The Body #1: Santo and Fiorella

Chapter 1 (Fiorella): With Love

Opening the oven, I checked on the roast I was making for our six month anniversary dinner.

Perfect.

I wanted everything to be perfect tonight. Santo had said last night that he wanted us to have a quiet evening in to celebrate six months of being married. As the only son of the second-in-command to the Head of the Body, Santo was in demand since he would one day take his father's position, and whenever we went out, men stopped him, wanting to talk, wanting a bit of his time. Currying future favor, Santo always told me.

"I just want to be with you tomorrow," he said, his eyes dark and intense. "No interruptions, no stares, just the two of us at home together, away from everyone."

I'd met Santo for the first time at my sixteenth birthday party. My father was a couple steps lower in rank than Santo's father, so I'd been surprised to see Santo walk into our house. All of us girls knew Santo by sight and we spent endless hours talking about him, wondering who Dario La Forte would betroth him to. It was a dream we all cherished -- being  the beautiful man's wife.

At the end of the party, my father introduced me to Santo and his father and told me without any build up, plainly and simply, that Santo Di Spirito was my intended, and I'd marry him on my eighteenth birthday. Santo had left soon after and I saw him four times a year until the day I turned eighteen six months ago. It had been like marrying a stranger, but we'd gotten along fine, and I worked hard at being the perfect Body wife so he would never have any reason to complain.

My mother had begun my training when I was very young: A good Body wife was pleasant, soft-spoken, demure and must always look polished. I learned to cook like a dream, plan dinner parties, run a household and, in general, be a support for my husband and his career in the Body. I was not supposed to argue or cause him distress in any way. My job as a wife was to provide a calm, peaceful home, an oasis for my hard-working husband.

While Santo was at work, I worked out, cleaned, prepared the evening meal and sometimes met other wives for some lunch and shopping.

Sometimes, we would go out at night with other business associates of my husband's, sometimes with other members of the Body, but often Santo would come home, loosen his tie and say he wanted to stay in. And like a good wife, whatever he decided was fine with me.

On those nights we stayed at home, he would sit on the couch and pat his lap, and he would hold me close, burying his face in my neck, and I could feel the tension drain from his body. Then a different kind of tension would take over and Santo would take me to the bedroom and work it out until we were both lax and sated. I was beginning to think he had been developing feelings for me; it was more than I'd ever hoped for and had made me fall even deeper in love with him.

Growing up, my girlfriends and I had been fascinated by the possibility of loving our husbands and of them returning our love. In most Body marriages, the wives fell in love and were openly starry-eyed, but we weren't sure if the men returned those softer emotions. If they did love their wives, they definitely hid it in public. Public displays of affection just didn't happen with Body men, and the higher ranked they were, the colder and more remote they seemed in public. But our mothers told all of us when they heard us chatting about love that the happier you could make your home, the more likely your husband would at least grow to care for you, even if it wasn't love.

Love wasn't as important as securing the next generation of Body members. And I knew that people were whispering  that I should have been pregnant by now, after six months. Santo asked me every month if there was anything he should know, and every month I felt that I had failed in my duties when I had to tell him no. For his part, Santo didn't seem to care; he'd merely press a kiss to my forehead and tell me not to worry myself.