That day I had stood in front of the man who was introduced to me as my future husband. Lorenzo Montorini. Those words from my father should have been the worst possible thing he could have said to his only daughter, but they weren’t. As if it were even possible, things continued to go downhill from there.
At least I was a beautiful bride. Everyone said so. The dress was something covered in crystals and lace. It was obscenely expensive, apparently flown in from Milan. It went down to the floor in the front and in the back had a long train. When I saw it for the first time, the day of the wedding, it was difficult to be angry that I had been excluded from the wedding preparations. It was gorgeous. Even Lorenzo had had a visible reaction to seeing me in the dress. I know I had one when I saw him in his tux.
If the man looked good in a suit, he looked even better in a tuxedo. In the room with my father and him, I had attributed the fact that he was so intimidating to the fact that he was so tall. He towered over me, even though I wore heels, both that day and the day of the wedding. Though his height played a part, it was also the air he had about him. He was confident—palpably confident—and sure of himself.
His presence was suffocating. His eyes felt like lasers burning my skin as he looked at me. He had smiled at me in a way I had originally thought was encouraging as I walked down the aisle. I was able to keep it together until he lifted my veil, and he held my hand as he said his vows and put the ring on my finger.
To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.
That was when the tears came. To my credit, I didn’t bawl like a baby as this man—whom I didn’t know—put a ring on my finger. The tears just ran down my cheeks, completely powerless against my waterproof bridal makeup. Another bright idea I couldn’t take credit for. I was so scared. I was scared shitless. What do you mean I have to commit my life and happiness to a complete stranger? I didn’t even know his middle name. I suppose it was dumb luck that people cry at weddings all the time. Lorenzo had reached a thumb out and wiped one of my cheeks, saying it was okay. The pastor made some sort of foolish quip about how overwhelmed the bride was to be marrying her beloved. I would have rolled my eyes if I wasn’t crying so much.
The only reason I hadn’t had a panic attack was because my body was probably in shock from everything I had learned up to that point. That—and Lorenzo had kissed me. I hadn’t thought about that part of the wedding until I heard the words from the pastor’s mouth. Could you blame me? This guy was a stranger. The people in attendance at the wedding were only closest friends and family; it was not a secret that he and I had just met. None of them knew me except by name. That wasn’t enough of a deterrent for Lorenzo though. No. He had looked me dead in the eye and held me by the back of my neck.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he had said to the pastor’s prompt to kiss the bride. His lips covered mine and moved against mine in a way that elicited hoots and applause from the wedding guests. I can’t claim to be innocent because I kissed him back.
Why the hell not. We were married, weren’t we? I could touch him however I wanted.
My married bliss lasted the exact duration of the kiss. We were given a short, four-day-long honeymoon, which was the first time we got to be alone together. Our first night together was the hottest I have had in my recorded twenty-seven years of life. I wasn’t a virgin, but I had never been handled the way he had handled me. I had gathered that Lorenzo was probably attracted to me, at least on a physical level. We had to be riding on the high from the ceremony. That and probably the ‘duty’ we both felt to consummate our marriage. It wasn’t that hard getting into the mood in our Hawaiian honeymoon suite. The days that followed, till we eventually got back to the city, were made up of me waking up to an empty bed and returning to the room for bed to find him already asleep.
I had only lived with a man once before, and it had been fine. That was because that man was neither my husband, nor was he Lorenzo. Lorenzo had two extremes; he either completely ignored me, or he teased and goaded me enough to start a fight. We were so badly suited. We could hardly stand each other. He had been born and raised in New York, but he talked to me as if we were in 1900s in Sicily.
One thing he made clear to me repeatedly was that I didn’t measure up to what he wanted in a wife. He didn’t say it in as many words, but he definitely implied it whenever he would tell me he wanted me doing the dishes because it kept me in line, and when he would insist that I stay home instead of working because his job was more than sufficient to support us.
The kind of woman he wanted didn’t exist. The last one died in the 1950s. He was real big on traditional gender roles, meaning he didn’t like the fact that I had a job where I used my hands and made my own money. He, at the same time, wanted me to be his Suzy Homemaker while he went out to work or whatever it was that he did all day. He never told me.
What was worse was my dad supported him. He’d married me off and had become my husband’s greatest ally. He agreed with Lorenzo that I shouldn’t work anymore, which nearly blew me down because I worked for him at his restaurant.
The features in food and drink magazines. The chef interviews, the clientele who paid through the nose to sit at my chef’s table and enjoy a VIP menu, he was ready to throw that all away so I could become Lorenzo Montorini’s Stepford wife. What was it? Were the Montorinis the highest bidders? If he was going to marry me off, there had to be something in it for him. I was his only child. His only daughter. His little girl. If those things didn’t matter, I was the reason his restaurant had been getting rave reviews and VIP patrons. It cut me deep to think that he didn’t care about those things, didn’t care about me.
