Dante was a very private man. That’s what everyone always told me, which is why I knew how wrong it was for me to violate his privacy. But I needed to see the things Dante kept hidden behind the door that Gaby had shown me.
Maybe it would help me understand him better.
It was early afternoon and Dante had left for a meeting at one of the Outfit’s underground casinos. I wasn’t sure when he would be back, but if the last two days since my embarrassing attempt at seduction could be indicative, probably not until eight o’clock. There was silence in the house. Today was Gaby’s day off and, as usual, Zita was busy in the kitchen and avoiding me.
I lowered the doorknob and entered the room where Dante kept his dead wife’s memorabilia. The curtains were drawn, leaving the room in darkness. I fumbled for the ‘light switch but when I pressed it, nothing happened. I ‘changed it back and forth a few more times until I decided it was useless. After a moment of guilt-induced hesitation, I carefully made my way to the window and opened the curtains. Coughing from a wave of dust raised by the heavy fabric, I blinked at the sudden light, my eyes filling with tears. I dried them quickly before daring to look around.
There was no lamp attached to the ceiling, just a string of abandoned wires. No wonder the switch did nothing.
Dust particles danced in the air and a musty smell penetrated my nose. A thin layer of dust had accumulated on every surface and even on the ground. My footsteps were clearly visible. In short order, panic threatened to overwhelm me.
There was no way I could have concealed my presence in the room if my footprints had been on the floor, but from the look of the room no one had set foot in it for a long time, not even Dante, so he would never have found out.
The room was cluttered with furniture and cardboard boxes. There was a dark wooden closet, two dressers, and a king-size four-poster bed. Slowly I realized. This must have been the master bedroom that Dante and his wife had shared before his death. At least I was not sleeping in the same bed where Dante had made love to his dead wife. I tiptoed toward the closet. I wasn’t even sure why I was trying to remain silent, but it almost felt like sacrilege to be in that room. I opened the closet and was hit by the smell of disuse and old clothes. Two dozen dresses hung from pink stuffed hangers, everything from long ball gowns to pretty cocktail dresses to casual summer dresses. Some looked like they belonged in my wardrobe, but of course they were too small for me.
I brushed the fabric with my fingers. It was strange to think that the person who had worn them was long gone, buried in the cold, dark earth. With a shudder I closed the door and stepped back, but my curiosity was not yet satiated. I opened one of the drawers in the closet next to the cabinet and found it full of underwear. I quickly closed it.
It seemed way too personal. I couldn’t go through a dead woman’s underwear, even if it might tell me something about Dante’s preferences. Hesitantly, I approached the second chest of drawers. I opened the top drawer. It was empty except for two photo albums. I had a feeling that the drawer had once belonged to Dante, filled with socks and briefs long ago. When he had changed bedrooms, he had left everything behind, even his dresser.
Ignoring my qualms, I picked up the two albums and carried them to the bed. On top was lying a dark red comforter , also covered with a thin layer of dust.
After a futile look around for another option, I sat on the edge with the albums in my workshop. The first album was white except for the image of two intertwined gold rings. With trepidation I opened the album. In the first picture was a much younger Dante and a small young woman in a wedding dress.
Dante was not looking into the camera. His only attention was on the bride, and the adoration clearly visible in his eyes made a knot rise in my throat. Cold calculation and emotionless sophistication were absent on his face. Perhaps it was because he was still young, but I had the feeling that it had just as much to do with the woman at his side.
It was a simple photo and yet it conveyed everything a wedding should mean: love, devotion, happiness.
I hadn’t seen our wedding photos yet, but I knew what I wouldn’t find there. I swallowed the ‘growing excitement. I flipped through the other photos, childishly hoping to find Dante with the look of the same indifference he always showed me. But although his expression became more cautious and controlled in the later photos, his feelings for his wife were hard to miss. They had been married for almost twelve years, but had never had children. I knew his wife Carla had been battling cancer for the last three years of her life, but I wondered why it had not worked out before then. I had never seen her with a baby bump, nor had I heard rumors of a miscarriage. Not that it was any of my business.
Maybe I should count myself lucky that Dante did not have children with Carla otherwise I would have them here to despise me too.
I hated the bitterness of that thought and abandoned it immediately. I didn’t want to become petty or act jealous of a dead woman. She had never done anything to me and it was horrible that she had died so soon.
