Page 11 of Vincenzo's Promise
Isabella
Several weeks had passed since I’d been given the news about my supposed upcoming engagement and subsequent marriage. While I didn’t know what was going on with this marriage proposal my father presented to me, I couldn’t get Mr. De Maio out of my head.
My days and nights were filled with thoughts of the deliciously handsome man and whether I would share my life with him. Despite my father’s desperate attempts to keep me shielded from the contempt of his enemies and friends, I cared less about what others thought of me. I’d thickened my skin throughout the years. I had no other choice. The only thing I cared about was what kind of life I’d have and how my career would fit into all of it. I loved my work and wouldn’t be giving it up to be Mr. De Maio’s silent wife.
My father informed me he’d advised Mr. De Maio to take some time to figure out if he still wanted to go through with this marriage. If people were so hard-pressed about my skin color, I was glad my father hadn’t subjected me to so much ignorance when I was younger. I’d grown up proud of who I was, and what I’d achieved. My father protected me, gave me and my mother a wonderful life, and I became an accomplished Black woman. I wouldn’t let ignorance diminish the person I was, and all I’d attained. And if the time came where I married Vincenzo, I hoped he understood just because I wasn’t raised in the Life, I was not a doormat for him or anyone else to walk all over. I would respect his authority as Boss, but he would show me the same respect as his Donna. And so would everyone else.
“What’s been up with you lately?” my best friend and colleague, Cheryl asked while we sat on my couch binge-watching our favorite TV show. “You haven’t been yourself since you came back from mob country.”
I laughed, nudging her on her shoulder. I’d known Cheryl since college, where we’d been roommates and best friends ever since. After graduation, I went to medical school, and she went to nursing school. When we both landed jobs at the same hospital, we couldn’t have been more ecstatic.
She was the only person who knew of my connection to my father outside of those in the Scuderi organization. Cheryl always said I was either some rich man’s mistress or the daughter of someone important because of the security that surrounded me. Once she saw my first condo purchased for my college graduation by my father, she asked questions and I held nothing back.
“Apparently, I’m getting married.” I held up my flute of champagne, emptied the contents, picked the bottle up from the table and refilled the flute to the brim. “Yay…congrats to me.”
When most women announced their engagement, they were excited. Thrilled. Not me. It was up in the air whether the man who I was supposed to marry even wanted me, and I was scared shitless to marry anyone who was remotely like my father. Vincenzo was the leader of his clan, so there was copious amounts of blood on his hands, just like my father’s.
She looked at me, all humor draining from her face. I couldn’t help but laugh at her expression, despite the circumstances, and the bubbly we started drinking earlier in the day had me a little tipsy.
“Did I hear you right?” Cheryl muted the television and sat her champagne flute on the glass coffee table. We were having our girls’ night at my house, sipping on champagne and watchingThe Walking Dead.“I know I didn’t hear you say you’re getting married?”
“That’s exactly what I said.” I picked up her flute, topped it off, and handed it back to her. “Are you ready to be my maid of honor?”
She took a huge gulp, draining half the contents. “What the hell, Bella? That’s not something to joke about.”
“Who says I’m joking, Cheryl? It’s the truth.”
“How in the hell did you get engaged when I can’t get your no-fun-having-ass to go and have a couple of drinks at the bar most of the time?”
“Hey, I’m fun!”
She gave me an incredulous look. I took another sip of champagne. We both broke out laughing hysterically. She had a point. I rarely went out with her. I never dated anymore, not after the mess I’d been through, and work consumed me. Hanging out at her home, or mine, was the closest thing to a social life I had.
Cheryl and I were total opposites. She was what I liked to call a free spirit. Work didn’t consume her like it consumed me, and she was almost always open to the idea of finding her special someone by sampling every man that came into her orbit if she wanted to. I couldn’t open myself up like that, especially after what happened.
“I’m not hitched yet,” I said, “and it’s a long story. But it looks like I’ve got no other choice but to marry some man I don’t know.”
“Well, who is my future brother-in-law, and is he at least fine?”
I thought back to the way Vincenzo had taken my breath away when he walked towards me in the restaurant like he owned the place. Rarely did men show that kind of confidence and power around my father, and it attracted me to him instantly. Fine was not a good enough description for Vincenzo De Maio—more like walking sin. Sin I couldn’t wait to experience.
“By the look on your face, that’s all the answer I need,” she said. “But with all kidding aside, are you going to go through with it.?”
“Like I said, I have no other choice.”
“You always have a choice, Bella. This is the twenty-first century. Women do things because they want to, not because men tell them to.”
I shook my head. “Not in their world, which looks like it’s now my world.”
The doorbell rang, and I jumped up from the couch. We’d ordered takeout from our usual place for our girls’ night, and I was starving. It was rare I had a day off, but I was excited to sit home all day with my best friend and catch up on life since mine was about to go through a major change. But this was also a difficult conversation to have with someone who didn’t understand the world of Cyrus Lombardo and Vincenzo De Maio.
Of course, I was a modern woman and loved my independence like most women, but with the lives these two men led, I was being thrust into an old way of thinking. It was either go with the flow or attend my family’s funerals. So, no, I really didn’t have the choice to say no.
When I opened the door, a delivery man holding a bouquet of bright yellow roses stood there instead of a delivery man with our takeout.
“Yes, how can I help you?”
“Delivery for Ms. Lombardo,” he said with a genuine smile.