The manicure I had gotten for the wedding had been deteriorating with every plate I scrubbed. My hands were perpetually dry, and the multitude of nicks and cuts I had gotten from knives and cracked glasses left flaky healing marks. I would leave the Band-Aid on till I had finished the dishes then get rid of it.
How did this become my life?
I had experienced every emotion in the book, brief sparks of satisfied happiness when Lorenzo kissed me at our wedding, loss and sadness when I realized we would be getting married, disgust, anger, even embarrassment. Now I was just bitter. Bitter that this was the way things had turned out. Bitter that I was married to someone because my father had made an enemy out of someone he should not have. Bitter because the feelings of two old men, honor, or justice, or something else vague like that meant I had to become someone’s wife.
The same for Lorenzo, too. He was his father’s offering lamb, slain on the altar. Both of us were paying for the fact that our fathers couldn’t play nice together. And it was not right.
Chapter Two
Lorenzo
D’Agostino was an...interesting man, but he was generally one of high repute. He’d been a thorn in my family’s side for decades, but I trusted his pedigree and his breeding.
How the hell was it that he and his wife managed to raise a woman like Isa?
What kind of girl didn’t know how to do the dishes?
At least she could cook. Of course, she knew how to cook, she was a chef for Christ’s sake before we got married. She was no slouch either. She’d trained in Europe and could cook French and Italian cuisine perfectly. She always asked me whether the food was good when she made it for me. It was, but I’d never admit it.
Sitting around the table with my guests, I heard the clinks and bangs from the kitchen. She had been in there all night at my request, but really I thought she would have been done by now. What was she still doing in there? Breaking more of my dishes most likely. Cursing my name. Cursing our fathers for setting us up in the first place.
As far as arranged marriages went, it could have been a lot worse. She was a decent housemate. She didn’t snore, and she didn’t have any disgusting habits that got on my nerves. She didn’t do anything particularly weird like practice nudism or demand all the windows remain open at night to help her sleep.
Our fathers were who they were, so we were who we were. She had probably taken it much better than other girls in her position would. I mean, there was the whole little fact that she had managed to live most of her life without knowing the truth of her family business. If she had known how our families knew each other and how it was that her dad had been putting food on the table since she was a little girl, then maybe, she would have reacted better.
She did react better than I did though. I almost felt sorry for her in that room when her father broke the news to her. She looked so insulted, like someone had just called her and her mother a bitch. She would have looked less shocked if you told her that her whole life had been a simulation like ‘The Truman Show.’ If you thought about it… it sort of had all been a simulation.
The truth had been hidden from her, and her reaction was warranted. She was probably too much of a lady to really get into it with her dad though. I knew what my family did, where our fortune had come from, and still, the news that I was going to be married to Alfonso D’Agostino’s daughter was some of the most hideous words out of my father’s mouth.
We had fought before. I was my father’s son. As a matter of principle, we never had guns on us when we did, but he had raised his hand to me more than once. He was my father. It was his right to do it. The fight that followed the news of my marriage was one of the worst knock-down, drag-out affairs we’d ever had. I knew that, because of who we were, I couldn’t just marry anyone.
Lorenzo Montorini. That was me. My life was set the moment my father fucked my mother without a condom twenty-eight years ago. I had known that my parents would have a say in who it was that I ended up bringing into the family, but fuck, it wasn’t supposed to go this way. I knew I was my father’s son, but I hadn’t been a boy for a long time. We were men. Both of us. And what he did was foul. Would it have been so hard to ask me first? Would it have been so hard to let me go for Isa and make her fall for me myself? I didn’t want another man to be the person who was responsible for my marriage, even if it was my father. He wasn’t going to be with us in our bed every night, so I didn’t need him to hold my hand and lead me to my future wife.
My wife.
Shit, I hadn’t even been thinking about marriage when he sprang it on me. I think the thing that was the most insulting was the fact that he hadn’t even told me first. He had told Alfonso first. They had made the arrangement between themselves, and then they had come to me, as a courtesy, just to inform me that my wedding was coming up and I had to go get fitted for a tux.
Dad had been insistent. It was Isa or nothing. I was going to marry the D’Agostino girl or we were done, he and I. I would be disinherited, and I would no longer be able to call myself Antonio Montorini’s son. What was so great about the girl anyway? Why did it have to be her? It would probably insult her a little if she found out, but she just happened to have been the daughter of the man my father wanted on his side the most. If it was anyone else who was causing my father as much grief as Alfonso D’Agostino was, it would have been their daughter. It was just bad luck that her father happened to be at the top of my father’s hate list. His men had gotten too close and a few guns had gone off, fired from both sides. Instead of taking the losses, he had come up with an unorthodox plan B. If you can’t beat them, marry your son to their only daughter and create an empire.
D’Agostino’s daughter, Isa, was… straight up, not the kind of woman I would have considered to become Mrs. Lorenzo Montorini. She was indelicate and strong willed. She was belligerent and hot tempered. She was bitchy, but fuck, she was beautiful. That was a simple fact. It didn’t matter if I thought so or not because it was indisputable as the truth. She was gorgeous.
