The Sicilian's Marriage Arrangement

“Yes. Where is Luciano?”

“He is in the shower.”

Hope gasped, feeling ripped in two by the answer. “I’m surprised you aren’t with him. He likes sex in the shower.” The crude sarcasm just slipped out, but even if it wounded Zia, it hurt Hope more.

“I was not in the mood.” Far from sounding wounded, Zia’s voice was laced with innuendo.

The tacit agreement to her fears made Hope’s knees give way and she sank onto the side of the bed. “Are you saying you spent the night with my husband?” Her voice trembled, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted to die.

“Are you sure you want me to answer that question?”

“No,” Hope whispered, her vocal cords too constricted for normal conversation, “but I need you to.”

Zia hesitated. When she spoke, her voice had changed, become more tentative. “Perhaps you had better discuss this with Luciano.”

Hope didn’t answer. She just held the phone to her ear and stared at the far wall of the room she shared with Luciano. Was this what death felt like? Your whole body going numb and your emotions imploding until there was nothing left?

Another voice intruded on her blanked out mental state. “Hope? Is that you, cara?”

And she realized she wasn’t numb.

“Don’t call me that you bastard!” She’d gone from whispering to screaming so loud she strained her throat. “You lied to me.” A sob snaked out and she covered the mouthpiece so he wouldn’t hear it.

He started to speak, but she plowed over him. “You p-promised. No mistresses. I believed you. What an idiot I am. Look how good you’ve been at keeping your promises. You said you would treasure my love too, but you stomped all over it. I hate you.” And at that moment she meant it.

“Hope, mi moglie, it is not what you are thinking!”

She would be a fool to believe the desperation that seemed to infuse his voice. She heard him ask Zia what she had said. Hope couldn’t hear Zia’s answer and she didn’t want to. She did hear the Italian curses erupt from her husband’s throat when Zia stopped speaking.

“Did you sleep with Zia?” she demanded in a voice raw from pain.

“No!”

“No, I don’t suppose you did. I’m sure there was very little sleeping involved.”

“Stop this. You are upsetting yourself for nothing.”

He called adultery nothing? “Were your dinners with her in New York nothing too, Luciano?”

Silence greeted that.

“Maybe you didn’t think I would find out?”

“How did you find out about them?”

“My grandfather.”

“Damned interfering old man.”

“Don’t blame him for showing me what a lying swine you are.” How dared he try to foist the culpability for this awful situation onto someone else? “If you hadn’t broken your promise to me, there would have been nothing for him to interfere over.”

“I have not lied to you. I have broken no promises either.” He didn’t deny being a swine.

She’d like to know how he justified that statement to himself. “You were in the shower when I called, Luciano.”

“This is proof of nothing.”

“It proves you’re in a hotel room with another woman.” Let him try to deny it.

“I am not.”

Getting ready to blast him, she remembered his preference for not staying at hotels and she choked on a bitter laugh. “You brought her to the company apartment? How brazen, Signor di Valerio, but then I suppose she’s been there before.”

“No, Hope. It is not like that.” He sounded like she felt, miserable. She couldn’t trust what she heard in his voice though, not when his actions had already spoken so loudly.

“It is exactly like that. Zia said as much.”

“What Zia said, it was a mistake.”

“Our marriage was the real mistake.”

“No! Amore mia. That was not an error. Our marriage was meant to be. You must listen.”

“Why? So you can tell me more lies?” She was choking on her pain. “Your girlfriend was honest at least.”

He said something to Zia and then the other woman came on the line. “Hope, I am sorry I implied I slept with your husband. I did not,” she said sounding distressed, “you must believe me about this.”

“That’s why you’re there when he’s taking a shower.” Hope wasn’t that gullible.

“I am truly sorry I made this sound like an intimacy. It was not. Luciano was still asleep when I arrived this morning to discuss some business.”

“Oh, please…” He never slept late.