by CD Reiss
This is how they work. This is how they control. This is how they do things. Capo Santino. Re Santino. He could probably have my Z’s killed this very moment if I don’t get in the car.
That thought is enough to flood total fear through every vein, every pore. There is no more anger, just fear.
“If you want to keep going to school, to be the savior in white you’ve dreamt of becoming, you can do that with my blessing. If you get in the car.”
With his fucking blessing?
“If I must force you in, and believe me, I can and will, that part of your life will be over.”
He can eat shit. He can die in a fire. He can put his own gun in his own mouth. He can rot with the worms.
“This isn’t fair.” I try to keep my voice steady and the tears at bay. “I did nothing. I am nothing. You can’t just take me away from my house, my home, my everything on a moment’s notice. I need—I need my things.”
“I will give you things. I’m not a jailer.”
“You sound like a jailer.” What is wrong with my mouth and why won’t it stop?
“I am the man who will be your husband, take care of you, and provide for you. Whether or not you get in the car.” His chiseled jaw cuts through the air like a switchblade as he leans down to be eye level with me. “The choice is yours, Violetta.”
It doesn’t sound like a choice. It sounds menacing and cold and evil.
How did I find this man so beautiful only moments ago? Shame on me. Shame on me for feeling a thrill, any excitement, like this was one of those movies I loved to watch with Rosetta. I thought I wasn’t an idiot. I told myself I wasn’t an idiot.
I am an idiot for ever believing it.
I look back once more at my zio and zia. He’s stoic as ever, holding his sobbing wife. The rest of the women have gone inside and Santino’s associates have fallen in line. Instead of looking like a ball team, they look menacing. Like a firing squad.
Nana Angelina’s the last woman on the sidewalk. She looks mostly unphased. Like this is normal. Like this is how things are supposed to be. Behind her, Elettra peers out from behind the curtains, but the glare hides her face.
If it isn’t me, it’s going to be Elettra. He’ll kill my family and take her. She’s a child, still, in all her ways. I can’t send her to the lion’s den the way I was sent.
So I gather all my resolve. Stop the trembling. Breathe to still my heart. My family did not die for me to perish under the hand of a capo. Nor did I come to live with my zio and zia only to watch them die as well. Death today and tomorrow. Not if I can stop it.
“Fine,” I say through clenched teeth. “I will get in the fucking car.”
“Good girl.”
Santino pats me on the head like a dog and gets me in the back. Another guy gets in with me. The one with the mantenuta. The door slams shut without Santino getting in. I watch him through the window as the car pulls away.
“Buckle in,” Mr. Mantenuta says.
A retort sticks in my throat like a wad of cotton. We’re down the block when he reaches over me and slams my buckle home.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he says.
I do something I’ve never done before. It comes from someplace so deep and primitive that it circumvents everything I’ve ever been taught by a shortened, evolutionary route.
I punch him in the mouth. His eyes widen, and the driver laughs so loudly I’m shocked out of the adrenaline rush that rewired my brain. Mr. Mantenuta puts his hand to his mouth. It comes back bloody from the inside, where he bit it.
Then he laughs too, and I know I’ll never beat these guys with adrenaline and rage.
I’m not sure what else I have.
5
VIOLETTA
On the drive, I try to memorize every detail so I can go home, get my family, and run away to the Bahamas or Malta. We can live on the beach and Zia and I can sell coconuts. I’ll forgive Zio for selling me and he’ll build little huts for us to rent. But I can barely see, barely identify what’s around me—because my heart is too busy pushing against my lungs to pay attention.
It’s both shorter and longer than I expected to be in the car. Mileage wise, we can’t have traveled terribly far. Still around the city. Not four states away, like I expect. But it’s also the longest drive I’ve ever endured, and then we stop at an iron gate at the edge of the city. It opens to a startingly modern white house with right angles and plate glass windows revealing stark, well-lit rooms. It’s shaped like a half-done Lego set. Very modern, very polished, very expensive.
