Page 43 of His Two Hidden Masks

“A life without food -- ” I said, taking another bite.

“-- is a life without pleasure,” Dylan said. “And I love pleasure. As do you.”

We continued eating in an easy, familiar silence.

“When did you know you’d made a mistake?” Dylan asked.

“A mistake?”

“With your ex-fiancé, your old lover, Roberto.”

“Excuse me,” I said, almost spitting my lasagna onto the table. “He was my boyfriend, my fiancé. I never called him my lover, but I suppose he was.”

“Well, if you couldn’t call him your lover, then I hardly think you should have been giving your body and soul to him forever. It sounds like you made a wise choice.”

His comment stunned me. Who did he think he was, lecturing me about who I should give my body and soul, to? “Well, thank you for your approval, but it’s unnecessary. I came to my conclusions about Roberto all on my own.”

“And what conclusion was that?” His dark eyes looked at me as if they had the power to bore a hole into my head. The man moved from playful to intense with a breath.

I stopped for a moment. It was a personal question, a deeply personal one that I had wrestled with alone for so long. I knew Auntie Aurora’s dismal card reading had been the final nail in the coffin.

But if I were truthful, my doubts started long before. A thousand tiny cuts created a wound that I could never heal. “There were signs. I ignored them,” I said, quietly.

Dylan leaned in closer. “Signs? What kind of signs, clever Bella?”

I wondered what it was it about it him that made me want to talk, to share, to open up, not just with my body, but with my heart. I took a big gulp of wine, the liquid moving down my throat and warming me from the inside out.

“This last year, I worked very hard on my business. My family thought of it as a hobby, of course. Auntie Aurora and I had just convinced my father to let me use the Andiamo kitchen for production. I needed to arrive early or stay late, post-dinner rush. It isn’t easy to keep those hours in Venice.”

“Ah, the good Italian life. You eat at midnight.”

“It is uncivilized to eat before eight p.m.” I winked, enjoying the easy calm of our conversation. I wanted him to hear the truth. I had left Roberto for good reasons. It was time to speak those reasons aloud.

“So, your father granted you space in the kitchen.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’d outgrown the kitchen in the palazzo, and honestly, being in the professional kitchen made everything feel more real.”

“Did you scrub and clean like a scullery maid?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” I said, smiling at the memory of those long days. “I worked hard, I still work hard, and I don’tmind it. I rose early, and I went back late at night. I needed to cook and clean as if I was never there. And whatever it took, I did it.”

Dylan poured the last of the red wine into our glasses.

“So, tell me about the end, with Roberto,” he said. “When did you finally decide that man wasn’t enough, if you want to share?”

“About a month before our wedding,” I said, closing my eyes. I remembered every detail. “I went to Roberto’s palazzo. His family has an enormous home by the Rialto. Roberto and I were going to live in the top two floors.”

“Fancy,” Dylan said, swirling his wine glass.

“So fancy,” I said, smiling. “I ran up the marble stairs to Roberto’s office. I had a bag filled with boxes of caramel samples. I had been working on new flavors, Earl Grey, lavender, and the queen of all caramels, jalapeño.”

“Jalapeño,” Dylan said, wrinkling his nose. “You are serious.”

“Very serious. I was exhausted. I’d been up for two days straight, obsessed with perfecting the ratio between the chocolate, the caramel, and that spike of flavor. Roberto was at his desk doing email, so I lay down on a couch and stretched my legs out.

He immediately started talking about how hard his day was. He’d been disrespected by Paolo while in a meeting with my father, and he intended to show him that he was going to be the new boss.”

I inhaled, feeling a small sting as I remembered my disappointment as Roberto’s self-absorbed rant continued. “I was with him for almost three years,” I said, my voice trailing off.

---