Page 22 of Married to the Mafia

I think about staying here, but what’s the point? I climb back up, getting increasingly filthy. As I get my shoulders up and out, they wedge themselves in the grate.

I’m still there when Dino comes back down carrying a tray of food. He walks into the bathroom and spots me at once. “Where the fuck are you going?” he asks, putting the tray down on the floor. “There’s no way out except down the altar.”

“Fuck you,” I say.

He grabs my shoulders and pulls. With a scraping of the dress, I’m through the gap, the fabric ripping as I come up. I stand up and brush myself down. The dress is ruined.

“Look at you,” he says. “You need to get clean.”

He leans past me and starts filling the bath. Steamy water rises into the air. He glances under the bath. He turns the faucet off. “You broke the pipe,” he says.

“So what?”

“So there’s nowhere for the water to drain but onto the floor.” He frowns, like he’s thinking for a moment. “You can use my bath upstairs if you behave.”

“Oh, I’ll behave,” I reply. “Honest I will.”

His eyes narrow. He grabs the dressing gown off the back of the door, pulling the cord out of it. “Hands together,” he says.

“Why?”

“Do it.” His voice is like ice and I feel a terror in the pit of my stomach. I get the feeling people have heard that tone of voice from him before. Maybe the last thing they hear before they die.

I put my hands together. He binds them with the cord, knotting it tight before walking through to the primary space of the basement. He picks up a cushion from the sofa and pulls the cover off it, shoving it over my head. “This way,” he says, taking me by the wrists and leading me over to the stairs.

“Please,” I say as I ascend the stairs. “I won’t tell anyone what you’ve done if you just let me go. Please, I’m begging you.”

“Not until we’re married,” he replies. “No whining. It won’t work.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want to.”

We’ve reached the top of the stairs. I find that out by stumbling forward. He grabs hold of me, putting an arm around my shoulder. I pull away, and he laughs at me.

He actually laughs. It’s a bitter sound, and it chills myblood. “Still trying to get away,” he says. “You’ve got spirit, I’ll give you that.”

He walks me along a corridor that’s got a wooden floor. I can see a little through the cushion cover. Lights in sconces, that’s about it.

We go up another flight of stairs, and then I hear a door opening. “Stand there and don’t move,” he says.

The door closes, and there’s the rattle of a key in a lock. He pulls the cushion cover off my head and I look around me. We’re in an enormous bathroom, bigger than any I’ve ever seen.

There’s a massive clawfoot tub in the middle of the room, big enough for about four people. He turns on the faucets, and it fills. As it does so, he collects towels and washcloths, piling them up on a chair beside the bath. He gathers up shampoo and a bar of soap, both unopened.

“Get undressed,” he says as the air fills with steam.

I show him the bonds around my wrists. “How am I supposed to do that?”

He walks over to me and unties the cord, letting it fall to the floor. “Now get undressed,” he says, staring into my eyes.

“Not with you watching me.”

He grabs hold of the dress and rips it in two, yanking the halves apart like it’s made of tissue paper.

He leans close to me when that’s done, lowering his voice. “You are under the misapprehension that you are in charge of things,” he says. “This is not a negotiation. This is not a debate. I tell you to do something and you do it.”

“Or what?” I say, but my voice is shaking and he notices.

---