It was true. Although she hadn’t brought home that first bouquet from the Grace Hotel, she hadn’t been able to pass up others. At the store. On the street. New York was full of flower stands she’s never noticed before. Every corner deli stacked flowers on its sidewalks, bursting with bright yellows, reds, pinks, and every other dyed color under the rainbow. For the last two months, everywhere she walked, there they were, peeking through the gloom. Friendly scarlet reminders of the fact that she, Nina Evelyn Astor de Vries…yes, Gardner…could still experience passion. Pleasure. Joy.
Even if just for one night.
“I like them,” Nina said as she stared at the bud clutched between her husband’s fat fingers. Her hands curled with the resistance to snatch it back.
Calvin wrinkled his stubby nose. “Cheap garbage. It doesn’t even smell anymore.” He tossed it on the sideboard below the array of more fragrant long stems.
Nina picked it back up and held it to her nose. It was cheap. Paired with a sprig of baby’s breath, it probably cost Matthew a dollar on his way to the opera house. The deli flowers lost their scent before they reached the city and would maybe last two, three days at most after Nina set them in the hideous Baccarat vase Calvin’s mother had given them as a wedding present. Her own private joke. The horrible woman had been a social climber of the worst kind, absolutely transparent in her desire for splashy wealth. Gone now, but she would have hated seeing such cheap, ordinary flowers in the gaudy thing.
A pair of thick hands encircled her waist. Calvin’s stomach reached the small of her back before the rest of him found her.
Nina shuddered.
“Well, if you’re going to wear a whore’s dress,” he said with breath hot on her neck. “Might as well play the whore.”
She tried to shake her head. “Please. I’m very tired.”
“Come on, princess. Time to come out of your castle. The common folk need to see you.”
It was a game he had always played. She was a princess in more ways than one. The daughter of not one, but two New York dynasties. An “ice princess” too, according to the gossip mags and nearly every man she’d known. Only two had ever succeeded in making her thaw. One had given her a daughter and a broken heart. The other she wasn’t sure she would ever get over.
I’ll be your friend, Matthew had said.
The fact that she needed one enough to say yes broke her heart even more.
The zipper was drawn down her back. “Let’s get this trash off you.”
When Nina glanced over her shoulder, Calvin’s eyes had that strange glaze about them. She tried not to shrink. She knew what that look meant.
“Oh, please,” she whispered. “Please, not tonight. Calvin, I’m so tired.”
“Do you really think you can prance around the city in that thing and get away with it at home?”
He whirled her around and shoved her against the sideboard hard enough that the polished teak bit into the small of her back. It would leave a bruise, along with several others come morning.
Calvin took each side of her dress and yanked. The fabric was delicate, but didn’t tear.
His expression flared as he shoved the material awkwardly to her waist. Nina resisted the urge to cover herself. It would only goad him more.
Tell him to stop, doll. You don’t have to take that.
Except in her heart of hearts, she knew that she did.
Mommy?
There was the other voice that always existed in the depths of her soul. She would never forget that day, only four years ago.
“Mommy? Is Daddy—is he hurting you?”
Calvin froze over Nina, where she was curled on the floor. Her skirt was ripped up one leg, and she would have a nasty bruise over her ribs in the morning. But nothing was visible. Nothing—quite—incriminating could be seen.
Calvin scrambled up, back turned to his daughter as he did up his pants. “Olivia!” he barked. “Go to your room. This is private!”
But Olivia just ignored him and rushed across the room, casting a suspicious look toward the man she knew as “Daddy” before allowing her mother to draw her close.
Behind her, Calvin shoved a thick hand through his thinning hair and shook his head with menace before he looked at Olivia. His meaning was clear. One word, and he would tell her everything. He would break the little girl’s heart. And Nina would lose her daughter’s trust forever.
Nina pulled Olivia close and peppered her face with kisses.
“No, darling,” she told her. “Mommy’s fine. I just fell, and Daddy was helping me get up.”
