“They let you believe you were being raised a tactless, ambitious American woman. I didn’t realize that until it was too late, and for this…I apologize.”

  “Talk to God about forgiveness.”

  “My oversight changes nothing,” he says as if I didn’t just throw his apology back in his face. He separates a piece of fish. “You should eat. Celia’s very sensitive about leftovers.”

  “How much?” I ask.

  “All of it, if you can.” He shoves food in his mouth, and when he chews, the muscles of his jaw tighten and striate.

  “How much was I worth?”

  “Hm?” He takes a drink of water.

  “How much was the debt I paid?”

  He looks at me as if I’ve confused him, then makes a tsk sound in his throat. “That’s not your business.”

  “Yes, it is!” I don’t mean to shout, but I don’t care anymore either.

  “Says who?” Santino asks as if my life’s a rhetorical question. “You’re mine. My business.” He spears another chunk of meat. “I decide what you need to know. This is how we do things.”

  “We?” I scoff. There’s a sweating glass of water in front of me and I want nothing more than to throw it in his face. He doesn’t talk to me, not really, from the moment he kidnaps me—trades me, whatever—and this is the conversation he decides to kick us off with? “You mean you? Where you’re from? I’m from here. And that is not how we do things. You can go to jail for this.”

  Santino sighs in frustration. He’s letting me know he’s being patient with me. The king does not like to explain himself. Or this situation. Or anything in general.

  “You have an Italian passport. Every minute you breathe in the United States, you are under the jurisdiction of the Italian Embassy.” He digs in his pocket and extracts his phone. “Would you like to call them?” He puts the phone between us. “I know the number. I have a friend there.” A heavy pause sits between us. “He knows all about you.”

  My husband is cruel. That’s what he is. Intensely cruel and calculating and cold. Just cold.

  The precise weight of his revelation crushes me. I was born in Italy and my immigration status is perfectly fine until it isn’t. The list of reasons I can get deported is long, and I’m a resident because of my clean status with the Italian side.

  Santino’s saying he can end that. He’s got his punishing fingers hooked where he can hurt me most.

  One of the steps in my plan for freedom is shot out of the sky like a goose in the fall. I’m trapped with no legal protection. No one to call to help.

  And he still hasn’t given me back my phone. God knows if it’ll ever be returned.

  Overwhelming loneliness fills me, every inch. I’m alone, no one knows where I am because surely the king wouldn’t advertise the location of his compound, and there’s no legal recourse.

  Digging my nails into my palms might make nice little flowers of pain to distract me, but not enough to keep me from crying. By the first hitching blubber, I can’t even feel them. Tears fall like the droplets on the water glass.

  “Don’t. No.” Santino’s demeanor changes in a flash. He flicks a handkerchief from inside his jacket and passes it to me. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” I try to swallow down the grief and sadness, but they feel much too large to contain. My throat’s full of sticky gunk, and I can’t get control of my breath.

  “Cry. No. Don’t cry. Please.”

  His cruelty is shed for something that sounds a lot like sympathy, and for some reason, that’s what unlocks the remainder of the tears I’d been holding back. They come pouring like monsoons and every inch of resolve I’ve carried is swept away in it.

  “Celia!” He rings a stupid gold bell that rests on the table. I hadn’t noticed it. Of course he’s the kind of guy who would ring a bell for a servant. How much longer until I receive my own bell? Tears fall harder, faster. “Bring the wine and a box of tissues. Subito.”

  A dim outline of a person enters and exits the room on demand. My sadness and grief have fully exploded, and I’m only barely hanging on.

  “Violetta. Listen.” Santino’s voice drops to an unthreatening purr. “You’re only upset because you didn’t know. This bargain was made long ago, but you’re only just finding out. This is new and scary, no? If you had known—”

  “I’d be grateful you stole me?” I hiccup, furious, tears still running down my face.

  “You aren’t taken from your life. I’ll let you finish school.”

