Page 56 of Where Quiet Hearts Scream
I walk briskly out of the kitchen into the family room. There are no sharp-edged picture frames on the walls or surfaces, no breakable plant pots or ornaments. I whip open more cabinets and cupboards and find nothing I can put to use. The house has been cleared from basement to bedroom. Anything sharp has been stowed away behind padlocks.
I slump to the floor in the family room, despair pulling me down onto the opulent Indian rug. I didn’t think I could cry anymore, but the tears fall freely. Every last ounce of freedom has been taken from me. There may as well be a padlock on every door to the house. In fact, there probably is, but a large part of me doesn’t want to prove myself right by investigating that.
“Signor’s orders.”
Viola’s soft voice from the doorway makes me jump, but her words only add another layer of bricks to the wall I’m building around myself.
“This isn’t my home,” I whisper through tear-sodden lips. “I don’t want to be here.”
She pads quietly across the room and comes to sit beside me on the rug.
“I know this is hard,” she says quietly. “I don’t know much about you. All I know is what I was instructed to do. I can only use my imagination to figure out why.”She takes a long inhale. “And please know, none of this is worth taking your own life for.”
I blink up at her in surprise. “I wasn’t going to take my own life,” I frown.
Her eyes narrow, then her lips part and she nods, understanding. “Oh. You need the blades for something else.”
I want to beg her to give me a key. Just this once. Just to get me through this transition to a new life, and to get me past the terror of my new husband discovering my destructive habit. But pride stops me. At least I have some left.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this but you must have had some life before you met Andreas to be so upset about coming here.”
I unleash a bitter laugh. “No, I hadalife. Here, I’ll have none.”
“But you’ll have Andreas…” she starts, but then she sees the bitter look on my face. “I was of the understanding this was a love match—not purely an arrangement.”
My eyes round. “If that’s what he told you and you believed him, you are more gullible than you think.”
Her brow creases. “He didn’t tell me that exactly. But he is a different man since he made that first trip to the Hamptons. I’m sorry, I… I had assumed his feelings were reciprocated.”
I push my surprise at those words to the back of my mind.
“You just thought I was about to kill myself,” I remind her.
She shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders. “I thought perhaps your sister’s wedding had brought back painful memories and you were hurting all over again.”
There’s something about her that is warm and maternal. I feel like I can trust her but in a weird way, I don’t want to betray Andreas by telling Viola about his fake identity—the one he reeled me into like a fish on a wire. Maybe she knows, maybe she doesn’t. Does it even matter?
“I liked him,” I admit, honestly. “But… he abused my trust.”
She reaches out and takes my hands delicately. “Don’t tell me anymore. He will ask me what you’ve said and I will not lie to Signor Corioni.”
“I just thought you deserved an explanation. You’re the one who’s having to deal with my reactions to these changes.”
She smiles kindly but doesn’t say anything more.
“This won’t be news to him. He knows what he did. And he under-estimated me. I don’t take kindly to being used and I won’t forgive that easily. If at all.”
She squeezes my hand then releases it and gets to her feet. “I understand.”
I watch her walk back to the door, then she turns around and sighs. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m pleased that you’re here. I’ve been looking forward to having some female company. Give it time, signora. I’ve known Signor Corioni for many years. I expect he’s notthe easiest man to love, but I see you, and I see him. And Iknowthat when you do fall, you will fallhard.”
She lets those words sink in, then she turns around and exits, leaving me wiping my eyes and wondering if I can everforgivemy husband, let alone fall for him.
Andreas
Arrow is pissed. “I’m telling you, Andreas. That man won’t fucking die.”
I turn around and retrace my steps across the room. “We’ll dig him out.” My voice is calm but beneath the façade, I’m seething. My father’s one-time right-hand man is hanging on by a thread, still somehow orchestrating his south Boston gang from the shadows. It doesn’t matter how many of them we put a bullet into, more green soldiers pop up out of nowhere. We should have taken this part of the city days ago, but it’s dragging, and my patience is wearing thin.
