My muscles collapse, and this man my body cannot ignore pins me upright with nothing more than his gaze. My body is torn between fight and flight, pleasure and pain, fear and thrill. A heavy veil of danger floats above, covering some greater truth, and I’m not sure if I want to see behind it.
One thing is for sure.
There’s a debt owed him, and I have no idea how it’s going to be repaid.
“Come, Violetta,” he says. “Walk with me.”
As if in a trance, I let the lion lure me from my aunt and uncle’s house.
4
VIOLETTA
We’re alone on the little porch with Zia watching from the other side of the screen door.
“Where are we going?” I ask, hesitant and anxious.
“Around the corner for a bit. This way.” Santino gestures. “I just want to talk.”
The way he says “talk” feels ominous. But just around the corner is just that—around the corner. I can survive a conversation for that long. I go down the steps first and hear the screen door squeak open. Zia exits, buttoning her jacket. Her sister, Zia Donna, slings her bag over her shoulder, staring sternly at the space Santino occupies between us, without looking directly at him.
Are they coming with us?
Santino slips by me and opens the wrought-iron gate to the sidewalk. I pass it, and he holds it open for my zias, who follow looking imperious and empowered.
Santino comes to my side, and we walk down the block. The spring air is cooling, and I enjoy the chill on my skin. The night birds chirp and the highway buzzes half a mile away. My aunts walk behind, their footsteps hard on the pavement.
Once I confirm they’re following, I know the ritual. Its purpose is to provide witness if he tries to treat me dishonorably. It comes after a request for marriage. It’s courtship, and it’s terrifying.
It’s also secretly, very secretly, a little thrilling, though I still refuse to see why I’m being courted by this powerful and devastatingly handsome man.
“What do you want to talk about?” I ask. Looking at him feels impossible, so I study the street trees and the stop sign at the corner, trying to think of anything but my proximity to him.
“Tell me about yourself.” It’s not a question, but another demand in the life of a king.
“That’s a little vague.” Before the words are all out of my mouth, I can’t believe I came back at him like that. My heart races, so I focus on the cracks in the concrete instead of trying to gauge just how imposing he is.
“If the question is vague, the answer can be,” he says with a joking lilt to his voice I didn’t think he was capable of. “One for one. See?”
I sigh. I can say whatever I like, then, so I might as well start with the bullshit everyone knows.
“I was born in Naples—the same place as you. My parents died when I was five.” I glance at him when I say died instead of were shot in the street, and I don’t see much of a reaction. “So,” I continue, looking straight ahead. “We were sent here to live with my aunt and uncle.”
“Losing one parent so young is a tragedy. Losing both—”
“It’s fine,” I interrupt, which probably never happens to him, so I rush in with more words. “I was lucky to have an extended family on this side. Really. I just… I don’t like to dwell on it. When did you come over?”
I pat myself on the back for the adept change in subject.
“Five years in Napoli, then here,” he says, ignoring the question and freezing the self-congratulations. “Do you speak?”
Obviously, I know how to make words with my mouth, but in the context of the Secondo Vasto culture, that’s not what he’s asking.
“No.” I feel ashamed to admit that I come from Italy but can’t speak the language. “I understand everything. Just don’t ask me to conjugate a verb.”
Is that a smile on his face? For a moment he doesn’t look predatory or majestic. He looks like a guy with something to offer. “I can teach you.”
“I get along just fine.” Relearning Italian is literally the last thing on my mind. Speaking in English to my family means I’m simply helping them with their English. And, honestly, I don’t want anything from this man.
Well, there are several things I’d want from this man, under different circumstances, but that’s beside the point.
“I miss home.” His voice rumbles in my very veins, and yet the longing and authenticity of his sentiment softens me. “Our people, we have rules that work. We don’t need to explain them or justify. Here…maybe you don’t have this since you came young. But I arrived only eight years ago, when I was 25, and I was set in my ways. I don’t have to explain them.”
He’s 33? Jesus, that’s old. How is someone so old so attractive? It feels strange. That means the first time I saw him, he was...
“I’ve seen you before,” I blurt out. “When I was younger.” I swallow a strange lump in my throat. “Seven years ago. Eight, maybe?”
“Yes. I moved here shortly before that day.”
We’re at the second corner, and I stop there. “You remember that day?”
“I remember lots of things, but that girl in the hall, I can never forget.”
My cheeks burn pink at the honor of being so memorable, and I know right there that getting all squishy isn’t going to help me get through the second half of this conversation. With a glance behind to check on my aunts’ progress, I start walking again, trying to sound casual.
“Have you known my zio long?”
“Sure. I know a lot of people a long time.”
He’s not going to hold up his end of the conversation. That’s the true fact right now, and it humanizes him in a way.
“But my zio’s house was one of your first stops when you got here. And let’s skip the part where you say you remember lots of things.”
“I don’t like explaining. Remember that.”
Remember when I cared?
Me neither.
“So, you stop at our house practically right off the boat—”
“I took a flight.”
“—and you see me there, remember me in a crowd of children? Do you remember my sister, Rosetta? My cousin Theresa? Or Mateo and Luca?”
He laughs, but the kind that tells me I’m ridiculous, not that I’m funny. “Do I strike you as an idiot?”
That feels like a trap if there ever was one.
“Not at all. Quite the opposite. You strike me as a guy who doesn’t answer straight.”
“I can. Try again.”
We turn the corner, but it doesn’t feel like we’ll be returning to the house anytime soon. If only my head and heart could get straight how we feel about this situation.
“Okay. Tell me what you do for a living.”
“This and that.”
I laugh so hard I have to stop and bend over. When I look up, he’s smiling as if he knows exactly what cracked me up.
“Show me how to answer like an American,” he says. “Tell me what you do.”
“I’m at St. John’s University studying nursing. See? Did you note the specificity?”