Her hair was the same color as dark chocolate, long down her back like a woman’s hair should be. Her skin was olive and colored beautifully by the sun. Flawless, besides a light dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose, which were easily covered with makeup or could be eliminated by a visit to the dermatologist. They were charming though. She could keep them. She was sharp and striking while remaining feminine. I would bet money too that that was her original face. Straight nose with a delicate upturned tip, rose-colored full lips, green eyes which stood out against her dark features. Who could hold a candle? Who could compete?
Her body was the icing on the cake. Her curves swelled and dipped perfectly. Amazing tits, enough for a generous handful. Spare waist and beautifully rounded hips and rear. Her legs were long, but she wasn’t too tall. She was tall enough that her head came up to my chin when she wore heels. She had to look up at me when she wanted to speak to me.
She was by far the most beautiful woman at the table, even if she was not really at the table but in the kitchen. Never in my life had I had to pay so much money to get broken dishes replaced as I had since Isa moved in. I wasn’t keeping count so she could pay me back, but let’s just say, I wouldn’t be letting her near the china tea set my mother gave us as a wedding present.
She had been so angry when she heard the news. Her eyes had flashed, and she had talked to her father in a way that would have gotten her put over one knee if she was still a child. She had more or less come around by the time it was our wedding day. She had looked nervous, and she had cried during the vows. I knew it was because marrying me was the last thing she wanted to do, but our guests ate it up. Lorenzo’s blushing bride. She is so innocent, look how she cried when he put the ring on her finger.
As a wife, she was sort of a disappointment. It wasn’t even that I didn’t like her; it was that she didn’t seem to be trying. We were like roommates. I could understand that we had just met and maybe the whole arrangement was a lot for her to adjust to in a short time, but the least she could do was try and act like she wanted to make it work. How was I supposed to if it was one-sided?
I mean, she was married to me. I had certain domestic expectations of her, but she wasn’t living in some shack in the middle of nowhere. All she had to do was say the word and she could have anything she wanted. We lived on East Seventy-fourth Street, we weren’t exactly slumming it. I thought she would have at least began some level of renovation on the townhouse or began filling it with art and furnishings she bought by way of retail therapy. She had done nothing of the sort, and it became obvious after a while that she wasn’t charmed by gift boxes and expensive price tags.
What did that mean? That I actually had to try?
At least she hadn’t tried to make excuses on the wedding night. It would have been too much if she had tried to refuse me on our wedding night. At least I could tell people I was married and it was true. I could understand that she was upset, but she had to get with the program. She was someone’s wife now. My wife. Forces more powerful than both of us had brought us together, and that was the way that it had to be. That was the way that it was going to be. I hadn’t envisioned myself getting married before I turned thirty. She and I both found out about the arrangement on the same day.
How was it that the most civil I had ever seen our fathers act towards each other was when they were arranging their children’s marriage? It had been my dad’s idea. Isa was D’Agostino’s only child, so he must have been desperate to agree to the marriage. It was a peace treaty, the two of us. It made the D’Agostinos and Montorinis a team, united against those who tried to move in on our territories.
Isa was beautiful in a way that shone through even when she didn’t try. First thing in the morning, when I would come downstairs and find her cooking breakfast, her skin was flawless and shone. Her eyes were bright and her hair, even if it was up, was never frizzy. I definitely took pride in that. My beautiful wife. My beautiful Isa. I got a lot of compliments on the way she looked, the way we looked together.
The platinum wedding band on my finger did little to deter women from flirting with me, however. A couple women at the table tonight even tried to come onto me, in the house I shared with my wife, eating the food that she had prepared. If there was a list of women who desired
me the most, Isa would probably be dead last.
I gently moved Elissa’s hand from my arm and cleared my wine glass. Speaking of the new Mrs. Lorenzo Montorini, Elissa was probably the saltiest about the new arrangement. It had been ages since she and I had been together, but she never let me forget it. She would have loved to be my Mrs. Montorini. Isa could look to her for some tips. Enthusiasm and eagerness. Maybe gratefulness and submission.
She was Isa’s direct opposite. She had the stature and build of a model. Tall and willowy, underfed in that way that is trendy on high fashion runways. Her hair was black, she would dye it and her employment status was ‘gainfully unemployed.’ There was always someone with long money and deep pockets that kept her in designer dresses, and I knew she wanted it to be me. If a wife was all I needed, I wouldn’t even have been that mad if my dad had selected Elissa.
Too bad she wasn’t a D’Agostino.
I wondered how Isa would feel if she saw Elissa all over me the way she was. If she knew what was good for her, she would be jealous, but whom was I kidding? How did I know she didn’t have men flirting with her despite the fact that we were married? It had only been two weeks, and she was still upset. We lived together; she had to come around some time; she had no choice. Besides, I had ways to convince her.
Vicious: Steel Jockeys MC Page 46