those memories, Violetta.” The way he says my name sends a shiver down my back. “They are all we have left of our culture.”
We.
We aren’t a thing. He and I aren’t a we.
I get out of the water, ready to hide in the shaded patio where I read my books when Santino’s out during the day. The furniture here matches the house and the pool. Modular, modern, clean lines, and comfortable. No wicker, no gold leaves, no velvet or damask. I settle under an umbrella and stretch my legs into the sun and sigh as they dry off.
Santino pads over to me, dripping wet, wiping his face off with a towel, and points to my stack of summer reading.
“You like this spot?”
I miss feeling like wallpaper.
I miss him wearing clothes.
“It makes more sense out here. Matches the house. Nothing else does.”
“Ah, you noticed.”
“It’s impossible not to.” I want to talk to him, not insult him, so I shrug as if it’s not a matter of taste even when it is and say what’s on my mind. “It’s like a museum in there.”
Santino drops in a chair next to me and crosses one leg widely over the other. His long hands drape past the end of the armrests. He even reclines like a damn king.
“Inside, that is all my grandfather’s furniture. My inheritance. The only thing that bastard left me was a house full of Rococo furniture. Can you imagine?”
No, I can’t. I don’t say anything, though. Because I don’t want to get involved in his stories like he got involved in mine. We aren’t a we.
“I had it shipped here from Italy,” he continues. “Because what else was I supposed to do? Sell the only thing my grandfather left me? Keep it in storage so the rats could shit in the cushions and termites eat the wood?”
Celia appears with two bottles of water and a small tray of snacks. She’s very good at anticipating her boss’s needs, which is why she stays in the kitchen and I read medical journals.
“I won’t disrespect my grandfather,” Santino says when she’s gone. “God knows, if the devil told Giacomo DiLustro his grandson didn’t have his ass on his inheritance, he’d dig his way out of the grave.”
“That’s disgusting,” I say with a lilt of humor.
“That’s my grandfather.”
I don’t know what to say, so I sip water.
“You don’t like it?” He turns his burning gaze to me. I’m suddenly very self-conscious. “You want new furniture?”
“It doesn’t go with the house.”
“A new house then?”
“You’d move for me?” I say it sarcastically because I don’t think I can process what he just offered. “I could change the furniture and let rats shit in your grandfather’s cushions?”
He says nothing. That somehow makes me angrier.
“You’d make a pretty little prison for me, Santino? How nice of you. How accommodating. What other terrible generosity will you exhibit for my comfort?”
Getting sassy with him never works, but I can’t stop the words or the attitude from rolling off me in big, angry waves. Did he honestly find this romantic? Think this was the way to win me over?
If it wasn’t for him, I’d be at the airport right now, on my way to Santorini. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be finished with my summer reading list. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be free and happy.
None of those things are happening. Because of Santino. My family’s lives are all in danger. Because of Santino. I am a fucking prisoner in this too big house. Because of Santino.
And he offers to buy me new furniture, buy me a new house? Is he insane? Is he stupid? Could it be the rest of my family is so small-minded they think a man like this runs the world?
I’m stewing and he’s sitting there, king-like, as though what he said wasn’t offensive.
“This is also your home,” he says gently.
“Is it, though?”
His anger rises. I can feel it. Well, good. If I’m angry, let him also be angry. Let him also feel powerless against his situation. He can’t control me. He forced me into his home and into a marriage, sure, but he cannot control my heart, my mind, or my actions.
He refuses my feminine wiles? Fine. Then he can deal with my attitude.
“You have moods like a child.”
This is the only time I am grateful for King Assface being an assface. Our conversation was becoming much too intimate. I overshared about my childhood, and he told me about his grandfather. Like we’re friends. Like we’re lovers.
We are neither of those things. We are strangers. We are jailer and prisoner.
I only told him silly stories, meaningless overall, but it was still too much. I didn’t want us to bond over Napoli. I don’t want us to forge any sort of connection. He already owns too much of me.
I should have never come out to this pool. I should have remained wallpaper. I should have never opened my mouth. I should have never agreed to come down here. Never agreed to put on this disgusting bathing suit. Keeping my distance is the only way to stay safe.
Then again, he opened up for the first time ever. We carried on an actual conversation, didn’t we? It only took a week.
If I continue offering up silly, insignificant stories about my childhood, he may continue to open up and I may find a weakness, but it’s just as likely I’ll be the weakened one. Then there’s no way out.
“I don’t mean you are a child,” he backpedals when there’s too much gap in the conversation. “I would never marry a child.”
“Please stop talking.”
“Have you hit your limit of me for the day?”
He’s not being defensive. He’s actually being vulnerable and self-effacing.
He’s trying to play me. I can’t deny I enjoyed sharing stories with him. Feeling connected to someone else who understood this ridiculous and beautiful way of life. I’ll admit I didn’t feel so lonely when we did.
But damn. I thought I was getting one over on him and all the while, he was charming the shit right out of me.
Or maybe this is who he is? How many people know why Re Santino keeps archaic furniture in his house? He could tell anyone it was an inheritance, but the deep-rooted reasons? The desire to be close to his grandfather?
I was being let in on a secret. I was being trusted. He trusts me.
Like a pathetic mouse clinging to a crumb, I cling to that thought.
Maybe there is hope for me after all. If he trusts me, I can get out of here.
“You haven’t hit your limit yet,” I say.
“You will eat dinner with me.”
“Is that a prediction?” I dig a black olive out of a little bowl Celia left.
“It’s a fact.”
“What if I’m busy?” I eat the olive.
“I’ll make you unbusy.” He raises an eyebrow with both humor and threat. I have a nice retort to tease out the humor, but Fat Lip appears at the back door. I’ve seen him around since the wedding day. He says hello with a certain level of respect, as if he knows I could punch him again.
“Santino,” he says.
“Stay,” Santino commands and joins Fat Lip at the door.
“I’m not a dog,” I mutter.
Behind me, there are terse whispers. Serious voices. I try to listen in, but it’s all in Italian and too quiet and rapid for me to follow. I wish these guys would just speak in English. It would make snooping so much easier.
I try to act nonchalant, carefully eating olives and chewing slowly. Is he in trouble? Is someone here to rescue me?
Never in my life have I wanted something more than to be rescued. Maybe my zio and zia organized the family and are marching on the house. Maybe they found enough money to cover the debt?
So many maybes, so much hope, and yet, I’d be just a little disappointed I couldn’t see this through.
“Violetta.” Santino’s voice is rolling thunder. “Bring your books. Go upstairs to your room. Now. Lock the door. Armando will be right outside.”
Goosebumps explode over my skin. Could it truly be someone coming to save me?
The piercing look on his face doesn’t tell me anything.
“Go. You will be safe.”
“You’re keeping someone out? Not keeping me in?”
“Just go.”
I take my books and go upstairs. It’s not until Armando closes the door behind me that I realize I did what Santino told me to because I trust him.