On Their Wedding Night, the Sicilian Mafia Boss Learned His Bride Had Never Been Touched

I looked at him.

He did not raise his head, but the corner of his mouth moved by a fraction.

“You may return to the university,” he said after a pause. “You’ll have an escort. Gennaro will accompany you.”

I nearly dropped the cup.

“When?”

“Whenever you wish.”

I did not thank him.

I could not.

I lowered my eyes to the coffee and tried not to cry from a new kind of anger that was not anger and for which I did not yet have the correct name.

Gennaro drove me to the university 3 times each week.

He kept 1 hand on the wheel and an elbow against the window. He wore sunglasses even in the early morning and discussed Palermo traffic as though every driver were an ancient personal enemy.

“That man cut in front of us,” he said 1 morning, indicating a car with his chin. “If the boss hadn’t forbidden it, I’d drive him into the nearest wall.”

“Do you have a license for that?”

“I have licenses for many things. Driving someone into a wall is the least of what I do.”

He paused.

“Today.”

I laughed quietly while Palermo passed outside in pale stone and bright sun.

It was the 1st thing that had made me laugh since entering the mansion.

Stella found me in a university corridor on my 2nd day back.

She looked at me, then at Gennaro standing 3 steps behind with his arms crossed, and then back at me.

“You’re back.”

“I’m back with an escort.”

“With an escort?”

She pulled me into a corner until I could smell her perfume, something floral and urgent.

She spoke rapidly into my ear.

“Did he hurt you? Are you sleeping with him? Do you want to run? I have a cousin in Milan who hides people.”

“Stella.”

“What?”

“No.”

She examined me and narrowed her eyes.

“You’re falling in love with him.”

“No.”

“You are falling in love with him, Eveina.”

“Lower your voice.”

“I’m going to kill someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Him, you, or fate.”

She inhaled dramatically.

“Tell me everything at lunch.”

That evening, Niko asked me to come to his study.

It was not the office where I had found the list of widows but another, smaller room with a fire burning despite the mild Palermo weather.

The scent of wood smoke mixed with something citrus, probably from the whiskey on the table.

Niko had removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves to the elbows.

He poured 2 glasses of red wine and handed 1 to me without asking whether I wanted it.

“You don’t have to remain standing.”

I sat in the armchair opposite him.

Rather than sitting properly, he rested on the arm of his chair with both feet on the floor and his knees near the carpet. It was an unusual posture for a man accustomed to presiding over meetings, and for that reason it held my attention.

“My mother died in an ambush,” he said without introduction. “I was 12.”

I said nothing.

There was no appropriate response when someone released a sentence like that without a frame, as though it had waited too long to be spoken.

“You asked why the payments were anonymous.”

He rotated the glass between his fingers.

“I was 12, and no one paid anything to my mother. She was already dead. But I remember the silence inside the house afterward. I remember my father saying she died because of her surname, not his.”

The fire moved quietly inside the fireplace.

“I never forgot that.”

“That’s why you support those women.”

“That’s why.”

Firelight struck 1 side of his face, dividing him into half shadow and half light.

I still did not know which half was real.

“My father is a politician,” I said. “I grew up learning how to smile in photographs no one explained to me. I was introduced as Arthur Shaw’s daughter to people who never really saw me.”

I watched the reflection of the fire inside my wine.

“When he summoned me to discuss the marriage, I thought he had finally forgotten that I existed as his daughter and remembered only that I could be used as a piece.”

I inhaled.

“I hate that he still has that power over me.”

“He doesn’t anymore.”

I raised my eyes.

“Do I?” Niko asked.

There was no arrogance or force behind the question. It sounded as though he already knew the answer and only wanted confirmation.

I did not answer.

I did not need to.

He understood what I withheld, and neither of us mentioned it again that night.

Two days later, the family hosted a dinner for its allies.

A long table filled a smaller hall. Low lights fell across the white cloth, and candlelight moved through the crystal glasses.

Don Vittorio sat at the head. Tommaso was on his left. Niko and I occupied the middle.

Dante Bellomo sat opposite us with a rehearsed smile and the expression of a man who had come to collect an old debt and intended to enjoy the process.

Before the 2nd course arrived, I knew he would provoke us.

“Signora Santoro.”

