Bleeding Sunset

Chapter 13

I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but the pin drop silence and the downcast eyes was just not one of them. I thought that Alessandro and his family would at least pretend to be happy to see me, since the last time that we were together things had been going so well. We sat around the simple dinner table, no one really saying anything, and none of them met my eye. I just wanted things to go back to normal- I wanted to hear Greta drone on about her day, and Alessandro make bad jokes about the food that we were eating, and Gabriela to roll her eyes and complain under her breath about how he was the world’s worst comedian. But there was none of that. 

In fact, the moment that the Rolls Royce Cullinan had come to a stop outside the home, they were standing outside, as if waiting for the First Lady. I guess, I should have better understood and interpreted their uncomfortable and fearful faces, even though they had nothing to be scared of. It was just me. 

I placed a smile on my face, taking it upon myself to start off some conversation, “so how have things been?” I asked in an unsure tone, speaking Italian since I was beginning to better understand the language. 

Alessandro was the one who spoke up, “well, they have been good.” He answered me and even though it was a good answer- great, actually. It hurt to hear that since I had been gone, things seemed to be going well. They had yet to tell me that they had missed me, or even give me a proper hug without their bodies being rigid and afraid in my arms. 

It seemed as though I were the plague, and something told me that it was because of the company that I was keeping. Being around Agostino really tainted you and everything that you were. He was poison, seeping into every pore, every thought, every doubt, every person and spoiling you for everyone else. Suddenly his words “…I’ll take it all, until I’m the only one left, until I’m all that you have.” Hit way to hard. I didn’t even have to attempt to escape in order for his words to be true, because sitting at the table where we once used to sit and laugh, talk about our days and never run out of words; the silence was resounding. 

I was tired of the silence. I was met with silence everywhere that I went, everywhere that I sat, everywhere that I stepped- pure silence. No one talked to me, not the staff at the house, not the guards, and Agostino was busy most of the time. I missed the booming laughter from Alessandro when he would “accidently” tip over the bowl of peas and say “oh no, I pea’d on the table!” and bring himself to tears with what he thought was a phenomenal joke, while I would giggle at the way that he never seemed to care what we thought and would just let himself be. I missed the way that Greta would talk my ear off about school and the guys that liked her, or the way that Aurora would tell me about the strange dreams she had of talking chickens and dancing goats, or the way that Matteo would draw the world’s worst scribbles and say that it was me. 

I was about to scream. If someone didn’t talk to me, I was sure that I was going to lose it. 

“Greta, how was school?” I chose to say, hoping that me saying her name would encourage her to talk. 

She didn’t look up from her plate, “fine.” She answered me shortly, and I dropped my fork, feeling myself reach my limit. I cleared my throat, suddenly losing my appetite and the lasagne no longer looking and tasting that amazing. 

“I…I can’t…” I croaked out, standing to my feet and pushing my chair back, hearing it loudly screech against the tiled floors. They all were silent, but I had their attention because for the first time in the evening, they looked at me. However, this time, I didn’t want to look at them so I walked away, and made my way to the front door. When I stepped out of the front door, the two men posted at either side of the door turned their heads to look at me but I walked through them, making my way to the other end of the patio and leaning against the wooden railings that would cause lots of splinters. 

I shut my eyes, letting the night air nip at my skin and tried to calm down my breathing. I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing, but I didn’t really care because I was trying to collect myself. After a few moments I suddenly felt a presence beside me, and I opened my eyes and turned my head, looking up at the man that was my father. He looked at me, but he couldn’t even hold eye contact with me, his eyes trailing away and looking down or looking behind me. My throat was tight and suddenly, it didn’t help that I was trying to recollect myself, “you won’t even look at me…” I found myself saying in a broken whisper. “look at me, Alessandro….” I pleaded, needing to be seen. 

I watched as he visibly swallowed, his brows furrowing and his expression becoming solemn. “I can’t…” he told me, his voice sounding strained as he tried to hold my eyes but he looked away. However, I felt him wrap an arm around me and bring me into his body. I placed my face in his chest and cried, letting out all that I had been holding in. Suddenly, I cried because I had been so silly as to make eye contact with a man like Agostino when I was still a waitress, I cried because I had so excitedly prepared myself for a date with him. I cried because he had raped me, I cried because of all the things that I had seen in the basement, then I cried because Agostino told me that I could never leave. I cried because I tried to run, but Agostino caught me and put me through hell, and I cried because despite all that, I somehow felt that Agostino was the only person who didn’t look past me or through me, but instead at me. 

Alessandro, wordlessly held me, his big arms around me and the comfortable pot belly served as a kind of comfort only a father could provide. For the first time in a long while, I felt safe and protected, in the shield that came with a father’s love. I could hear his heart beat, hear the way that he breathed, and I could feel the deathly tight grip around me as he pulled me impossibly closer. 

I cried until the tears slowed to a stop, and when I pulled back from his chest and looked at him, I felt like a little child. His eyes held a gentleness in them that I had seen directed towards his other children, but never towards me. My heart soared, and suddenly my hiccups came to a still and my arms wrapped tighter around his stomach. 

I suddenly felt another pair of arms wrap around me and a bed of curls invade my senses, and I knew that it was Greta. She and her outrageous yet beautiful hair was always a sight, “oh, I love a group hug!” she suddenly exclaimed with joy as she buried her face in my neck and I lightly laughed, turning my face away from her hair that was coming into my nostrils. We stood in each others arms for some time, swaying side to side, breathing each other’s scents in and I thoroughly enjoyed the moment. 

“I’m scared, Delaney.” She said in a whisper, speaking into our bodies, disguising her words away from the guards. “I wish you could come back home…” she trailed off but we all knew that the only way that I was ever going to come back home was in a casket. There was no other way around it. “the whole town’s talking about you…talking about the woman that the dono della morte has taken. None of the other women lasted this long.” She was whispering it to me than to my father whose head had been turned the other way and Greta and I were face to face with each other, speaking in whispers. 

“There were others?” I asked her and Greta gave a small nod. 

“They were with him for a week, and suddenly, there was a funeral and there the family of whatever woman it was- having a closed casket funeral. Never any longer than a week or two, not to mention the months that you have spent with him.” she paused her eyes gazing into my own in a way that was filled with panic, concern, suspicion- all the sorts, “the Italian mafia is coming to Merton,” she relayed to me, “and if the Italian mafia don travels all the way from Italy to Merton once in the 15 years that the dono della morte has been running his business, it means one thing and one thing alone…”

“What’s that?”

“A wedding.”