“But it looked like he pushed you down. He was on top of you. His hand was—”
“Shhhhh.”
Nina kept Olivia’s face pressed to her shoulder and stroked her hair so her daughter couldn’t see her break. Calvin was now absorbed with his phone, but he kept checking every so often to make sure Nina wasn’t saying anything wrong. He, of course, didn’t offer the girl the slightest bit of comfort.
“Don’t worry, my love,” Nina whispered as she clutched the child close. “It will be all right. I promise.”
She sent her away the next week. They had both cried when she dropped her off at Andover, four hours from the city. But better Olivia shed a few tears than stay here. Particularly if she grew into the girl Nina had every certainty she would.
“What the hell is wrong with this thing?” Calvin pulled and prodded Nina’s dress, struggling with the fabric until the bodice was awkwardly yanked over one of her breasts, the rest of her skirt bunched around her waist.
Would he notice the scent of the man all over her? Or would her subtle perfume, the scent of roses, and his own myopia keep Calvin from seeing what was right in front of him—his wife, painted in the colors of another man’s pleasure?
He grabbed her breasts with the caress of a toddler. He didn’t twist them roughly. Not yet.
He reached down and started playing with himself furiously, but, as she could have predicted, nothing happened.
He would need more.
He always needed more.
And if she didn’t give it to him, she would pay the price.
Tonight there was no doubt she would cry by the end. Her emotions were barely in check as it was.
Calvin’s tastes, however, meant he would take her tears as a sign of victory, not distress. And with any luck, it would make him more merciful than usual. He never lasted long on the nights when she broke.
“All right,” she murmured as she closed her eyes. “But remember, not the face.”
Act III
Aria
Chapter Twenty-One
“Uncle Mattie, Uncle Mattie, WAKE UP!”
Fifty pounds of solid-brick boy landed on my stomach with a thwack, knocking all the wind out of me before my eyes were even open.
“Christ!” I croaked as I rolled my nephew Pete onto the floor with a thud. “What the hell is your mother feeding you, kid?”
“Right now? Prob’ly cereal.” Pete popped up from the Oriental rug looking like a jack-o-lantern with his two bottom teeth missing. “She says it’s time to get up. We’re leaving in forty-five minutes, and Daddy says God don’t like it when we’re late to his party.”
With a groan, I pushed myself up from my grandmother’s sofa and set my feet on the floor, then bent over while the blood rushed from my head. Good fuckin’ God. I was really too old to be spending two nights in a row on Nonna’s couch and definitely too old to be this hungover. But the alternative—pacing around my room until I lost my nerve and went back to the Upper East Side to beg—wasn’t an option. Nonna had taken one look at me when I arrived Friday night, made up the couch, and put me to work for the rest of the weekend. She knew the look of the Zola men when they needed some healthy distraction. I just never thought I’d be one of the ones who couldn’t find it myself.
“Mattie!”
I pressed a hand to my temples as my sister bustled into the room.
“Jesus, Lea, I’m up, I�
�m up. You don’t need to yell.”
“Mattie, we’ve been calling your name for the last fifteen minutes. How much bourbon did you put down with the boys last night?”
“Not that much.” I eyed the pot she was carrying distrustfully. It smelled like it was full of mushy oatmeal and was not doing good things to my roiling stomach. “Nonna know you’re burning her favorite saucepan?”
“Nonna is upstairs ironing your damn shirt like you’re a child while I make everyone breakfast,” Lea retorted as she stirred the oatmeal. “We’re here to walk her to church, like we do every Sunday, and the boys haven’t eaten yet.”
I noticed she didn’t answer the question.
“That looks like puke!” Pete shouted as he screamed out of the room.
“Come eat,” Lea ordered me. “The boys say they won’t until you do.”
I pushed myself off the couch. “Fine, fine. I’m up. Did you at least make some coffee too?”