  “Let me?”

  “If you behave. And maybe, if you want…” Santino touches my arm, and the gentleness of it shocks me as much as my reaction to it. I hate it and I’m grateful for it all at the same time. “A job?”

  I jerk my arm away and the tears flow faster, harder. If I’m a good girl, he’ll let me go work in a shop somewhere. If I behave, he’ll let me go to class. I’m not just a slave, not just house decor, I’m his pet too.

  How could this possibly be my life? After every tragedy I had to endure as a girl, this is how I end up?

  My heart cracks open.

  “Santo Dio! Violetta!”

  He doesn’t just get frustrated, he yells. His yell is a big man’s yell, one that fills up the crevices of the room and blankets me whole. His yell is that of a man accustomed to power and obedience and cruelty. Who has seen things. Who has done things.

  And I have just angered that man.

  My eyes dry up immediately. No more snot. No more tears. No more heaving. The aching pity, one that I despised so much yesterday afternoon, is gone.

  In its wake is a terrifying new creature.

  Wrath. Loathing. Fear.

  His anger wakes me up like an animal who heard a sound in the night. Defensive, protective, afraid for its life and ready to flee.

  I thought I was afraid of him before. He’s hurt me once, he’s issued threats more than once. But to have him yell is a whole new level of hell. It’s more than thunder. It’s more than lightning. He doesn’t act like a king.

  He acts like a god. A vengeful, wrathful god.

  I don’t want his sympathy. I don’t want his kindness. I don’t want his niceties. I won’t manipulate him so he throws me a bone and feigns concern.

  “These are the rules,” he says, starting with the pinkie of his right hand. “Uno. You do as I say. You go where I take you. In public, you smile like a good wife. Due.” He bends back the fourth finger, a heavy gold ring on it. A diamond crown is embedded in the center. It dwarfs the narrow gold ring on his left hand. “You do not speak to another man without me present. Tre. Your zio and zia? Their lives are forfeit if you run. You understand? If you run, it’s because they didn’t teach you right. They’ll be the ones to pay.”

  He is firm. He is godlike—holding out a finger for each rule like a war talisman.

  My own voice is clear in my mind, even if my mouth cannot speak through the spit of sorrow.

  It says that I have rules too.

  One: Santino will never have my body.

  Two: Santino will never have my mind.

  Three: Santino will never have my soul.

  Four: I will never, ever cry in front of him again. I will never shed another tear so long as I am near this man.

  “If I am happy,” Santino says, putting his fingers away, “you go back to school in the fall.”

  “If you’re happy?” I manage to say. “What about me?”

  He ignores the question and adds a stick to the carrot. “If I’m not happy, you will be punished.”

  He stresses that last word—punished—with extra vigor.

  “How?” I challenge.

  “You don’t want to find out.” His presence feels like a massive black cloud. Like a tornado. Like an evil genie. Maybe I can find his lamp and send him back to hell where he belongs. “God willing, I’ll only have to do it once before you learn.”

  “Do you usually bring God into your threats?”

  “He is the original threat-maker, Violetta.”

  “Think you’re God then?”

  He bares his teeth a little. My attitude gets under his skin. I don’t think he has much tolerance for this behavior. I think anyone who talks to him like this gets the chance to do it once and never again.

  “They call me Re Santino.”

  “I know what they call you.”

  “Then maybe you should pay attention.”

  Oh, I’ll pay attention. I’ll learn all right. I’m going to learn everything and get the fuck out of here. Clean. With Zio, and Zia, and even Elettra safe from this monster.

  Aren’t I Emilio Moretti’s daughter?

  Am I not as decent? As hard-working? He deserved so much more than life handed him, and so do I.

  It won’t end for me the way it did for him and my mother.

  I will live and I will be free.

  “Your door is unlocked.” Santino sounds as though he’s teetering on an edge. To what, I don’t know, but I can only assume what isn’t good for him will work for me. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he says before leaving a plate full of leftovers behind.

