“You look beautiful, stellina. Stop fretting.”
I dropped my hands from the pins in my hair and turned away from my white-clad reflection in the mirror. “I just don’t want him to be disappointed.”
Mamma snorted. “He wouldn’t deserve you in a gunny sack.”
I sighed.
She cupped my cheek, her eyes soft. “I did not wish this for you.”
“Mamma, stop.” I pulled away from her and headed to the window. I didn’t want today—my wedding day—to be clouded in pity. For better or for worse, this was the life I’d been given, and I was going to make the best of it.
“Mi dispiace, stellina. We only have a few more minutes . . . Do we need to have the sex talk?”
I gave her a look.
She chuckled. “I wasn’t sure what you’ve learned from Signora Tiller.”
My private tutors were old enough to be WWII survivors and stuffy enough to be virgins themselves.
I swallowed and turned back to gaze out the window with a dark secret pressing in on my chest. I’d been molested for four years of my childhood and my mother never knew. Even at eight years old, I’d known if she found out she’d try to take me and run again. I’d been terrified the next time she tried Papà would actually kill her. Now, at twenty, I couldn’t force that secret past my lips knowing how much it would upset her.
“Ricorda, mia figlia, you do not have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. You are young—Antonio will understand.”
“I’m not afraid of the marriage bed, Mamma. I’m not even nervous about it. I just want him to . . . like me.” Love me.
“Oh, stellina . . .”
My chest tightened. “Please don’t ruin this for me, Mamma.”
“You are right, I’m sorry. I think it’s time to go downstairs. Are you ready?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
My first wedding was a lavish affair, with white lilies and tulle bows as far as the eye could see. The guests cheered and threw rice at the bride and groom as we left the church.
The day was beautiful.
The mood perfect.
I was gorgeous—everyone had said so.
I was floating on a cloud of optimism. Right up until I’d gotten lost at the reception in my husband’s ten-thousand-square-foot home while trying to find the bathroom. Then that optimism shattered like glass at my feet. And all because of a crack in a door that should have been closed.
Her name was Marie Ricci.
Mid-twenties, girl-next-door looks, slightly cheap.
I knew of her only because she’d played the part of a waitress in a B-horror movie I’d had the misfortune of seeing.
Everything about her was ordinary, but it was impossible to overlook her while she kneeled in front of my husband’s office chair, his hand in her dark hair.
That was the moment the first whispers of bitterness crept into my jaded soul—watching my brand-new husband get blown by an Italian actress on our wedding day.
I drifted down the hall, my dress suddenly feeling fifty pounds heavier. I thought my husband had poor taste in sexual partners, but at least he had an amazing library. And an impressive collection of scotch. I had never had more than a sip of alcohol in my life—Papà had forbidden it—but I knew the bottle I was currently pulling the cork out of was more expensive than most people’s cars. Papà liked his liquor from so high a shelf God must have put it there Himself.
I took a drink straight from the bottle.
Sometime later, I was sitting cross-legged at the piano, playing a nursery rhyme I remembered from the lessons I’d taken as a child. I went to lift the half-empty bottle to my lips, and instead, ended up falling backward off the bench and smacking my head on the floor. Liquor spread across the oriental rug.