I followed Lea back into the kitchen, which was crowded with gremlins shoving oatmeal into their faces (and at each other) while Michael, their father, looked at his phone. Tommy made like he was going to fling a glob of that crap at my face until I drew a finger playfully across my neck. He giggled and went back to eating his breakfast.
“Nonna said you stayed all weekend,” Lea said as she poured my coffee.
I took the cup gladly. Fuck, I needed some caffeine.
“Ah, yeah,” I said. “She needed the bathroom re-caulked, so I helped her out.”
“Funny, since Michael just did the bathroom for her three months ago. You saying his work was messed up or something?”
Michael looked up at the mention of his name. “What’s wrong with my caulk?”
“Cock!” shouted Pete. “Something’s wrong with Daddy’s cock!”
“Caulk!” Michael snapped at his son. “Caulk, not cock, Pete.”
“Cock, cock, cock,” muttered MJ, the youngest, while he spooned his cereal happily.
“See what you did, Lea?” Michael said. “Now you got the boys talking about cock on a Sunday. What’s Father Deflorio going to say when one of ’em start asking about Jesus’s privates in the middle of Mass?”
I cleared my throat. “He’s heard worse, Mike. And your, ah, work was fine. Honestly, I think Nonna was just a little paranoid about the color.”
“She said you showed up late Friday in a tux.” Lea examined the undershirt and pair of boxers I’d slept in like they were secretly masking the formalwear I’d fought not to throw in the fireplace.
I took another long sip of coffee before answering. “I went to the opera with a friend. Decided to come up here instead of going home since Nonna said she needed some help.”
Lea’s eyes narrowed like she didn’t believe me. I didn’t blame her. Considering she and Michael lived only a few blocks away, he was the fix-it guy around here these days, and the fact was a point of pride for both of them.
But I wasn’t about to tell her the real reason I’d fled to my grandmother’s house on Friday night and made use of my old CUNY t-shirts and hole-ridden sweatpants for two days. I wasn’t going to detail how I’d wandered around the botanical gardens for hours yesterday, barely avoided hurling my phone into the fountain, then spent a full hour in confession before drinking far too much bourbon with Michael and his friends. Staying in the Bronx meant I didn’t have to go home to Frankie’s third degree. It meant I didn’t have to watch her with Sofia and be reminded of the cute blonde girl who should have been mine. It meant I could surround myself with errands and church and bullshit conversation instead of the empty white room that seemed so much emptier now that I’d seen Nina in it.
I had to let her go. That was all there was to it. I had to let Nina go.
It just felt like I was tearing out both of my lungs to do it.
“How’d you end up last night?” I asked Michael, avoiding Lea’s death glare.
Michael looked up from his phone again. “Ah, shi—I mean, not so hot. Finished the night twenty down.”
Lea set the coffee back on its stand with a clatter. “Excuse me? I thought you were watching the game, Michael.”
Michael held up his hands in surrender. “Babe, I was with the guys, and you know how it is. Mattie was there too. Just a friendly game of poker, like we always do. Last time I brought home a hundred and you didn’t argue with that.”
“Mattie, can you talk some sense into him? Remind him that gambling is illegal in New York? Maybe you should call your friends with the NYPD and have them do a raid on Jason Russo’s house first Saturday of the month, eh?”
“Can we come?” Tommy asked, and immediately started miming like he was holding a Glock, CSI-style.
“What the hell are you letting him watch, Michael?” Lea started. “First the gambling, and now my baby boy is playing with guns?”
“Lea, it’s just boys being boys. He could have picked that up anywhere.”
“But he didn’t, did he?”
“Christ, Lea!”
“Daddy!”
“I’m going upstairs to change.” I turned to leave the kitchen, coffee in hand. I’d been in the middle of arguments like these too many times and had learned when to leave.
Overall, Michael was a good husband to my sister. A good brother-in-law. He was a mechanic and part-time driver who worked in Nonno’s garage, then took it over after he and Lea got married (much to my relief). He worked hard, supported Lea and the three, almost four kids she’d popped out in eight years, and was as steady as a rock. So he liked to toss in a twenty here and there on a game. I could think of worse vices and had reminded my sister of the fact multiple times.