  Celia doesn’t like leftovers.

  I might need Celia, and I definitely need my strength.

  I breathe. I eat. I drink.

  I can’t leave yet. I haven’t figured out how to keep him away from my family. The Italian embassy isn’t safe, but aren’t we still on American soil? There are laws in this country.

  I’ve lived here almost my whole life, so that has to count for something.

  Maybe it doesn’t. My status is more precarious than I ever imagined. I’ve never felt like an immigrant before. That’s one more thing I can blame on him.

  After draining the last of the water, I stand and make my way upstairs, taking a circuitous route through the kitchen. The glass walls show the quickly dimming sky of my wedding day. The day I lost everything.

  I can see where his guards dot the exterior of the house, but they can also see me.

  Is escape possible?

  I could use one of the windows in the kitchen, one of the few rooms with a window that opens on the first floor—that has to be some sort of fire hazard. There are thick bushes beneath the windows to cushion and quiet my exit, provide some cover.

  I’m slight enough to get through the shadows, run past the men from the wedding with their guns and big shoes. Run past the cars lined out front as though Santino is hosting his own auto show.

  But then…what? I still don’t know where I am and there’s no cover in the streets. I don’t have my phone, I don’t have any money, and I can’t go home because that’s where this all started.

  It’s not a sweet, impossible daydream. Escape is more than a six-letter word. It’s a plan, one I can’t put together until I put some cash together. Until I know exactly where the men are, where each fugly piece of furniture is down to the precise inch.

  And I’ll need some sort of gun, and ammo, to protect my family. Something that gives me power all my own. Something to assassinate a king.

  It’s not hopeless. I can figure it out. I just need patience and discipline.

  The two things my zio says I was never born with.

  No time to learn like the present.

  9

  VIOLETTA

  Sun filters through the windows and blasts hot, bright light across the carpet. I fell asleep in my corner, but at some point in the night, I must have crawled onto the bed. At least I had the presence of mind to stay on top of the covers.

  King Assface said if I obey him, I’ll get things. Like school and a job. Those might be the first steps to getting out of this.

  Zia told me men handled the cruel things of the world, but she also always told me a home is built by a woman. Men work with men but create homes with women because they can’t do it themselves.

  All I have to do is open my eyes to where he is weak.

  If I lull him a little as a subservient, obedient woman who accepts forced marriage as part of the deal, maybe I can work him over.

  Zia Donna said Elettra would turn into a whore for being with him, but a wife is different than a whore.

  Why did he want a wife so badly? And why me?

  If I can just figure out what makes the man tick…

  What makes him desire.

  What makes him come.

  My freshman semester at St. John’s, Tommy Canova felt me up in the back of his Camaro, and that was as close as I ever got. Sometimes I get a rush thinking about it, but he ditched me for Nancy Roleto from Bio 103. He shrugged when I found out. Said she was more agreeable. But Santino is the king, and no one disagrees.

  Last night, it hit me I’d likely need to use my body against him. Today, I know it’s the only way, and I only have one tool. Not experience, but innocence. I wasn’t saving my virginity for love, but for escape.

  I’ll seduce him with innocence instead of experience.

  Yes. It’s a new day, and I can do that.

  My wardrobe, however, is not sexy.

  I settle on a blouse that isn’t completely horrendous, with buttons I can undo. I pair it with a pair of slacks because there is literally nothing else. With only a few buttons done up, leaving plenty of cleavage exposed, I tousle my hair until it has that sort of sleepy sex hair vibe I’ve seen on TV. I’d kill for some lipstick. Time to rely on old tricks from junior high, like sucking on my lips and pinching my cheeks for color.

  I see my sparkly diamond ring in the mirror and turn it to face me. Assuming it’s real, it has to be worth money. If I get out, I can sell it. Another option showing my situation isn’t as dire as I assume.

