Chapter Five Villain

CHAPTER FIVE VILLAIN

I was so not feeling the poetry assignment. The last thing I wanted was to trace someone else’s words about grief and pain while my own loss, raw and searing, sat so heavy in my chest. Still, it was a distraction, not to mention a necessary component of graduating, so I was doing my best with it. I had been scanning a giant book of poems for nearly an hour before I found one about self-deception. I transcribed it, verse-for-verse, then wrote my own response.

I used to wear masks so subtle I barely noticed them. A compliment to my mother after a dismal meal, a smile at my best friend when she sang out of tune, a forced laugh at my uncle’s bad jokes. I wore small masks that came and went, like fleeting expressions.

I am stuck inside the mask I wear now. I want to rip it off. I want to show my scars to the world, to unveil the ugliness that breathes inside me. I want to be unashamed. I want to be unafraid. But every day the mask gets tighter, and I suffocate a little more.

I stopped writing. This was definitely too much. Simmons would keel over if I kept going. I scratched it out and flipped the book of poems open again.

‘Very industrious, Persephone. On a Friday night, too. And here I thought you only cared about leading Nicolò on.’ He chuckled at his quip. ‘Your brain, it seems, is capable of some diversion.’

I put the pen down and sat back in my chair. ‘This isn’t a documentary, Felice. Can you not narrate me?’

I could feel him coming closer, the sickly scent of honey filling up the study. His shadow fell across the desk, the edges crisp and blackened under the table lamp. He made to lean over me, and instinctively I covered my notebook with my elbow.

‘Can you think of nothing else to do than bother me while I’m trying to write this stupid essay?’

He rounded the desk. He was wearing a new suit – dark purple, with a crimson necktie. He arranged himself, with arms folded, against the wall. His smile was indulgent. You’ve had a tough week, so I won’t take that to heart, little Persephone.’

‘I wasn’t aware you had a heart.’

‘I don’t,’ he said, his light eyebrows drawing low over his eyes. He was a skeleton barely fleshed out before me. In certain lighting, I could see the edges of his skull beneath his receding hairline.

‘You are literally a villain.’

‘I used to have a heart.’ He didn’t betray a flicker of composure at my observation. ‘When I was young and foolish and thought the world was a bright, forgiving place. But I’ve learnt my lessons, Persephone, just as you will.’

There was something in his voice just then that made me quell the insult resting on my lips. I could see it in the careful placement of his smile, the twitch in his right eye. Grief. Grief for the wife who had walked out on him at eight months pregnant and had taken his foolish heart with him. Grief for Evelina, the woman he had built a palace for.

Only Evelina hadn’t left him, like he thought. She had been taken from him. He mourned the absence of a woman who was never coming back. A woman my father murdered. Bile rose in my throat at the image of that ruby ring inside the diner safe, of Jack’s words to me. The truth of my father’s depravity had been wrestling with the pain of my mother’s demise, and I wasn’t ready to unleash either. I certainly wasn’t about to tell Felice what really happened to his wife. I would take that to the grave with me. I hoped Luca would too.

I shut my notebook. ‘I assume you’ve come in here for a reason?’

‘Nothing escapes you, does it?’ he said mockingly. ‘If you must know, I was wondering about the measure of your intent.’

‘My intent?’

His eyes darkened. His teeth seemed to grow sharper. ‘Do you still wish to experience the feeling of retribution? Do you still thirst for it as you did the day you showed up on our doorstep seeking sanctuary?’

His intensity was more than unnerving. There was no humour or mocking left now. ‘Where has all this come from?’

‘This week,’ he said.

‘The week Donata stuffed my mother’s car with dead rats and blew it up in front of me, you find yourself wondering whether I still hate her as much as I did? Whether I still want to make her pay for everything she has taken from me? I thought you were supposed to be smart.’

Felice hitched up a brow. ‘I would say the same of you, but I’ve always been under the impression that you’re somewhat obtuse.’

I rolled my eyes at him.

He came closer – his breath pushing that cloying smell into the air between us. ‘It is my opinion that you give Gianluca too much credence in the matter of your mother’s avengement. His words, if you let them, will weaken you, and you will remain as you always have been…’ he paused, and then elongated the word, as though he could taste it in his mouth and it was almost too delicious to let go, ‘powerless.’

Powerless. There it was. The button. And he was pressing it.

‘Powerless.’ I was powerless. I felt powerless. Especially after what the Marinos had done with my mother’s car. I had stood there, watching the flames devour everything – just like before.

‘Let me speak plainly, Persephone. Gianluca has always been broken. His heart and his head are not where they should be. He is certainly not my father’s legacy as others contend. He has always given me the deepest impression, beneath his duties and his family loyalty, of being irrevocably… dissatisfied .’ He swirled the word around in his mouth, tasting it, before spitting it out. ‘Gianluca is, simply put, unsatisfactory .’

I felt an irrational urge to defend Luca, but it would only appear strange, and right now I was trying to fly under the radar. Let Felice think what he wanted; it didn’t change the truth of anything.

He poured himself over the table, gripping its edges so hard it looked as though his spindly fingers might snap off. ‘I suspect Gianluca sees in you another version of himself. One that is not beyond saving, one that he can actually control. His dealings with you are, in my estimation, a projection of his own failings with himself.’

It felt a little bit like I had been punched in the heart. The idea that Luca saw something of himself in me had never even crossed my mind. I thought he had wanted to help me, maybe even be with me, in some kind of alternative universe, but this… I had never imagined that I might be some kind of… project. A do-over. It hurt. It hurt .

I tried to keep my expression placid. ‘Wow, Felice. Tell me how you really feel.’

‘I am saying this for your own good.’

I cut my eyes at him. ‘Oh, I’m sure you are. I’m sure you came in here with the intent of looking out for me. I’m sure you didn’t mean it when you raised a gun to my head a few weeks ago and threatened to shoot me in front of your whole family. You care about me. Yeah. That seems really likely. I totally buy that. Oh, I believe you. Whoa, Felice, please stop caring so much about me, you’ll give yourself a heart attack. Please, calm down with all that genuine caring.’

He frowned at me. ‘Are you done?’

‘Yeah.’ I shrugged. ‘That’s all I got.’

‘I see how Luca is excluding you from family business. Any attempt he makes to distance you from the glory in revenge is nothing more than a selfish preoccupation with his own shortcomings.’

‘Felice’ and ‘sincere’ were not words I would ever put together in a sentence, unless of course the sentence was ‘Wow, Felice is not a sincere person.’ Yet, there was a disconcerting level of honesty in his expression. He truly believed what he was saying. The idea that Luca might actually like or care about me hadn’t even crossed his mind. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ I asked. ‘What does it even matter?’

‘We are at war, Persephone. Everything matters now.’

‘You really should have majored in theatre, Felice. You would have made an incredible Lady Macbeth.’

He bent his head to my height, his elbows propped across the desk. ‘Nicolò will show you the way forward. He knows the path and he walks it, undaunted. Gianluca will shut your eyes until it’s too late, and you will, I guarantee, meet the same fate as your mother.’

I sucked in a breath, all dregs of humour evaporating in that instant. ‘My mother is not some cautionary tale, and she’s definitely not a weapon you can use against me.’

He raised a hand, halting the venom on my tongue. ‘The fact remains that we are now all you have, Persephone. If you want to be part of this family and remain part of this family, you must choose to whom you are going to listen. That is going to make all the difference. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘I understand,’ I said, if only to end the conversation. ‘Luca won’t help me survive in this world.’

Felice’s grey eyes darkened, his lips twisting into a slow smile. ‘But Nicolò will.’