“Don’t take too long!” Lea snapped behind me. “And bring Nonna and Joni down with you. We have to leave in thirty-five, or else we’ll get stuck in the back! I’m not taking communion after two hundred people have put their mouths on that chalice!”
After a quick shower, I found my grandmother in her bedroom, the 1950s time capsule that still had the same mahogany bedroom set, the same stack of handmade afghans and lace-curtained windows, the same assortment of prayer candles and saints cluttering the vanity, and the same twelve-inch crucifix nailed over the bed. Nonna stood in the center dressed for Mass, as she had every Sunday since we were kids, in a conservative navy skirt and loose sweater, running an iron over my pants.
“Nonna, you didn’t have to do that,” I said as I pecked her cheek.
She smiled. “If I don’t, you look like a beggar at Mass.”
“A beggar in a tuxedo?”
I peered at the white shirt and black pants she had laid out for me like I was still a kid. Other people might let their kids attend church like they had run off the school yard, but that was never an option for us. Every Sunday, we were up by seven to make sure our hair was brushed, our clothes were pressed, our shoes were shined. The Zolas were nothing if not proud people.
Nonna chuckled. “Don’t wear the jacket or the tie. Then you will just look like a waiter, eh?”
I chuckled with her. “Shall I take your order?”
She gestured toward the bed. “Get dressed. We need to talk.”
With a rumbling in my stomach, I obediently put on my pants and started buttoning my shirt while Nonna put away the ironing board. I could hear the music humming from Joni’s room down the hall, layered by the clatter of the boys downstairs. My whole life, this house had been full of noise. Now, though, even after all this time, it still missed my grandfather’s voice.
“What are these?” I wondered when I caught sight of a few open cardboard boxes next to the closet, each filled with familiar, slightly moth-eaten clothes. I pulled a cardigan off the top. “Is this Nonno’s?”
Nonna shoved the ironing board into a now-empty side of the closet. “They are just taking up room. We need the space.”
I couldn’t believe it. Not because it wasn’t time. Shit, Nonno had been gone for fifteen years at this point. But in some ways, it felt like it hadn’t been l
ong at all. For most of my adult life, we’d mourned him in one way or another. Nonna wore black every day for five years. We talked about him constantly, his pictures were everywhere, and his things had remained in this house like he was going to walk in any day and reclaim them.
I stared at the closet, at the yawning space where his clothes used to be. Then I turned away when the rent in my chest seemed too painful to bear, even as his last moments flooded back, just like they always did when I was here.
Nonno inhaled deeply through his face mask. The residue of stunted breath left condensation beneath the plastic. A good sign. He was still breathing.
He had left the hospital against the doctor’s wishes, but no one really blamed him. Mattia Stefano Cristiano Zola had lived well. He had moved across an ocean. Built a business and married the love of his life. Raised three children, mourned one of them, then raised another family of his grandkids. Who could fault the man for wanting to spend his last days in the comfort of his home rather than the cold confines of the hospital?
His last few days had been short. He picked at his breakfast in the morning, the plate of ham, crackers, and espresso Nonna had fixed him since they were teenagers. Then he fell asleep for hours, waking only for a few minutes at a time until sleeping again, off and on, through the day and the night.
Joni and Marie, Lea and Kate—they all still shared the two bedrooms on the top floor, but this was the first time the six of us had been in the house since I’d left for college a few years before Frankie did last spring. Now Frankie was sharing Lea’s bed again. I was back on the couch.
We hovered in the hallway, even the little ones. Everyone waiting for their chance to see Nonno’s crooked smile. To share a chat. To say goodbye.
Nonno knew too, that these would be our last moments. He had something for everyone.
“You know what the most important thing in life is, Matthew?” he asked me after finally catching his breath again.
The Other Man (Rose Gold Book 1) Page 25