Page 95 of Where Quiet Hearts Scream
“It was great,” I reply, smiling,
“You look different,” Bambi says with a disgruntled frown on her face.
My brows hike up my forehead. “In a good way I hope.”
She shrugs and returns her gaze to her phone.
Trilby sidles over to me and dips her mouth to my ear. “She and Allegra just had a fight. Ignore her.”
Tess rolls her eyes as though she’s bored of hearing about it.
“Where’s Papa?” I ask.
“He just popped out for a few minutes. Groceries probably,” Trilby says. “How was Washington?”
I can’t stop the grin that spreads across my face and it draws the attention of each of my sisters and my aunt.
“Well, that’s a good look on you,” Allegra says with a wink.
“It was fun,” I say, lightly.
Tess is about to open her mouth, no doubt to berate me for losing my head over a man who supposedly abandoned his younger brother for over decade and clearly can’t be trusted with my heart, when the front door opens and Papa’s voice filters down the hall.
We all smile as he enters, then those smiles fall slightly when we see who’s following him. It’s Antonia, Cristiano’s aunt. The woman Papa has been seeing for almost a year now.
I’m sure she’s a lovely woman but I can’t bring myself to get to know her—it would feel like acknowledging that Mama is really gone.
They both come to stand in front of the fireplace. He’s still wearing an impeccable suit, as if he could be called into a business meeting at the port at anymoment. But two things are different. One: He’s smiling more broadly than I’ve seen him smile in eight years. And two: His wedding band has gone.
Allegra comes back into the room with my husband and three other men. Cristiano walks to Trilby’s side and takes her hand. Something about his demeanor tells me he already knows what we’re about to find out.
Benito lifts Tess, sets himself down in a chair and rests her on his lap. The third man stands at the edge of the room and taps at his phone until Antonia clears her throat with a pointed glare. I assume it’s Nicolò, her son. Whoever he is, he’s also on the receiving end of a timid, curious stare from my seventeen-year-old sister.
Papa clears his throat. “Girls,” he says, and I already hate the way that word sounds.Girls.We are not girls. We are women who’ve endured years of grief after our mother was brutally murdered at the hands of a gang right in front of our eldest sister.
“I have some news.Wehave some news.”
I look across at Antonia who is panning her gaze nervously between us all.
“Antonia and I just returned from a short break in Vermont. And, well,” he says, beaming now, “while we were there, we decided to get married.”
He awkwardly lifts Antonia’s left hand and a giant emerald sends shards of green light across the room. How did I not notice that when they walked in? It’sunmissable.
But it’s met with silence.
Tess huffs out a breath. “You’re joking.” Benito’s arms tighten around her waist.
Papa laughs nervously. “No, sweetheart. I’m not joking. We did it by a lake. Just the two of us, simple and beautiful.”
Bambi swears under her breath, earning herself a vicious glare from Allegra and Antonia’s son.
Trilby looks over at me like I have the power to reverse time.
I just stare at him—at the man who raised four daughters with a woman whose ghost is still in every room, and who is now smiling like a teenager at prom.
“You got married?” I ask, finally, the words tasting foreign in my mouth.
His smile wanes as the evidence of our shock settles in. “I wanted to tell you all in person. You mean everything to me.”