I got the second album. At the end were some photos showing Carla with a wig and no eyebrows.
Dante’s arm was wrapped protectively around his pale, thin wife. Grief overwhelmed me. What was it like to lose someone you loved so dearly?
I had loved Antonio as a friend, but it didn’t even come close to what Dante and Carla must have had, and if I’m honest, in the end I had often resented Antonio for keeping me in a loveless gilded cage so he could hide that he was gay.
The door swung open, jolting me, and Dante entered , his expression thundering. Before I could move, he was in front of me and snatched the photo album from my hands.
He threw it on the bed, his furious eyes burning into me.
“What are you doing here?”
He grabbed my arm and made me stand up, bringing us so close that our lips almost touched. “This room is none of your business.” I wriggled in his grip. “Dante, you’re hurting me.”
He released me, some of the anger replaced by cold disapproval. “You shouldn’t have come here.” His eyes raced to the open album on the bed with the picture of him and his sick wife. He took a step back, the ‘last fury gone and replaced by a frightening calm. “Leave.”
I did not need to be told twice. I quickly ran into the hallway, startled by Dante’s outburst, but genuinely terrified by the strange calm that had finally taken over his face.
Dante left the room and closed the door. He did not look at me again. I watched his back as he walked away and down the stairs. Wrapping my arms around me, I closed my eyes. I didn’t like to give up on things. I was stubborn, too stubborn as my mother always stressed to me, but I seriously thought about accepting that the marriage between Dante and me would not work. There was only so much rejection I could take.
*** During dinner we hardly spoke, and when we did the last thing on my mind was current events.
Dante didn’t mention what happened, and I certainly wouldn’t. After Zita had cleared our plates with an overly curious look in my direction, Dante stood up. “I have more work to do.”
Of course he had. I nodded silently and headed for the library. If things kept going as they were now, I would be speaking Russian in no time, I thought bitterly as I picked up the textbook. I could not concentrate. The letters were swimming in front of my eyes and I finally gave up. I left the room and cast a glance in the direction of Dante’s office. There was no light filtering in from under the door. Perhaps he had gone to bed?
I headed toward the stairs but stopped when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. The living room door was open, allowing me to clearly see Dante sitting in the large armchair in front of the darkened fireplace, drinking what looked like whiskey. I thought about going up to him and apologizing, but his brooding expression made me decide against it. Instead I quietly climbed the stairs and slipped into the bedroom.
Under the warm spray of the shower, my fingers found their way between my legs again, but I wasn’t really thrilled and eventually abandoned my attempt to find relief.
Seeing those old pictures had ripped open old wounds and created new ones. They had reminded me of the few times early in our marriage when Antonio had brought his lover Frank to our house to have sex with him. It was one of the safest places to meet, but despite my best attempts to accept it, I had suffered because Antonio’s interaction with Frank spoke of the love and desire he could never give me. Seeing Dante with his wife today had felt the same.
I had not resisted Frank then, and I was increasingly sure that I had no chance even against a dead wife.
*** Bibiana had advised me to leave Dante alone for now and hope for the best, and during our phone call it had actually seemed like a decent solution, but after a day of overwhelming silence I couldn’t take it anymore.
When that evening I saw Dante sitting in front of the unlit fireplace , drinking his whiskey, something clicked in me.
My first husband had not wanted me because he preferred men, and my second because he could not let go of a dead wife and because he preferred to brood over a glass of whiskey. I knew that Dante had had sex with other women after his wife’s death. Bibiana had confirmed to him that she had been frequenting her husband’s club for some time, so why didn’t she want to have sex with me? Maybe something in me disgusted men. That was the only logical explanation, and if so I needed to know and stop wasting my time on foolish hopes and ridiculous seduction schemes.
I entered the living room, making sure my heels made an audible sound on the wooden floor. Dante kept his gaze on the dark fireplace. Of course he ignored me. He almost always did.
My arms began to tremble with restrained anger. “Is it true that you used to attend the Palermo Club?”
Dante scowled. He swirled the whiskey in his glass, without looking up. “It belongs to the Familia, but it was long before our marriage.” Bibiana had said the same thing, but her casual tone and dismissive body language were too much. He acted as if none of this was any of my business.
