Page 7 of Giovanna

“Unbelievable. You drag me home just so you can show me again how little I matter. How my own parents can’t manage to find half a shit to give about me.”

She is shaking and her eyes won’t meet mine. At least I know she isn’t a sociopath. She knows what she has done and carries it. I can’t say the same for my father. “You know how things work in our world.” She whispers.

Chapter Four

Francesca

When I say I learned to fix myself, I am telling the truth. I pieced myself back together and papered over the cracks until they set hard. Nana and Pop were pretty oblivious to the pain I was in when I arrived. They were glad to have their Australian grandchild come live with them, but more so because they felt it mitigated the embarrassment of their daughter running away overseas at 17, I suspect.

For six years they put a roof over my head and mostly kept me out of trouble, but I was left alone to deal with my trauma and rebuild myself until the only person I ever truly loved showed up on my doorstep.

My Massimo was all grown up and ready to party when he wheeled his suitcase into Nana and Pop’s home and brought the light back into my life. My best friend and the only person who has never let me down. Even through years of messaging and video calls from afar, he was my constant.

I sometimes wonder now if Massimo is my soulmate. There is nothing remotely sexual about our relationship and he is God’s gift to gay men, but we are bound together in a way that is difficult to put into words. No words I have ever managed have seemed adequate anyway.

Massimo saved me from settling into a life of monotony and duty by showing up when he did. He gave me the confidence to admit I wasn’t in love with the well-to-do Englishman I was engaged to marry and reminded me that I was 22 and young enough to live for the pure enjoyment of it. Ironic considering now it looks like he only bought me two years of freedom leaving me available to be indentured to his own oldest brother.

On the straight and narrow path to becoming Mrs. Gareth Godfrey-White, I had settled into an existence that was sequestered from anything dangerous. Gareth was a nice guy, a safe guy, and he would have provided for me and our future children with ease. Holidays in the Maldives and living in country estates. He playedpolofor goodness sake.

It was easy and a means to motherhood that wasn’t entirely unbearable. But, Massimo went and stuck his ginormous foot in and snapped me out of my trance. Single again, I went along for the ride as Massimo danced us through every club in London and many across the continent.

My darling friend with his wide dimpled smile and tragic good looks led us on a two-year excursion consisting mainly of prosecco, dancing, and adventure. Welivedand blew through a shit load of his Dad’s money ensuring we enjoyed ourselves as much as possible.

Perhaps now life is coming to collect the fee for two years of freedom and happiness with my favourite person. I should feel grateful for all I experienced and accept this next phase in my life as inevitable. In any case, I don’t have much choice.

In the absence of any escape plans, I find myself trawling through Mum’s wardrobe looking for something to wear to my engagement party. A party at which I will speak to my fiancé for the first time in over eight years.

He probably doesn’t even know who I am. I can’t remember Elio ever properly interacting with me and Massi. Avoided us like the plague more than anything. He used to spend most of his time drunk or trying to get laid. Not that he had to try particularly hard. He was as attractive and charming as Massimo is. I wonder if he still is.

If I have to attend this tragic charade, I am determined to look devastatingly beautiful because everything is easier when you are confident in how you look. I’m aware this is a worldview I picked up from Mum, but even I can’t disagree with her on this one.

But if I’m completely and truly honest, my determination to look my best has more to do with the prospect of seeing the person who has featured in almost all of my dreams and been the inspiration for every private piece of pleasure snatched between my sheets for eight long years.

The dress I choose is a dark navy blue sleeveless bodycon dress. It is high-necked and reaches just below the knees so appears modest despite hugging so tightly to every curve of my body that I will have to forgo underwear.

Thank goodness my mother is a self-obsessed mafia wife who at only 43 years old is in such great shape that she looks like she could be my sister. Her clothes and shoes fit me perfectly and I choose a pair of brand-new black strappy stilettos to pair with my dress.

Checking my angles in front of the mirror, I tussle the roots of my hair to make my carefully styled loose waves look sexily messy. Chestnut brown roots gradually become blonde tips halfway down my back with some more blonde at the front framing my face.

I’m not the Francesca who was hushed up and ushered out of the country all those years ago. Lightening my hair into the perfect summery balayage was one way of reinventing myself and leaving behind the nervous and broken dark-haired girl. Part of me is looking forward to the inevitable shock from people who haven’t seen me in the years since and who won’t recognise me.

I’m a cocktail of dread and excitement. Loathing that I am to be traded like property, but excited to be back from exile. Most of all I am filled with raw desperation to see the member of the Marino family who has consumed my thoughts and fantasies for as long as I can remember.

Because Giovanna is the one person under the age of 50 in Australia who doesn’t use social media, I haven’t been able to stalk her from afar. My only glimpses of what her life has looked like have been through her cameos on her brothers’ social media.

But, tonight, finally, I’ll get to see if she is still the grumpy but gorgeous woman who made me feel crazy, safe, confused, obsessed, and devastated all at once.

What will she make of me now that I’m a grown woman? I want to capture that moment when she first sees me. Will there be recognition? Attraction? Or worse of all, disinterested?

“Leaving in five minutes, Francesca!” My father’s compassionless voice grates on me as it carries up the stairs. I resist the temptation to reply that I am not coming. Instead, I finish off my makeup with the only correct choice of lipstick for an occasion such as this: blood red.

For all my confidence in my appearance, and my parents’ reassuring approval of it, as the driver pulls up outside the Marino house I am hit with a bout of nerves. I’m suddenly nauseous and shaky and want to book a flight back to London.

Deep breaths and repeated reminders to myself that I just need to find Massimo and everything will be fine, calm me a little.

“Come on then,” Dad’s impatience interrupts my attempts at self-soothing. At least Mum has the decency to look apologetic, to Paul Rossi I don’t think I have ever registered as anything better than a somewhat useful nuisance.

Heads turn as soon as we enter the vast open-plan living area the Marinos use for entertaining. With no walls to separate the areas, furniture serves to differentiate between the kitchen, dining, and lounge. The space is already full of people; some I vaguely recognise, most I don’t.

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