Mr. Mantenuta reaches over and punches my seat belt open. He smiles at me with a fat lip, as if it’s neither his first nor his last. There’s no vengeance in it. No shame. No bruised male ego. Getting punched in the face is just part of the job.
A man the size of an antique armoire walks out the front door and escorts me out of the car. Fat Lip walks behind me. I’m trapped between mountains of testosterone, and when I stop to see what they’ll do, the guy behind me gently takes me by the shoulders and pushes me forward.
Running gets me nowhere. I can’t forget that. I need a plan. I need to think, but I can’t. Fear, anticipation, rage, and shame tangle like a ball of steel wool.
The men lead me into the house, which is all clean lines, brushed metal, white walls. The architecture’s one step warmer than an Apple Store, but the furniture’s one-hundred-percent Italianate, gold-painted, velvet-covered embarrassment, inlaid with more swirls than a custard shop.
The man of the house is nowhere to be found.
Fat Lip stays downstairs while The Armoire leads us upstairs on a teak staircase, down a length of hallway with an ornate half-circle card table pushed to the side and a plate glass window at the end, and finally stops outside a door. He unlocks it by pushing beepy numbers on a keypad with sausage fingers that dwarf the buttons.
“Name’s Armando,” he says, letting his hand slide off the tiny (but actually normal) doorknob without opening the door. I must look like a refugee or something because his expression goes soft. “Listen, it’s gonna be okay.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Yeah. True.” He holds up hands the size of dinner plates. “My ma was done the same as you. She was hanging laundry, minding her own business when they dragged her off. She laughs now but she wasn’t laughing then. It turned out okay.”
If I could reach his face, I’d punch it. He’s got a lot of nerve using his mother’s story to tell me I’m going to be fine. It’s like saying you were in a fender bender last year, so getting t-boned tomorrow’s going to be a cakewalk.
“Re Santino’s a good guy,” Armando the Armoire adds. “Once you get to know him.”
He’s trying to sell me a pile of shit by calling it a chocolate cake.
“I’m not going to get to know him.”
Armando’s not much of a poker player, and I can tell he’s got a lot to say. I’m just too scared to listen.
“Help me get out of here,” I whisper.
He shakes his head and swings the door open.
“You need anything, just knock on the door. Someone will come.”
I stand in the hall. The room has the same florid furniture as the rest of the house. Canopy bed, dresser that’s curved in the front. Wall of windows with no curtains open to the night sky, where the moon hangs over the horizon like a cold eye in the sky.
“On the tears of our Lady of Carmel,” Armando says. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you while I’m here.”
Why do I believe him, except that I need to? He might be the one to shoot my zia, or deliver me to the church, but if I don’t believe him now, I’ll lose all hope of salvation.
So, I let myself be drawn by the moon, and step inside.
Behind me, the deadbolt sounds like a gun cocking. This room is too small. Too dark. Too confining. The big window that stretches across the wall is a lie. A tormenting tease of freedom.
I’ll die in this room. I can feel it. In the middle of the night, a man will unl
ock the door and come in. With a steely weapon or efficient hands, he’ll send me to join the rest of my family. My parents. My sister. I’m the last, and then there will be none.
It’ll be messy, bloody, I can see it all happening on the bed. I can feel the squeeze of hands around my neck.
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” I whimper. He never would have let this happen. He would have fought it with the last of his life.
“Calm down. Calm down. Calm down,” I whisper, the words barely catching air from my lips, plummeting to the ground like dead baby birds. “Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.”
What would Scarlett say?
Just thinking of the best friend I’ll never see again constricts the muscles of my heart. But she’d tell me to breathe. She’d tell me to look at it from another angle. She’d tell me to find my silver lining.
“Where’s the fucking silver lining here?” I ask the moon, but she just stares at me with an eye older than humanity.
