Prologue
Lino
Nineteen years ago
Samara sat at my mother's piano, pressing the keys quickly and lightly as she sang a soft melody. I recognized it as one of the popular pop songs the girls at school listened to, but the sweetness of her voice made it seem like the song belonged to her and no one else.
Gentle. Clear. Haunting.
Even then, I felt everything inside me tighten as something snapped taut and vibrated through me.
I stared at her as she faltered when she caught me watching her from my place next to her on the bench at the piano that nobody ever used.
Not since my mother's accident years ago.
The shy smile on her face made me beam at her, but instead of teasing her like I might have ten minutes ago, I reached forward and tucked her frizzy copper hair behind her ear so she couldn't hide the blue-grey eyes she covered with thick-rimmed black glasses.
"Your voice is pretty," I whispered, trying to straighten my shoulders to look taller. I wasn't short for my age, but my cousin Matteo was taller than me already and girls flocked to him. He said chicks liked tall boys. Even eleven-year-old chicks, apparently.
“Thank you,” she replied, her cheeks turning pink with the blush that so often covered her face. She smoothed her hands over her green skirt, moving to stand and put some distance between us, but I stopped that by grabbing her right hand in mine and running my thumb over the odd heart shaped birthmark on her palm.
"One day when we're married, you'll sing to me every day," I said, watching as the smile faded from her face and her pursed mouth parted in shock.
"When we're married?" she whispered, the blush fading in favor of her golden skin paling.
I nodded. "I’m going to marry you."
She huffed in laughter, but I knew Samara well enough to know I'd made her uncomfortable with my declaration. She was my best friend and had been for years already.
I also knew she had years to face the inevitable reality that I meant every word.
My father cleared his throat, and I turned to see him standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. I deflated immediately but smiled to reassure Samara. I knew she worried about our friendship, knew she worried that my father's disapproval of her being a part of my life would have consequences for me.
But there was nothing I wouldn’t do to have Samara in my life.
Even face my father's wrath.
"It's okay," I whispered. "I'm sure your mom will be done soon. I'll see you at school tomorrow." She nodded, casting a wide-eyed glance to my father before she darted off to the attic where she, her mother, and her brother, Yavin, lived. She had to pass my father to fit through the narrow doorway, and for a moment panic coursed through me that he might touch her.
r /> Hurt her to punish me.
But she escaped unscathed. I knew I wouldn’t be so lucky.
"I thought I told you to stop hanging out with the cleaner's kids," he snapped, and I knew Samara wasn't far enough to have avoided hearing him. It was intentional. Everything with my father was a deliberate action, all part of the greater games he played to gain control over everyone in his life.
I'd have to talk Samara down from the edge again, because every time he pulled this stunt she didn't want to come between a father and his son. I didn't have the heart to tell her that my father's fists were already between us and there was no room for anyone else in that gap. Not when she still mourned the loss of the father she couldn't even remember, and not when she was the one who fussed over my cuts and bruises.
"And I told you, Yavin and Samara are my friends." I stood from the bench, closing the keylid gently and reverently. All my strongest memories of my mother were at that piano, and I knew one day, I'd have the same kinds of memories with Samara.
"You told her you would marry her. Let me be very, very clear, Angelino. That will never happen. Not so long as I'm alive. No son of mine will marry a Jewish brat." I kept quiet, because I knew there was no point in arguing with him. But one day, I'd do whatever it took to find a life that was happy. A life where my father didn't dictate my actions.