Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101247 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101247 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
“What do you mean?”
“No bride comes home to stay for a few days with her mother after her honeymoon, cara. Something is going on between you and Valentino.”
I release a deep, shaky breath. “It’s nothing.”
She catches both my hands in hers and kisses them softly. “I will not let you go down the same path I did, Francesca. Something is wrong, and I want to help you fix it before it becomes irreparably broken.”
I school my expression into one of nonchalance. “What if I don’t want to fix it? What if I want it to get so bad to the point where he gets impossibly frustrated and ends this… this… arrangement of convenience?”
“How about you say that again, but with a straight face this time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve fallen for your husband, Francesca. Your eyes, cara, they never lie. They tell me everything I need to know.”
I try to laugh gaily, but the sound is harsh and bitter. “Valentino is handsome, and I’m a woman, so it’s easy to want him, but I hate him and everything he stands for. He’s just like papa, he-”
“He’s nothing like your father,” Mama cuts me off. “I would rather have died than let you marry him if he was like your father…”
“What do you know of him, Mama?”
Wrinkles gather on her forehead. “I don’t know much about him, but I can sense a man like your father from a thousand miles away.”
I roll my eyes and fall back on the bed. “But he’s exactly like Papa, Mama. He kills, he lies, he cheats, and he’s a champion at being unfaithful.”
Mama grabs my wrists and pulls me up. Her eyes are intense and earnest. “Remember that day when he came to ask for your hand in marriage you walked into Nonno’s library wearing that stupid bat costume?”
“Yes.”
“I saw the way he looked at you,” she says. “Your father has never looked at me like that. Not once. That man will not hurt you. He will never treat you the way your father treated me. He is more-”
“He cheated on me on our honeymoon,” I blurt out. “On our freaking wedding night!” Stinging tears slip past my defenses and roll down my cheeks. I press my lips together and wipe them away with my sleeve. He is not worth my tears.
Mama clasps her hands and bows her head. For a few seconds, she is silent. When she raises her head, her eyes are full of love for me. That makes me cry even harder.
“Tell me what happened,” she says softly.
I tell her about Valentino returning to the hotel room smelling of a woman’s perfume, and how the woman shamelessly shows up a few days later at his house in Italy and informs me that she is in love with him and was with him on our wedding night. Angrily, I tell my mother how disappointed and hurt I was, especially since he swore he’d never slept with another woman since our wedding.
“And he has the guts to stop speaking to me after I confronted him about it,” I growl, ending my recount. “He’s an arrogant prick! He cheated, and now he’s acting like he’s the victim.”
Mama’s sigh comes from a very deep place inside her. “In all this you haven’t told me where you caught them sleeping together.”
“Mama!”
“I’m sorry to tell you, but in this instance, you are in the wrong.”
“What?” I explode. “I’m not the one whoring around.”
“No. But you’re the one who has put two and two together and come up with five. I know you never wanted to be part of the world you were born into, but this is your life now. You need to start accepting it.”
“Mama-”
“As horrible as this brutal world we have been born in is, a man’s word is his bond. Once he gives his word about something, he never backtracks. It is the same with your Nonno and all the other honorable men in the Cosa Nostra. The greatest respect you can give a man is to take him at his word.”
I stare at my mother. “What are you saying, Mama?”
“If your husband told you he didn’t do it and gave you his word, then maybe you should trust him over some random woman who is clearly jealous and whose sole purpose is to tear your marriage apart. Valentino isn’t speaking to you because you disrespected him by not holding his words in high regard. He gave you his word and you trampled upon it.”
My body stills at my Mama’s words, especially since they feel so right. Ever since that evening outside my bedroom door in Italy, Valentino has ignored me. I hardly see him at all, and when I do, he greets me, then goes right back to behaving as if I’m not there at all.