𝐁𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐨 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐟𝐢𝐚

Chapter 24

I'm suddenly woken up by Cristiano's movement. He carefully lifts me off of him, and gets out of bed. It takes me a minute to come to my senses, I look at the time. I almost fall out of bed when I see how late it is. It's almost 11:00 am. We should've been out of bed hours ago, even though Cristiano and I had been up till 6:00 in the morning.

But when I look at Cristiano, he doesn't even seem to be in any kind of rush. He walks into the closet for a while, and when he comes out, he's fully dressed in a black suit and coat.

He pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and smokes it for a few minutes. Then he turns to look at me.

"Get dressed, wear something black and warm, quickly." He says sternly, then goes back to smoking his cigarette.

I don't hesitate to do what he says, even though it was strange. I go into the closet, and quickly find a black turtleneck, black pants, and a long gray coat. I rush out of the closet, and into the bathroom. I put my hair back into a simple bun, brushing out my hair would just make it all wild and frizzy. I decide not to put on any makeup, not wanting to keep Cristiano waiting any longer.

When I leave the bathroom, the room is filled with the disgusting scent of smoke. I fight the urge to cover my nose, and walk over to him. He flicks his cigarette in the trash, then takes my hand.

We walk downstairs, and there's this strange mood throughout the house. Things feel somber, and all the maids seem to have their head hung lower than usual. Even the guards seem to be remorseful. Was there a death? Was someone in the family attacked? Where were Cristiano and I going? I had a million questions, but I knew asking one of them would just make Cristiano angry.

He leads me out the front doors of the house, and to a car that was waiting outside. He opens the door to the backseat of the car, and lets go of my hand. I quickly get in, and Cristiano gets in on the opposite side.

"Drive." He says, and I suddenly realize that there is a man in the drivers seat.

Don's rarely drove, and when they did they were probably with their mistresses. I didn't even know how to drive.

We just sit there in silence, and drive through the city. The weather is starting to get colder out, little particles of ice were starting to cover the door windows. I realize that we are starting to leave the city, and we are heading into the countryside. Where were we going?

Anxiety filled my body, and I started to fiddle with my fingers . I had been doing that since I was little, it's what I did when I was nervous. I glance over at Cristiano, and I can tell he's angry about something, he probably just wants a cigarette. Finally the car slows down, and when I look out the window I'm surprised. We're pulling up to a cemetery. The car comes to a stop, and Cristiano gets out.

At this point I had even more questions than I did before. What were we doing here? Suddenly my car door opens, and Cristiano reaches his hand out to me. I don't want to go anywhere near that cemetery, and he knows it. My eyes are practically pleading with his. He gives me a look, a take my hand or else kind of look. I hesitantly place my hand in his, and he gently pulls me out of the car. We walk towards the entrance, where there's a gate. When I look a little more closely, I can see the word "Seratorre" on a sign above the gate.

It suddenly hits me, this must be the family cemetery. But what were we doing here? Why didn't we have any guards with us?

Cristiano takes a key out of his pocket, and unlocks the gate. He opens it, then proceeds to walk us both into the cemetery. I can't take it anymore, I stop dead in my tracks.

"Why are we here?" I blurt out. Cristiano looks at me, clearly annoyed that I'm not just following along. He squeezes my hand a little tighter.

"Walk with me, and I'll tell you." He says sternly.

I start walking with him again, but his hand didn't loosen around mine. We walk around dozens of different grave stones, some dating back to the 1920s. Eventually we stop at a large gravestone, engraved with the names Eleanora and Marco. It suddenly hits me, Cristiano's parents. We're visiting their grave.

"It's been 3 years to the day." He says, staring somberly at the gravestone. I don't know what to say. What am I suppose to say? I never even met them.

"I'm so sorry, I bet they were lovely." I say, trying to console him.

"My mother was lovely. My father was an absolute bastard." He says angrily. He clearly didn't have any good memories of his father, similar to way I didn't have any good memories of my mother.

"Don't you miss him though?" I ask. He looks at me almost shocked. It was definitely not a question he was asked often, if at all. He turns his head back to the gravestone, and thinks for a moment.

"He was a monster Giada. All the scars on my back, he put them there. How could I miss him?"

"Y-you shouldn't." I say, putting my head down. I regret even asking him anything. Deep down I knew who gave him those scars, I knew who had turned Cristiano into the man he is. His father was a monster.

Cristiano lets go of my hand, and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a cigarette. I don't know why, but I felt this sudden urgency to keep him from lighting it. It didn't make sense, he had smoked in front of me so many times before.

"Please don't, those will kill you!" I say, grabbing the cigarette out of his hand and backing away from him.

At first I regret it, but for some reason Cristiano doesn't seem angry. He is giving me this look of pity, yet he has this posture of complete dominance.

"Wouldn't your life be so much easier if I died Giada?" He asks in an almost menacing tone.

My breath almost stops. Did he really just say that? He had a point. If he died I would probably just be sent back to New York to live out the rest of my life. I love New York, but going back there meant I'd be completely alone.

"You're all I have Cristiano."

We stare at each other for a while. I can't tell what he's thinking, but it seems like he can read my mind. He reaches out his hand, motioning for me to give him back his cigarette. Reluctantly, I place it in his hand. He puts it in his mouth and lights it.

I suppose it was his way of telling me he didn't give a damn about my opinion. Eventually, he walks towards me and takes my hand again. He pulls me closer to him.

"You're right." Cristiano says as we walk back to the car. It puzzles me for a moment.

"About what?" I ask, as he opens my door for me, and I climb into my seat.

"I'm all you have. You should remember that." He says, then shuts the door in my face. He was being cruel, but I deserved it. I felt like I had crossed the line. This relationship, if you could even call it one, wasn't a partnership. It was a dictatorship. He had all the control, and I had none. Sometimes I didn't mind it, but most of the time it terrified me.

Cristiano had complete power over me, and the only way out was death. And I'd rather be married to a monster, than die.