Page 21 of Alliance

But the second I saw my father, I started to cry, and he knew immediately.

It wasn’t him who consoled me, though. Instead, Grandpapa came and picked me up to go out for ice cream.

We sat outside, the NOLA heat making sweat run down my cheeks while we licked the sweet sugary substance from cones. Finally, he told me that life wasn’t black and white. There’s no good and bad. He didn’t talk down to me when he said the words, not in the way my father did when he spoke to me. My grandfather treated me like an adult.

“How did reading that article make you feel?”he asked.

No one ever asked me how I felt in my house. The Romano family was all about suppressing your emotions and putting on a good act. The better of an act we put on, the happier my parents would be.

“Bad,”I had said.

We talked about that feeling for longer than anyone ever had a conversation with me, and at the end, he looked me in the eye and saidfamily is everything.It was a motto he had preached since he came over to the States from Sicily with nothing but the clothes on his back. It wasn’t often that he spoke of his life before I was born, so I was entranced when he finally did that day.

“There are times in life where you’ll have to fight to get what you deserve, bambina. But you never fight with family, okay? I always wanted a family, a big family like this.”He takes a lick of his ice cream cone.“People who are loyal to each other, who protect each other. Family is everything, Lana.”

I internalized those words. Even when I was angry, even when my parents made me want to scream, I remember,family is everything.

As I walk through the front door of our home, no one greets me. There’s no shout to welcome me home. No one asks me how my day was.

I miss my grandfather in this moment. Grief settles in my bones, weighing me down, making me so heavy that every step feels like I’m dragging my legs. I want to collapse on the staircase and just give up.

My heart aches and my bones hurt, and I no longer want to live like this.

“Get changed.” My mother’s voice sneaks up on me when she finds me slowly ascending the stairs. “Your fiancé is coming over for dinner.”

Chapter Eleven

THE WHISKEY HAS SETTLED INmy stomach. It feels like a brick of lead covered in a sticky maple syrup. It’s weighing my core down and the sickly-sweet taste has left me feeling like I might vomit.

My mother, as usual, doesn’t care about my current state.

When she smelled the whiskey on my breath, she told me to brush my teeth, then threw the dress she wanted me to wear on the bed, and left.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to not love your children. To only see them as a bargaining chip. Once, when Aunt Caterina was drunk, a state not uncommon for her, she spilled my mother’s secret to Madi. She never wanted kids. Carlotta Romano didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, but bearing children was expected of her. She would have stopped at one, but my father wanted a boy, so they tried again. After two girls, she said no more.

Even with that knowledge, I still didn’t understand.

Hollywood movies have trained me to believe that as soon as a mother holds her baby, she falls in love. How many stories had I watched where a mother held that crinkly-skinned newborn in her arms, sweat dripping down her forehead, dizzy from the epidural, but the second that child hit her chest, love bloomed? Love was the solution to every problem, as least in the movies.

I wonder how my mother reacted when they put my small body on her chest. Knowing her disdain for messes, I bet she handed me right back and asked someone to bathe me.

My heart aches at the thought.

I swish some mouthwash around in my mouth, thinking about swallowing it down and hoping the alcohol is enough to keep me buzzed. The alcohol is the only thing that helps anymore. I wake up longing for the sweet relief that comes with a swig of whiskey. I need the edges dulled, need my thoughts to slow down. Whiskey is the only thing that keeps the panic at bay.

The thought of seeing my finance makes my stomach churn. The bruises he left on my arms have only just started to disappear. Instinctively, I trace my fingers along the yellow edges.

The dress my mother left out is long sleeved; she’s fully aware of the bruises that mark my skin so I’m sure she picked the dress on purpose. It hurts when I think about her actively choosing a dress to hide the marks he left on me, the man she’s forcing me to marry.

I toss the silk material to the floor and head for my closet, flipping through the rack of clothes. I settle on an emerald green shift dress made of a smooth satin material. It has a delicate neckline and thin spaghetti straps. I slide the soft material over my body and let it fall. The dress does nothing to hide the faint bruises on each of my arms. He left new ones the day he found me with Naz and manhandled me into his car.

A laugh escapes my lips when I look at myself in the mirror.

The girl in its reflection looks like shit.

Bags line her eyes, and the bruises stand out on her arms. The dress is pretty, but it swallows me. I’ve lost weight since I’ve last worn it, apparently my whiskey diet has made me thin. My legs look pale and small, and my hair looks dull as I twist it back into a low bun.

I look like a sad excuse for myself, but I don’t care. I don’t want to look good for Davis. If he’s so determined to marry me, he should know that this is what he’s getting.

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