He raised his glass toward me with a gesture that resembled elegance without possessing it.

“You’re more beautiful by candlelight than by party light. Although, according to what I’ve heard, parties were always your natural environment. Perhaps too many parties for a Santoro.”

The table entered a narrow silence.

Forks stopped.

Breaths were held.

Don Vittorio’s hand paused in the air. Tommaso blinked slowly, calculating what the remark might cost.

Beneath the table, Niko’s hand tightened against his knee.

I felt the movement before seeing it. His thumb pressed into his leg in a gesture I had learned to recognize as the moment before something terrible happened.

Without looking at him, I placed my hand over his beneath the tablecloth.

His fingers stopped immediately.

“Too much curiosity for a guest, Signor Bellomo,” I said lightly. “You appear well informed about parties. Do you attend many?”

Tommaso smiled at his plate.

Don Vittorio resumed eating as though nothing had happened.

“I attend the ones worth remembering,” Dante replied.

“What a shame.”

I smiled with a calm I did not feel.

“I remember every worthwhile party, and I never remember seeing you.”

The table laughed.

Even Don Vittorio produced a brief, nearly silent laugh.

Dante lowered his glass with deliberate care.

Beneath the table, Niko intertwined his fingers with mine.

During the drive home, he remained silent for an entire kilometer.

I watched Palermo’s lights multiply across the black water. Gennaro drove with the careful silence of someone communicating that he could hear nothing and we were free to speak.

“You saved that man’s life tonight,” Niko said.

“I saved yours.”

“I know.”

The sea passed the window. The city receded.

“Tonight,” he said, still looking ahead, “you’re going to sleep in my room.”

He paused.

“I need to discuss the contract.”

My body became still.

The space inside the car appeared to contract.

Gennaro did not turn, but 1 shoulder rose slightly in genuine discomfort.

“All right,” I said.

We climbed the stairs together.

The marble was cold beneath my heels, and the sconces produced a low yellow light against the stone.

Niko opened the main bedroom door. He entered 1st, switched on a corner lamp, and folded his jacket over a chair.

I remained near the entrance with my fingertips against the wood, preserving the possibility of leaving.

“Sit,” he said. Then, more quietly, “Please.”

I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands together.

He brought a desk chair in front of me and sat with his knees nearly touching mine and 1 elbow resting against his thigh.

There was no table or meaningful distance between us.

“The contract contains a clause,” he began.

He spoke like someone who had rehearsed the sentence several times without finding a satisfactory version.

“It requires an heir to make the alliance final. I didn’t decide that. My father and yours agreed before we met.”

My fingertips felt cold despite the room’s warmth.

“I could wait and pretend I had forgotten, but eventually you would learn about it under the worst possible circumstances. I prefer that you hear it from me.”

I looked at my hands.

“I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to,” he continued. “But I have to be truthful. There is a deadline. And the truth is that I no longer know what I want to do about it.”

“What do you mean?”

He passed a hand over his face, a tired gesture I rarely saw.

“I entered this marriage believing I would produce an heir the way I would attend a business meeting.”

He laughed without humor.

“Then tonight, when Bellomo opened his mouth, I understood that I would kill for a woman I have no right to call mine.”

His eyes met mine.

“You ruined everything, Eveina.”

I looked at him, at the lamp reflected in the window, and at the Palermo sea moving silently outside as though there were no reason to hurry.

“Niko.”

“Yes?”

“I’m a virgin.”

The statement emerged before I decided whether I wanted to speak it.

Once it occupied the room, I wanted to retrieve it.

Not because it was false but because it was the most private thing I had ever given anyone, and I did not yet know whether the recipient could carry it.

Niko became completely still.

He appeared not to breathe for a period I counted without intending to.

His eyes searched my face for mockery, sarcasm, or anything that would explain the statement.

He found nothing.

The silence became larger than the bedroom.

“What do you mean?”

It was not truly a question. His mind was attempting to place a piece that had fallen outside the pattern.

“What do you mean, you’re a virgin?”

I gripped my dress to hide the trembling in my hands.

“I always have been. I attend parties. I drink, dance, and laugh at inappropriate jokes. I allow people to believe whatever they choose because I never cared enough to correct anyone who didn’t ask.”

I inhaled.

