Chapter Nineteen

Colleen

 

“You will go to the party, and you will smile, and you will dance, and you will, in short, do everything that is required of a nice Irish girl when her mother asks her to.” Alma stands over me, arms folded, but I know that she’ll unfold those arms if the need arises: unfold them and start waving them like crazy. My only hope is that since she wants me looking pretty for this ball, she won’t want to bruise me too badly. “Do you understand?” She goes on when I just sit there, glaring up at her. “I don’t know what happened the other night, but I know I don’t like it. I know that much! And let me tell you, girl.” She leans in close. “If it was your little friend, he’s done if he shows his face again. We have put measures in place.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mutter, my standard response since it happened.

 

“Right, right.” She rolls her eyes and backs away to the bedroom door. I sit up, and then stand up. She turns to me in surprise. “Is there a problem?”

 

“I don’t want to go to this ball,” I tell her. “Since when do the Irish and the Italians have parties together, anyway?”

 

“Since your father said so, that’s when!” she almost screams, marching across the room and raising her hand. “Your father and Lorenzo Moretti have worked out a deal, and this party is a piece of that deal. There. You have it. You shouldn’t need anymore information. A good daughter would do as she asked and not complain about it. And—and—” She takes a deep breath, her face turning red; Alma cannot allow her face to turn red, oh no. She’s above such things. “And you should be happy! Any other girl would be over the moon to play dress up and go to a lovely party!”

 

“You’re planning something,” I say, reading her. Everything about her tells me that she needs me to look pretty for more than simple appearances. It’s like I’m her prize show dog and she’s a sadistic owner. She might normally slap the dog across the back of the head, but today she can’t; there’s a show. So instead she just glares. “Aren’t you?” I snap, bolstered by my apparent invincibility. “You’re planning something! What is it, Mom?” I steel myself when I use the word she hates so much.

 

She flinches, rustles her purple silk nightgown, and then settles back with a rictus scowl. Then she smiles; the smile is worst of all. “You’ll see soon enough,” she says with confidence. “Listen, Colleen. One day this will all seem like a bunch of silly nonsense. You might not believe it now, but in a few years we’ll be sitting around and laughing about this. Me, you, your father, your husband, my grandchildren. All of us, having a gay old time.” She does her softening routine, extending her hand. I want to bat that hand away, but at times like this I find myself weakening. It’s a preview of what could’ve been, had we been closer all along. “If you just went along with me a bit, it wouldn’t have to be like this. If you just smiled every now and then, and at least tried to have a good time. But you never do. You’re always complaining, always whining, always behaving as though your father and I haven’t given you every luxury in life.”

 

This is the moment when I am supposed to crumble and apologize. I normally would, but she’s already demonstrated that the repercussions are going to be much less severe today. “Didn’t you ever stop to think that I might want more than luxuries, Mom?” It is the first time in years I have said Mom not as an insult, but as a genuine plea. “You never care about what I want, only what’s best for the—”

 

“For the Family, yes! That’s exactly right!” Her scowl deepens, which is almost impressive since it was so deep already. “Everything all of us do is for the good of the Family! Do you think your father wanted to let that Italian dog go, huh? No, no, the things he would’ve done to him if he had the chance … if he gets the chance again, you better come to terms with the prospect that he won’t be around for long. Anyway, enough talk. The ball is in seven hours; we’re leaving in three and a half. I want you to meet me in the costume room in one. Do you understand?”

 

“The costume room,” I murmur sourly. When I was a girl, the costume room was my study, but then Alma started to complain about how she needed more space for her clothes and so, voila, it became her costume room.

 

“Some girls never have a study for one second of their entire life!” Alma snaps. “Don’t be so ungrateful.”

 

“Whatever.” I fold my arms. “I’m not going to the ball, so that’s that. You can say and do whatever you want. I’m not playing your sick game.”

 

“You absolutely will play my game,” she counters. “All you get to choose is the way you play it: willingly …” she takes a step closer, lowers her voice, smiles savagely “… or not.”

 

With that, she turns away—her silk gown fluttering like a cape—and strides from the room. I sit on the bed and nod a silent thanks as Khabib (Scar’s real name) closes the door. The Russian guards are friendly enough, but that won’t stop from them carrying out Alma’s messed-up orders.

 

I don’t do much except sit there and listen to some Celtic music online, a mix that takes me to far-off lands where I don’t have to think about the coming night. I want to stay strong about refusing to go to the ball but I’m not sure if I can. Alma doesn’t exactly have a bad track record when it comes to making me do what she wants. I think about Gabriel, always, wishing he was here; being with him would make sense of it all. I felt like a different woman with him, especially that last night when I initiated the sex. The woman sitting here would never do something like that, but she did, that other one, the braver one, the one with some life in her. That woman wasn’t a doll.

