Page 47 of Where Wild Hearts Dance
She pulls the door of the studio closed and is about to open the door to the street when something sharp drives through my chest.
“I didn’t sleep with her,” I blurt out.
She stops dead still and I hold my breath.
Slowly, her head turns, her dark hair falling over her face. “That’s none of my business,” she whispers.
Whatever sharp thing is in my chest twists painfully. I’m suddenly lost for words.
I find myself, for the first time in my life, feeling weak. Bernadis never admit weakness. Weakness means death, and I will not die for anyone.
I remember the car on the corner. I resume my dry, soulless tone. “My driver will take you home.” She opens her mouth to object but I beat her to it. “Cristiano’s orders.”
Her mouth snaps shut and she opens the door. Karina’s words ring in my ears no matter how hard I try to push them away.She’s yours.
Contessa Castellano will never be mine, so there’s no point in imagining anything else.
Contessa
“I’ve got something for you.”
I’m lying face down on a lounger beside Cristiano’s pool when the sound of Trilby’s voice makes me jump. I’ve unwittingly made this place my second home, purely because it affords me an escape from the ever-watchful eyes of my aunt and Papa. At least that’s what I keep reassuring myself. Not because I’m half-hoping a certain bronze-eyed, gun-wielding consigliere happens to frequent it too.
I roll onto my side and shade my eyes from the sun. Trilby is holding something that looks like a box.
Is that what I think it is?
I sit up and rub my eyes, hoping it will make me focus better.
“I know you always wanted it,” she adds in a soft voice.
I realize what it is before my vision adjusts and I hold out my hands to take it from her. The weight of the box fills me with warm memories. And knowing my way around it like the back of my hand, I pop open the lid. A beautiful ballerina sits proudly on a pedestal, just waiting to be wound up.
I feel my way to the handle at the back and twist it. Music heavily tinted by the sound of vintage carousels echoes around the terrace and tears fill my eyes.
We both watch in silence, each of us remembering Mama in our own way. The music slows to a clink clunk, so I wind the handle all the way and watch the beautiful little figurine spin in her pink lace tutu. I touch the sparkling gems on the bodice of her dress.
“Those are real, by the way,” Trilby says.
“What?” My voice feels ethereal as I watch the stones glisten in the sunlight.
“They’re diamonds.”
I watch the little figure spin with renewed awe. “But, there’s like twenty of them.”
“It was a wedding present to Mama from Great Aunt Chiara.”
No further explanation is needed. Great Aunt Chiara is legendary in our family and I’m sad I never got the chance to meet her. She married into old world money at just seventeen. She and Great Uncle Guiseppe never had children, and so Mama, being the only daughter in thefamily, became the beneficiary of all the gifts Chiara would have bought her own daughter if she’d had one.
“I had no idea.”
I always thought this was a cheap bargain basement jewelry box, but nevertheless, I craved it like every other kid my age craved candy. But now, my feelings are spinning like the diamond-encrusted ballerina.
The sun shifts behind Trilby, casting a shadow over the box and me.
“Is there a reason you’re giving this to me now?”
She sits down opposite me. “You look like you’re in a bit of a funk.”