“But I always believed I would give myself only to the man I married.”

I looked directly at him.

“I have never told anyone. Not even Stella, and she knows everything else about my life. I’m telling you because you are officially my husband.”

He laughed once.

The sound was brief and surprised, without cruelty, as though a joke had finally revealed itself and the joke was him, his assumptions, and every judgment he had accepted without question.

Then he became silent.

I saw the precise moment he understood.

His face altered gradually.

His eyes softened 1st, followed by his mouth. His shoulders lowered by a fraction.

Last were his hands, which opened against his knees as though he needed to feel a stable surface.

“I judged you,” he said.

His voice had changed.

“I judged you through other people’s mouths. I know I didn’t deserve to have you tell me this.”

“I know.”

He stood and went to the window. After several seconds, he returned and knelt between my knees without touching me, bringing his face level with mine.

“Eveina.”

He waited until I looked at him.

He truly waited, with a patience I had not known he possessed.

“You owe me nothing tonight. You never will. The deadline exists, but it’s not your burden. It’s mine.”

“Niko.”

“Yes?”

“Look at me.”

He did.

“I don’t want to wait.”

My voice trembled, but the words remained whole.

“I don’t want to wait because I have already decided.”

He did not move.

“I decided in the garden when you took my hand and refused to let go. I decided when you allowed me to return to the university without turning it into a favor or another chain. I decided when I discovered that you send money to women no one else remembers, and that it reveals more about you than anything anyone has said.”

I maintained his gaze.

“I’ve decided.”

He placed a hand against my face.

It was the 1st time he touched me without urgency, anger, or the pressure of the garden.

There was a clear exit, and he was simply holding my face. His thumb moved slowly along my jaw as though confirming I was real.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“If you change your mind at any point, we stop.”

“I know.”

“At any second.”

“I know.”

He leaned toward me.

The kiss was slow and entirely without haste. It was not the kiss from the garden, charged with anger and adrenaline. It possessed the patience of someone who had finally understood that this mouth was the 1st part of something singular.

He stood and approached the lamp.

Before switching it off, he looked over his shoulder.

“Are you still certain?”

“Turn off the light, Niko.”

The room became dark except for the faint blue light reflected from the sea.

I closed my eyes knowing it would be the 1st night I belonged to someone and the 1st night someone belonged to me in return.

I woke before sunrise and did not immediately recognize the room.

The light was different, blue and cold, without weight.

The sheets carried Niko’s scent, a mixture of polished wood and something citrus that I had learned to identify without trying.

I turned on the pillow and extended my hand toward his side of the bed.

It was empty.

The shape of his body remained in the fabric, indicating that he had only recently risen.

I sat up.

The mansion’s main bedroom seemed to breathe in silence. The heavy curtains were partly open, and through the gap I saw the sea, gray-blue and still, as though it too did not know what to do with the morning.

Then I saw Niko.

He stood on the balcony with his back toward me, leaning against the stone balustrade. He wore dark pajama trousers and a white shirt open to the wind. His hair was still damp, his shoulders outlined against the horizon.

I left the bed quietly and took the silk robe he had folded over an armchair.

Niko, who appeared never to fold anything, had folded it.

I crossed the room barefoot.

The wooden floor was cold. The memories of the night remained warm beneath my ribs, and I did not want to disturb them yet.

They were mine.

They were ours.

There would be time to understand them later.

The balcony door was partly closed. I pushed it open.

“You sleep very little,” I said.

He turned.

In the half second before he answered, I understood the morning.

His eyes, usually so controlled, had softened. They were not lowered or defeated. They looked as though someone had cleaned the glass from inside.

“I was listening to you breathe,” he said in the rough voice of someone who had not yet spoken that day. “I became tired of waiting for you to wake from a distance.”

Heat rose into my face.

After everything, I could still blush because of a sentence.

I folded my arms over the robe and approached the balustrade. He made enough space for me to stand beside him.

Our arms touched.

“Are you all right?”

It was a dangerous question because it carried too many possible answers.

“I’m here.”

He nodded as though that was sufficient.

The edge of the sea began receiving light. A distant gull called.

“I didn’t know,” he said, looking outward. “I judged you through other people, and I, more than most, should understand how other people lie.”

“Stop. It’s over.”

“It isn’t.”