 

Time passes far too quickly. I watch the clock pretty much continuously, counting down the seconds until the time when I’m supposed to meet Alma to get dressed. Eventually the dreaded knock comes on the door.

 

“You dress?” Khabib mutters.

 

“Yes,” I reply, tugging a blanket around my shoulders to cover my pajamas.

 

He opens the door and, as always, looks a few inches above my head. “Misses ask for you. You come.”

 

“No.” I shake my head firmly. “Tell her no.”

 

“She say you come.” He sighs. “Please. Come.”

 

“No!”

 

“I tell her.”

 

“Tell her then!”

 

He shrugs, as though it doesn’t make any difference to him, and then shuts the door. His heavy footsteps sound down the hallway and then lighter footsteps sound back toward me. Alma throws the door open, still in her gown but now with rollers in her hair and her face half-painted. She almost leaps at me, aiming her forefinger like a weapon. Some of her fingernails are painted, but others are still unpainted. It’s a strange look.

 

“You have two choices,” she says. “Either you follow me and you get dressed nicely. Or I order the Russians to come in here and dress you. That will mean they will see you naked, or at least half-naked. I have no desire for that to happen but you are not leaving me much choice. They will not hurt you, of course, but if you fight them I will be forced to allow them to drug you. Is that what you want, girl? To be passed out as men paw at you?” She lowers her voice to something like resentment. “Would you like that? Is that what that Italian dog did to you, turn you into a slut?”

 

“You’re prehistoric!” I hiss.

 

“Why?” she retorts. “Because I do not believe in the nonsense you young women spout, that you can go to bed with any man and still look at yourself in the mirror in the morning?” She tuts. “Those are your choices. Pick one. Now.”

 

I pause, willing myself to tell her to go fuck herself. But the idea of Khabib and Volkov pawing at me does not bring me any pleasure. It fills me with fear, because I know that she’s telling the truth. They’ll dress me simply because Alma told them to. They’ll handle me the same way a butcher handles meat.

 

“I’ll get dressed myself,” I say, defeat weighing heavily on my shoulders.

 

“Good. Follow me.”

 

I follow her to the costume room—open-plan dressers on three of the walls, with clothes-store-style cushion seats in the middle and two separate vanity units—and get into a sparkling red dress, the one Alma chooses for me. Then I sit there completely still as Alma paints my face and my nails.

 

As she straightens my hair, she mutters: “You have to have a certain face for curls to work. I have that face. You see.” She turns her face so that it catches the light. “You’re better off with straight hair, I feel, because—well …” She sighs. “Just because.”

 

“Sure,” I growl. “Sure.”

 

Soon we’re ready. Khabib and Volkov escort me down to the entranceway, where Father stands in his loose-fitting suit with a napkin stuffed messily into the front pocket. He straightens it and looks everywhere apart from at me. It’s been like that since I returned. He won’t look at me because I had sex with a man; it’s that simple.

 

“Is he late?” Alma says, floating down the stairs.

 

The doorbell rings.

 

“Ah! Finally!”

 

We get into the limousine: Alma, Father, and I in the back, Khabib, Volkov, and the driver in the front.

 

“Oh, I forgot to mention,” Alma says as we ride from New Jersey to Long Island: a long, dreary ride under the gray clouds and through the endless sleet. “You’re to play nice with an Italian called Samuel Romano tonight, okay? Do you understand?” There: her plan; the real reason she could not hit me.

 

My blood turns cold. Samuel Romano … didn’t Gabriel mention him? I try to fix on the exact memory but I can’t. Everything has moved so fast. I know that he’s not Gabriel, though, and that’s enough.

 

“What does play nice mean?” I ask.

 

“It means pretend to be a flirty virgin with him,” Father says quietly. “It means make him feel wanted. This is very important. You might be marrying this man one day.”

 

“But—”

 

“Enough!” he snarls.

 

The rest of the car ride goes on in surly silence. Soon my side of the car is opening and a man I recognize from the meeting at the Italians’ hideout is offering me his hand. He’s tall and razor-thin with a weird-looking goatee and a bad combover.

 

“My lady,” he says.

 

The whole car turns to me, waiting. Alma almost explodes when I don’t take it right away. I sigh, take the very tips of his fingers, and walk with him from the limousine toward the castle-style building. It’s not a real castle, but an imitation look that I would find very impressive if it were not for Samuel Romano’s hand, which presses against my lower back but inches down to my ass.

 

I reach around and grab his wrist, sliding his hand back up my back.

 

“Oh, playing hard to get, eh?” He grins, nudging me like we’re friends. “I guess you’re a tough nut to crack.”

 

I swallow bile.