The window wall overlooks a pool. The rectangle glows turquoise and the patio furniture around it matches the modernity of the house, as does the stocked bar off to the side. It was begging to be enjoyed. It would be gorgeous and absolutely perfect if it wasn’t the view from my jail cell.
There has to be a misunderstanding here, that’s all. The hulking men, the invisible guns, the locked door. I came willingly. I got in the car. I did what I was told.
After they rape me, will they say I came for it willingly?
I shudder. My first sexual experience will be forced, and they’ll say I wanted it.
“Get your shit together,” I snarl to myself.
What’s the first thing they do in the movies, when someone is kidnapped or held against their will?
Explore and survey the room.
Find assets.
Find points of escape.
This house feels entirely too large and too new for Santino.. It’s scrubbed and modern, but the furniture’s straight up old country. There’s a reason, but there also might be a space to slip through.
Santino doesn’t like the house. If he did, he would have matched the furniture. So, maybe he doesn’t know it as well as he should. Maybe I can find a way out that he can’t see, but I have to calm down.
I rest my head against the glass and breathe. I will be free. I will escape. It may take time, but I will escape. The moment I stop saying these words to myself is the moment my life is over, and it’s not over yet. I turn and face my prison.
My eyes have adjusted, and now the light of the moon is more than enough to see what I’m dealing with. The furniture is straight out of Napoli. Curved, deep reds and golds, heavy and wooden. Poor Nana’s idea of hand-carved, gold-painted, rich people things. The illusion of wealth, Zio used to say.
The bathroom is stark white with a shower, tub, and toilet. A new toothbrush sits on the vanity, and when I see my face in the mirror, I shut the light before I freak myself out.
Queen-size four-poster bed against one wall with damask bedspread and silk canopy. The rolltop desk in the corner doesn’t hold anything weapon-sharp…or anything at all. I open the dresser drawers, expecting them to be empty, but they’re full of clothes.
Nice pieces I could never afford, judging by the tags, but the style is nothing like I expected. Or would have chosen. It’s not archaically Italian, but it’s not flattering. Boxy. Marmish. Bloomers and blouses.
Holy shit. I’m not the first. I lose control of my body, hands shaking, losing the strength in my legs, I almost collapse, until I see a tag hanging from the armpit of a bathing suit.
I realize the underwear is still boxed and the socks are still bunched in threes with plastic hooks atop the cardboard wrapped around them.
I throw open the closet door, and a motion-sensor light flicks on. It’s huge inside, and like the drawers, contains rows and racks of things I’d never wear, all new, all expensive, all in my size.
Santino knew I was coming. He’d prepared.
Fuck.
A loud splash echoes from below, and I run to the window to look down at the pool. In a tight black bathing suit, my captor slices through the water like a javelin. His body is long and lean, tightly coiled under the shimmering surface. He’s a missile of speed and grace, underwater for the entire length of the pool.
My palms press against the glass, blocking him out, erasing him so I can imagine a world without his brutality in it.
It’s useless. He has to know I’m up here, but he doesn’t even glance up at the woman whose life he just ruined.
That is perhaps his deepest cruelty.
After a few laps, he springs to the surface of the opposite side, shakes his hair out, and pulls himself out of the water. He takes a towel from a smooth wooden trunk, dries off, and walks back inside without looking up once.
No reassurance. No apology for his staff manhandling me like a criminal. No acknowledgement whatsoever. As if I’m nothing to him but the repayment of my uncle’s debts.
He had no right to take me, even by our rules, yet he did.
I’m a prisoner of a man too beautiful for human eyes and more evil than I can comprehend.
My eyelids droop and my limbs lose strength. I’m sapped of every bit of energy so quickly I can barely keep myself upright.
I know trauma shock when I see it, and right now, my body’s shutting down for its own survival. I can’t fight it, but I don’t want to get into the bed he prepared for me. Under his covers, his tacky damask sheets. I’m not going to wear the nightgowns he imagined for me or bathe in the water pushed through his pipes. When I pee, I don’t let my ass touch his toilet and my teeth won’t fall out if I skip a night brushing.
