“You don’t want to hear about my boring complaints, do you?”
“Come on, you’re the new Don’s wife. Remember that I was a Don’s wife not too long ago, I have some experience on how this all works. Although I doubt Casso’s as bad as his father, but you never know.”
That doesn’t make me feel better.
I chew on my lip and hesitate before I sit down. That’s right, she was a Don’s wife, and I wonder if she misses her old position and the privileges that came with it. I suspect she’d take back certain things—money, power, travel, all that—but she could do without the constant fear.
“The sad thing is, I don’t feel like anyone’s wife. But I am, aren’t I?” I look at the ring on my finger and wonder why I haven’t torn it off and thrown it into the pool yet. “I went with Casso on an errand this morning. You know, for all my years living with my father, I’ve never actually witnessed him working before.”
“That’s a good thing.” Elise stretches and puts her hands above her head. Her platinum blond hair’s swept over one shoulder and she’s in a relatively modest dark blue one-piece. “Your father wouldn’t be much of a parent if he was bringing his only girl around into dangerous situations.” She glances at me, frowning deeply. “And your husband isn’t much if a husband for doing the same.”
“It’s not his fault, I practically blackmailed him into bringing me.” Which is true: I told him that if he didn’t let me come, I’d make his life harder. The idea of me acting rebellious and difficult is enough to get him to do what I want for now, which is kind of nice, but I wonder just how long I’ll retain that ability. Sooner or later, he’ll see through my bullshit and stop responding to it. “I just didn’t know he was capable of, you know.”
“What part, exactly? These men do a lot of things, girlie.” Her eyebrows are raised.
“Cruelty? No, I know he’s cruel. Violence? Brutality? I remember him as a teenager, but he’s not anymore.”
“No, he’s not,” she says, speaking quietly. She looks out over the pool and I follow her gaze. A little waterfall trickles down from the rock formation above and makes a gentle splashing. “I don’t mean to defend him with this, believe me. The last thing I want to do is make excuses. But what they do isn’t simple. It demands a lot, physically and emotionally, and I know Casso is trying his best, even if his best isn’t always obvious.”
“That almost sounds like you think he’s a decent guy.”
She laughs. “Casso’s a prince compared to his father, that’s for sure. These men, they have no support system, right? They’re thrown into a hellish, almost medieval world that demands blood and money and sacrifice and sucks all the feelings from them like a big fat black hole, and nobody’s around to listen to them talk. So they bottle it all up and it comes out in fucked-up places. I know you and Casso have a complicated past, but it might be worth thinking about your new husband in context.”
“Context.” I roll the word around my mouth. It tastes bitter on my tongue. “I’ll give you context. When I was a sophomore in high school, he was a senior. Back then Miller Academy was only tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade, so when I showed up for my first year, he’d been there for two already. And it was fine at first, I was excited to start a new school, excited to get a fancy education. But then he found me one day in the halls.”
I close my eyes and tell her exactly what I remember. I can see it all so clearly already: Casso, tall and handsome, the guy every girl wanted in that stupid, awful place. He was a shining, glorious god with a perfect smile and hair to match, and Casso just stood there, studying me, the two of us alone in some quiet out-of-the-way hall. He stepped up to me and said nothing, not a single word, only advanced until he was right there in front of me and I was pinned back against the lockers, and my heart was racing, I was so freaking scared but also weirdly excited, and he leaned down and said, I’m going to make your life fucking hell, Olivia Cuevas. That was all, nothing else. It was the first time we’d ever met, and he acted like I was his mortal enemy already, before we ever had a conversation. He walked away like nothing had happened. But that was my first introduction to Casso Bruno, and he wasn’t lying.
“He was a bastard back then,” Elise says, squinting over her sunglasses. “How bad could it have been?”