Page 59 of Forced Arrangement

He was a disgusting person. My father should have known better.

I slip in and out of unconsciousness now that my head has been injured and I feel a wave of sleepiness pass over me. My mind starts drifting, remembering.

“I don’t like Uncle Guiseppe.” My small voice was tremulous, indignant as I looked at my father.

“Why not, little dove?” my father asked in his deep, velvety voice. He had tweaked my nose in an effort to charm me out of my petulance.

“He gives me the creepy crawlies,” I insisted, stamping my foot.

My father had laughed and picked me up. I stroked a hand over his shiny, dark hair. His eyes were so dark brown that they looked black as he regarded me with love.

“I have to have bad men working for me, little dove,” he told me. “I need their help to do the scary things other men won’t do.”

“I don’t want to marry a man like Uncle Guiseppe,” I insisted.

My father smiled at me. “You won’t, my dove. I have arranged a perfect match for you. A friend’s boy. He’s kind and loves animals. You will have lots in common.”

“Does he have a pony?” I asked, my annoyance forgotten.

“Lots of them,” my father had assured me. “You can ride together when you are old enough to meet.”

“Okay, I guess,” I had replied with a little shrug. “But boys are icky.”

My father had laughed loudly at this. “You won’t always think so, my dove.”

The sound of footsteps jolts me awake. Where had that memory come from? I wonder if it was an actual memory, or just a fantasy my mind conjured up.

I feel a tear slip down my cheek and I dash it away angrily. This is no time for weakness. I need to figure out how to get out of here.

I thought of my father’s handsome face and his strong arms.I could use a little inspiration, papa,I think to myself.

The steps are getting closer and I huddle in on myself. I have to protect the baby at all costs. I cannot let them hit me in the stomach or throw me around. It’s my one, overarching goal at this moment. It’s all I can control.

“Well, don’t you look terrible,” Guiseppe says in a happy tone of voice as he steps into the room. He spits in my direction and says something very rude in Italian.

“Your stupid husband has not found you, yet. How does that make you feel? Do you think less of him? Maybe you could have done better if the roles were reversed. After all, you are your father’s daughter, even if it pains me to admit it.”

He leans down and grabs my cheeks, pinching hard and bashing my head against the metal wall behind me.

I stifle my shriek of pain as I see stars. A flare of impotent rage floods through me, but I just huddle more tightly into a ball on the floor.

“Why do you hate him so much?” I grind out through the pain that clenches my jaw shut. I honestly don’t understand what his problem with Angelo is. I would have thought he would be more focused on hating me than my husband.

Guiseppe looks at me like I’m simple. “I suppose you don’t know the truth. After all, your mother hid you away so long ago. It was smart of her. She was a cunning bitch, that one. Your father knew where you were, but he made sure that none of the rest of us could get to you.”

I feel a jolt of shock at his words. It had never occurred to me that my father would have made sure that we were protected all those years that we were living in the UK. I felt so, so stupid that I had thought that my mother and I had just been able to get away and start over.

It makes me realize that Angleo was right. My father had loved me and tried to protect me despite what my mother had done. Maybe he understood all too well why she had run.

“I can tell you the story, since you are a fool and never realized your true situation,” Guiseppe says. “Really, you should have stayed in England. You were safer there than you ever will be here. Your father and Angelo’s father saw to that.”

That was a new wrinkle. Angelo’s father had also helped to keep me safe? Why?

“You want to know why I am so angry at Angelo? You want to know why I want to kill him? Well, I will tell you a little story about Arnoldo Castiglia. He would have been your father-in-law, you see. He’s been dead some time now, but that’s no loss.” He bares his teeth and then spits on the floor again near me. I eye the spittle with revulsion.

“Your father and Angelo’s father were purists, you see. They believed that the Cosa Nostra could only be strong if full-blooded Sicilians were in charge. They looked down on the rest of us as less-than, all because we were only Italian, or perhaps even worse half-Italian.”

He wanders around the room, his hands behind his back, lost in his memories.

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