  I open another button. I feel sexy and dangerous. A spy or an assassin prepping to go undercover.

  But mostly, I feel like the kind of cheap whore Zia Donna would loathe.

  Well, Zia Donna, these are a woman’s options in your world, and maybe the one you picked actually sucks. I guess your niece is a whore.

  I look for my husband. He’s not in the kitchen or the living room, so I head to the dining room. He’s sitting back at the head of the table, in front of a fire despite it being late spring, drinking coffee and reading yesterday’s Corriere Oggi. A charcuterie board is laid out before him—slices of breads, salami, cheese, prosciutto.

  My stomach growls. Considering the stress I’m under, I should probably avoid heavy food. I’m trying to seduce this man, not throw up all over him.

  The capicola’s singing to me though. I can hear it calling my name.

  “What are you wearing?” Santino asks, appearing from behind his paper.

  That ridiculous gold bell sits next to him.

  “This is what you left me.”

  “You look like a nun.”

  A nun? I’ve got, like, three buttons undone. This is what he considers nun-like? What I’ve gotten myself into no longer feels like a swimming pool I could handle, but a dark, expansive ocean. Shit. Do I even know what sexy means?

  “Sit,” he commands. “Eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He cocks an eyebrow at me. Something that might be construed as playful, if you squint really hard, tugs at the corners of his full lips. “Your stomach is shaking the house.”

  “I don’t usually eat breakfast.”

  “Nor do I. This was for you. So eat.” He returns to his Corriere Oggi.

  He is making this so much harder than it should be. I take a seat, several down from him instead of next to him, and grab a piece of cheese that looks mild enough.

  Can’t have salami breath when I’m trying to get in his pants.

  A shock of heat hits me between the legs. Stupid, stupid body. Stupid.

  “Do you want some coffee?” he asks lazily.

  “No.” I do, but I also don’t want his guy running in here to witness what I’m trying to do.

  Santino steals me, threatens me, weds me, commands me, then continues to act as though I’m wallpaper. No more. Now is the time to act like the adult everyone clearly thought I am.

  I’ll show them.

  I slide back the heavy chair. The movement is enough to catch a moment of his attention, so I unbutton the remaining buttons on my ugly blouse.

  He raises an eyebrow. The newspaper is down at least.

  I channel every sexy runway model I can think of and chew on my lip. I even throw in a hair toss for good measure.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You want to fuck me?” The words don’t come out as strong as I hoped, but they send another shock of heat to my core. They help me feel a little dangerous. “You want to prove what a man you are?”

  He doesn’t move. I rip off the shirt and run my hands under the cups of my bra.

  “Go ahead,” I say. “Just take what you want.”

  “Get dressed.” He goes back to his newspaper, this time shaking it out loudly and holding it up before his face, blocking me out. Ignoring me again.

  This time, it hits my pride. My body isn’t good enough for him? My breasts are too small? I’m no Rosetta, but I’ve been hit on enough to know I’m not disgusting.

  And the king wants to turn me away?

  Unless he’s playing hard to get?

  God, this man and his stupid games.

  I walk around the back of his chair, letting my fingers trail across his shoulders.

  “We never consummated our marriage,” I say throatily. I wish my voice had more rasp in it so I’d sound older.

  “I don’t fuck women who act like children.”

  Anger replaces the other internal urges at war under my skin. Am I nothing but a literal child bride to him? Someone he can order around as though he’s my replacement father?

  I don’t have a father. I have Zio. And now I have a husband who has threatened to harm the only father figure I have left.

  Santino will never, ever replace either. He’s not a husband. He’s an obstacle between my freedom and me.

  I get on my knees and take a deep breath before forcing my hands to run along his hard thighs. I’ve never touched a man anywhere near his dick and the sensations are confusing. Infuriating. Overwhelming.

  “You want me to suck your dick, Santino?” I run my hands farther up his thighs and drop my voice. “Just tell me to. Command it.”