Exhausted, traumatized, and deep in shock, I drag myself to the corner and fall asleep with my back to the wall and my ass on the floor. I’m unconscious before I can even get uncomfortable.
6
VIOLETTA
“Hi,” the moon says in the voice of Elettra. “Hey, Violetta?”
Am I even sleeping? Of course I am. I was up all night in some traumatized fugue, and it was all a dream and now I have to get up and make a big dinner. Zio will tell me to study and Zia will demand my help in the kitchen. Then Santino will show up and take me away.
“Come on,” Elettra says, but not from the moon this time. “You have to get up.”
Opening my eyes is the biggest mistake of my life, because the first thing I see is the damask on the queen-size bed. I had no color in the moonlight, but the day illuminates the red and gold the night hid.
“I have your dress,” the voice says. It’s not Elettra, and she’s not speaking English. It’s Italian. I translated it in my sleep.
She’s about seventeen with curly brown hair and big brown eyes. Her brows are trimmed and her lips are full and lined. She seems fucking delighted to be here. Great. Another psychopath.
“Who are you?” I ask in English. She takes a moment to understand me and answers haltingly in my language.
“I am Gia.” She presses her hand to her chest.
“Go away, Gia.” I try to crawl into the corner, but all that does is make me realize how much my body aches. She turns to the open closet door, the top of which I can see over the ridge of the bed, then back to me.
“Re Santino said I have to…nnn.” She shakes her hands as if they’re wet and she can’t find the towel. “How do you say…?” Her face twists in distress.
“You can speak Italian. I understand. Io capire.” I don’t bother to conjugate the verb, but I know she gets it when her hands go still, and she looks relieved.
“Allora,” she stands. “I understand if you talk slow. And anyway, I have to practice.”
“Fine.”
“I picked a dress. I hope you like it!”
“What dress?” I stretch my legs, but I’m not ready to get up. If I stand, I’ll have to leave the hope that this is all a dream.
Gia goes around the bed and plucks something off the inside hook of the closet door and drags the lo
ng bag along the floor. I can’t really see it in the bag, but I don’t have to. It’s a wedding dress.
“No,” I say, hugging my knees.
She unzips the bag. “It’s from Avanti!”
I’ve never heard of Avanti and I never want to, but Gia wiggles the dress between the zipper teeth, exposing a hideous tiered lace and satin thing. It offends me. Not just because I was supposed to choose my wedding gown, and if I had, it wouldn’t look anything like this. I’m offended by its existence on Earth.
Gia reads me like a book.
“You don’t like it.” Her arms drop, bending the dress against the floor.
“Burn it.”
“Wait!” She throws the gross cake-frosting white gown over the bed and runs back to the closet. “Okay so Santino and I argued…” She comes back with another garment bag. “And I swore the Avanti was better but he insisted I show you both.”
She unzips the second one, and I wait to tell her I’m going to shred it with my bare hands, then burn it. It was the one he wanted. They argued and he insisted on this one so if the first one was an offense…the second one is…wait.
They argued?
Re Santino—the king—argued with a teenage girl and didn’t demand it had to be his way or the highway?
The crack in my perception appears just as Gia gets the dress out of the bag. It’s a moment of weakness that puts all my judgement into parsing the circumstances under which Santino allows dissent, and that dress just crawls right in.
It’s fine antique lace, slim from the shoulder straps to the hips and gently flared to the floor. Gia pulls another hanger out from behind it to reveal a little matching jacket and veil.
If I could choose a dress for my wedding to a man I know and love, this would be it. I stand and reach out for it, snapping my hand back before my skin meets the lace.
“No.”
“No?” Gia’s stricken.
“I don’t want to marry him, and I don’t want to wear a dress he picked out for me. As a matter of fact, him picking it makes it worse. It’s hideous. It’s the most disgusting thing in the world, and I won’t wear it.”