Anger was burning in my veins. I could feel my anger coming out of the cage, but I was too shaken to hold it back.
“So you didn’t mind the company of prostitutes but you can’t take your wife’s virginity?”
That got her attention, and now I wished it hadn’t. Her blue eyes lifted. I wished I could put those words back in my mouth, wished he would return his gaze to his whiskey. Perhaps there was even a glimmer of confusion on his face for a millisecond before the mask of acquired calm slipped back .
I turned without adding anything else, shocked by what I had said, terrified of the consequences that my outburst might spill over. Behind me resounded the clink of a glass set on the mahogany, followed by the creaking of the chair. My throat closed, ice filled my chest. My fingers gripped the railing as I climbed the stairs.
His steps followed me, calm and measured. I suppressed the urge to look back or even to run. Dante could not see how shaken I was. What was I going to do?
He would have demanded answers. Answers I could not give him; I had promised never to give them to anyone. But Dante was the Boss.
No one got to that position without knowing how to acquire information. He would not torture me or even raise a hand. But I was sure he didn’t need to.
I slipped into the bedroom, then stopped in front of the window overlooking the premises. There was nowhere else to run. The bed loomed out of the corner of my eye. I closed my eyes as I heard Dante enter the room and close the door behind him. His tall figure appeared behind me in the reflection of the window. I lowered my gaze to my fingers, tracing the cool marble of the windowsill . Sometimes I felt like I could handle everything, like I was the sophisticated, controlled woman Dante probably wanted, but at times like this I felt like a silly girl.
“Virginity?” he said without a hint of emotion. The gift of all men in the Familia. If you grew up with violence and death, you learned to isolate your heart from the world. Why didn’t they teach the same thing to the women of the Familia?
“You and Antonio were married for four years.”
I didn’t turn around, didn’t even dare to breathe. How could I let it slip out? My mistake could ruin Antonio’s reputation, and mine for agreeing to his plan. Being gay was a punishable offense in the mob, and I had practically helped Antonio commit it. I focused on the breath, the feel of the marble against my fingertips, the trees outside bending in the wind.
“Valentina.” This time there was a slight hint of tension in the word.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” I whispered. “It was just a figure of speech. I didn’t mean it literally. I was a good liar; I had no choice but to become one. “As you said, Antonio and I have been married four years. I’m obviously not a virgin.”
His hand touched my side, and I practically jerked forward a foot, colliding with the window sill. I gasped in pain, then bit my lip to swallow the sound. I had been wishing Dante would touch me for days, and now that he did I wished he would go back to ignoring me.
Dante was watching me through the window. “Turn around,” he said in a low voice. I didn’t even hesitate. His voice, even without threat and danger, had too much authority for me to resist. I took courage as I faced him. I focused on the buttons of his white shirt. His eyes would destroy me. Every muscle in my body was tense as the string of a bow. He put a finger under my chin and lifted it, forcing me to meet his gaze. Again the touch. Why would he touch me now when before he was doing everything he could to keep the distance between us?
I swallowed. Be strong, Valentina. A dead man’s wish is sacred. Don’t break your promise.
And it wasn’t just Antony I was protecting. I had been living a lie, I had been lying to Dante himself since our first meeting, I had led him to believe one thing while the other was true. I wished there was emotion, even anger, on Dante’s face; I could have confronted him, but he revealed nothing . Always the ice man.
“So your words downstairs were simply meant to provoke?”
He seemed calm and curious, but I was not fooled. I had his full attention.
I couldn’t say anything. The way he had expressed it made it sound really bad. What was he thinking about? I wished I had the slightest clue whether he was in a good mood or a bad mood.
He won’t hurt you, Valentina.
So far he hadn’t done anything to me, but we hadn’t interacted much in the few days of our marriage.
And two days earlier it had been scary as hell when he had found me with the photo albums.
The tension became too much and a tear slipped out of my right eye, ran down my cheek and caught on Dante’s finger that was still pushing my chin up. He frowned, letting go of my chin. I quickly looked away from him and took a step back.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because you scare me!” He exploded at me.
“Until today you have never been afraid of me.” He was right.
Except for a few brief occasions, I had not been afraid of him, but I knew that with a man like him I should be afraid.
“Then maybe I’m a good actress.”
“You have no reason to be afraid of me, Valentina,” he said calmly. “What are you hiding?”