Home

Home is an apartment on Park Avenue. The walls are white with gilded golden lights fixed to them. The curtains are a sky blue and they are blowing inward with a night breeze. I am in love. The furniture is large and tufted, and they screamed of class and comfort. I stifle a delighted giggle. It was not horribly large, but it was cozy. The kitchen was cramped with the stove taking up most of the space, and a small table was tucked away in the corner of the room. Given the business that was required of the two of us, I doubted much use would come to it. Their nights would be filled with business meetings or parties. A luxury not afforded to me until recently. I had no head for the business. My father’s business would go to my husband now. As would his fathers. One day my husband would be the most powerful man in New York and I would be the girl who turned a blind eye to his affairs and raised children he did not care about. He wore his own shackles in this, but his were crested in diamonds.

“It is not much. Our house is being built.” I look at him and I notice he is disgusted by the space. He takes no joy in this home. It is too cramped, too empty, too much of a reminder that I was here.

“I love it.” I tell him and its true. It is the first good thing that has happened to me since we were joined. Seven days had passed since then. Seven silent days were spent near the ocean by two silent people in two separate rooms. It was the honeymoon of dreams.

He rolls his eyes and I bite down on my tongue. He was petulant and distant. The most he had spoken to me was when he told me the members of his family. He had two younger brothers- Nicola who was married to Lilliana, and Giovanni who was married to a woman named Frances. His father is Maritzio, Don to the Cattaneo family. He says nothing else about his father. He does not need to. I already know.

Maritzio Cattaneo was a cantankerous man, prone to actions beyond logical thought. Many times my grandfather told me of the blood spilled within our family by the Cattaneo family and Maritzio seemed more than happy to keep the tradition alive, only giving in to peace when the prohibition started and trade became substantially more restricted. The rivers of blood the Cattaneo family had spilled flowed into my veins, and the throb of betrayal raveled itself in my body. I wanted to shed my wedding ring and throw it out the window. I held no loyalty to any family, but I did not think it right that blood be spilled at all over a few roads in a city.

Domenico sits on the couch and I drop down next to him, tucking away extra bits of dress fabric. My family has gifted me lavish gowns for wedded bliss, each more annoyingly long than the last. My step-mother had ordered me night gowns made in France to impress my new husband. I would never tell her that he had seen neither her gowns nor my flesh. He is reading a book, his shoulders relaxed and eyes immersed in words. I knew what he was doing. He was escaping. He was crafting worlds from words, living a million lives that were never his own. I did it too sometimes.

The fireplace was lit, casting light onto his cheeks. Like this he is beautiful. When he is not looking at me, he is beauty. But when he looks at me, I see more devil than god. I make no mistake, the calm man next to me is one of the most dangerous men I will ever meet.

“Will you tell me something?” I ask him and he stiffens and puts his book down.

“What?”

“Why did you marry me?” I ask him suddenly. I do not know why I ask the question. It is a question I already know the answer to.

“Because I was ordered to.”

The conversation ends there and he goes back to his book and I am left once more wondering who it is that I am married to. I craft a book in my mind and I dig out the tunnels of thought that I am trapped within. I give faces to the emotions that live within me. Shame is a vile man with dark eyes, and he lives in my mind. Melancholy has hair the color of snow and lips tainted blue. She lives in my heart. My eyes, my eyes are fear. I am a map of emotions and tunnels. I do not find a face for happiness. It is not a character I have met yet.