He was the one who'd dragged me out to the family's autumn table on the estate grounds, yet I spent the whole day fretting over what his mother could keep down.
He was the one trading jokes and low laughter with the crew, while I stood off to the side, invisible, never once let into the circle.
"Adriana, why do you have to be so dull?"
After the associates had gone, he asked me that, his face wiped clean of anything.
I didn't bother answering. My mind was already counting how many extra hours I'd have to bleed into the books that month just to keep the debt on this house from swallowing us whole.
By the time I finally understood, we'd already drifted too far apart.
He blamed me for going gray and lifeless. But he'd conveniently forgotten it was me playing nursemaid to his mother and scraping side work into the night, all so he could live like a man without a care in his blood.
People moved past me on the sidewalk, throwing strange looks.
I laughed, and it came out bitter. I must have looked like a joke.
Eight years. How many eight-year stretches does a person get?
I'd given everything to the man I loved, and I'd lost. Completely.
If that was how it was going to be, I had no reason left to stay in that rotting house.
I wiped my tears and caught the last bus.
The irony sat in my throat. Salvatore kept two cars in the garage, each worth more than most made men saw in a lifetime.
But when I'd asked for a little scooter to shorten my commute, he'd called it a waste.
His cars were never for me.
I folded myself into a corner of the bus and caught my reflection in the dark glass.
Red, swollen eyes. Dark circles like bruises. A coat washed so many times it had faded to the color of ash.
No one would believe I was barely past twenty.
I used to think love could stand against anything. Reality had just delivered its correction, quiet and merciless.
But it was fine.
It wasn't too late. Not yet.
The moment I opened the door, the laughter inside died.
Salvatore looked over at me, his eyes already cold and far away.
"Where were you? Why are you crawling back now?"
I didn't look at him. I swept my gaze over the men and women draped across the furniture like they owned the place, and walked straight for the bedroom.
"Salvatore, your keeper of the house has quite the mouth on her."
A young woman turned her head, her voice teasing, testing the room the way a knife tests a seam.
My hand froze on the door handle. I thought about what I must look like just then.
Like the help. That was fair.
Or worse. Like the help who paid for the privilege of serving.
Salvatore's face went dark. He crossed the room, his voice sharpening.
"Adriana, didn't I tell you to have supper ready? Everyone's been sitting here waiting on you. Have you no shame?"
"Now get in there and—"
Slap.
The sound of my palm meeting his face killed every sound in the room. Somewhere a glass touched a tabletop too gently, and nobody breathed.
"Get out!"
Salvatore, so sure of himself a breath ago, rocked back from the blow.
He stared at the fury in my eyes, disbelief written plain across his face.
"Say that again."
"I said get out! Why the hell should I wait on any of you?"
"Adriana, what's gotten into—"
Before he could finish, I hurled the photograph I'd been clutching straight at his face.
The tears came without warning. I screamed at him.
"You're right. I must be out of my mind to have let you use me all these years!"
"Count everything I did as thrown away. We're done!"
The battered suitcase lay open on the floor, nothing like the shiny new one I'd carried through that door eight years ago.
And Salvatore was no longer the bright-eyed boy who'd once looked at me like I was the whole of his world, who'd sworn, "From now on, you're the lady of this house."
He stared at me, his expression gone flat and dark.
"All this because I forgot to leave you money for the market? Was that really necessary?"
The room stayed silent for two long beats. In that stillness the disbelief settled cold in my chest.
I looked up, unable to make sense of it.
Even now, he wouldn't admit it.
He'd already gathered himself back together. He pulled out his billfold, peeled off five hundred, and let it fall carelessly onto the vanity.
"Upset because one of mine called you the help? That it? There. Go buy yourself something decent, clean yourself up, then go get the food and make supper. Even if you won't eat, my mother still has to."
