CHAPTER 18
Giovanni
“Hello?” Mrs. Marino’s voice answered on the third ring.
“Hi, Mrs. Marino. This is Giovanni. How are you today?”
“I'm all right, Giovanni. How are you?”
“I’m pretty good. Is Arianna home?”
“She is, but I think she’s still sleeping. Have you tried calling her cell?”
“I have,” I said. “But it keeps going straight to voicemail.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Marino. “Well, as soon as I see her, I’ll tell her to give you a call.”
“Thank you so much,” I said.
I felt somewhat better knowing that Arianna had made it home safely, but something still just didn’t seem right. With it being nearly noon already, I couldn’t fathom why she wouldn’t have her cell phone turned on by now. And considering that she’d left the nightclub fairly early, it wasn’t like she’d had a particularly long night—unless she hadn’t gone straight home. While it had crossed my mind to ask Mrs. Marino if she knew what time Arianna had made it home, I refrained from doing so, figuring that such an action would sound a bit alarming, not to mention stalker-like.
Regardless, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. I didn’t want to be too paranoid about it, but a part of me felt that she was back to avoiding my calls for some reason. It was like we had gone all the way back to square one and I was finding out the hard way.
Figuring there was no need for me to sit in my apartment stressing, I got up, showered, got dressed, and headed to my father’s office. I typically didn’t volunteer myself for extra work with my old man, but right about now, I desperately needed a distraction, and I was pretty sure he could give me enough busy work to provide that.
The instant I entered the building, I was met with the typical glances and waves, yet something still seemed off. People seemed a little more unwilling to meet my eyes.
I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone these days, I thought.
As I neared my father’s office, I heard his voice drifting through the door. I recognized his business-voice and suspected he was on a serious phone call. I paused outside his office for a moment, listening and wondering if it turned out that I wasn’t going to have to look for busy work after all.
“A sanitation problem, eh?” he said. “Yes, of course, it needs to be overseen. We’ll figure it out, I guarantee you that. It’s what we do after all.” There was a brief pause in the conversation before he continued. “Sounds like this is a bigger problem than normal.”
Announcing my presence with three knocks on the door, I then pushed it open and entered his office. My father looked up at me, his neutral expression turning into a glare and making me feel like his gaze was practically stabbing me. I froze in my tracks, startled by the continued grimace he directed at me.
He cleared his throat and then redirected his attention to the phone call. “Yes, I’m certain. Just let me know when and how soon. Should I call you or you want to call me? Yes, all right. That’ll work.” He paused again, taking another opportunity to glare at me.
I slowly crossed the room, wracking my brains to recall if there had been anything I’d forgotten to do for him. But my mind drew a blank, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why he kept looking at me that way.
“Listen, I’ll call you back later. Some other business just came up that needs to be taken care of,” he said. “Yes, you too. Goodbye.”
Dad hung up the phone, and then he stared silently at his desk for so long that the moment quickly grew uncomfortable.
“Uhm…bad timing? Should I come back later?” I asked. He didn’t respond, but he did glance up at me. For a second, I almost thought his amber eyes looked red with fury. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know, Giovanni. You tell me.”
I folded my arms and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. I was already trying not to worry myself sick over Arianna, so the last thing I wanted to do was play word games with my father. Sometimes the man could be truly infuriating. Whatever was bothering him, I wished he would just spit it out already.
I sighed. “I’ve got nothing to tell you, Dad. And honestly, I’m just not in the mood. I came by to see if there was anything you needed me to help you out with today, but maybe not.”
“Giovanni,” my father said, managing to make my name sound like a swear.
I threw my hands into the air, exasperated, and then let them drop to my sides. “Yes, father?”
“How dare you come in here with that attitude. After you’ve threatened to ruin everything.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about, old man? I haven’t made any threats lately.”
He closed his eyes for a second as if praying for patience. “I’ve tried so hard,” he said, “to bring you into the family business and to get you to understand the importance of what I do. I have taught you to be a man of your word—or at least I thought I did. But all you do is disappoint me, Giovanni. I just don’t understand you sometimes.”
My heart sank, hearing the utter disappointment in his voice, yet not having the faintest idea why it was there and what I had done to deserve it.
“Dad, you of all people should know how dedicated I am to this family. So please, can you tell me what the hell you’re talking about? You’re scaring me.”
“Oh, you should be scared,” he snarled. “Do you honestly mean to tell me you don’t know what transpired this morning?”
“No, I honestly don’t. So just tell me. What is it?”
“Where were you last night, Giovanni?”
“After I left you, I went out for a drink and hung out with Maria for a little while. Then I went home.”
Dad clenched his fists at his sides. “Then tell me why I received a phone call from Mr. Marino, calling off your engagement to Arianna.”
“What?!” I staggered backward, feeling unsteady all of a sudden. The room felt several degrees too cold, and my heart sank to my stomach. I shook my head. “No…Something’s not right. That can’t be right. I haven’t even heard from Arianna today. How…Where…Why would Mr. Marino do something like that?”
“You haven’t spoken with Arianna? You’re telling me you didn’t know this was coming?”
“No!” I said, agitated. “Everything is fine between me Arianna.”
“Don’t you dare lie right to my face, Giovanni!” Dad yelled. “Mr. Marino himself told me that it was Arianna who wanted the wedding called off! So, what the hell did you do to ruin things for her?”
“I didn’t do anything! Clearly, Mr. Marino is crazy! Everything is fine between Arianna and me! I was planning to spend time with her today!”
“Then why are you here with me?”
“Because…” my voice trailed off. “Because Arianna hasn’t been answering my calls. Her mother said she was just sleeping though. She…She hasn’t turned her phone on, that’s all.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Dad said. “You damned kids are always glued to your phones. There’s no way in hell it’s so late in the day, and she just hasn’t turned her phone on. If she isn’t answering, it’s because she isn’t accepting your calls, Giovanni! I’m only going to ask you once again—what did you do?”
Ignoring him, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone, ready to try calling Arianna again for the umpteenth time. I’d been desperate for her to answer the phone for hours, but never more desperate than I felt at that moment.
Please answer, please answer, please answer, I chanted to my head. Never in my life had I been so disappointed to hear a voice mail message.
I hung my head. “I don’t know…”
“You don’t know what?” Dad said.
“I don’t know why she isn’t accepting my calls.” Feeling an oncoming headache, I rubbed my forehead and ran an exasperated hand through my hair. I then swore under my breath. My father’s gaze was burning a hole through my face. “I swear everything was fine between us the last time we were together. I mean—I saw her briefly last night, but before I could get to her, she left. She looked angry, but she didn’t even know I was there, so she couldn’t have been angry with me.”
“There must have been something you did.”
“No, there isn’t!” I said, losing my temper and slamming my hand on his desk. “She’s…She’s crazy, that’s what she is! She keeps getting pissed at me for no reason! I didn’t do a goddamned thing to her!”
Dad snarled. “You screwed up somewhere along the lines, Giovanni, because that’s just what you do. That’s what you’ve always done. You want to know why I haven’t given you a higher position in the family business? Well, there you have it! It’s because you are and have always been a colossal screw-up! And if you don’t fix things up with Arianna, then you can see your way out of this family for good. I will not tolerate you always messing things up for me!”
“W-What did you just say to me?” I asked, my voice so low that I had practically whispered.
“You heard what I said. This is officially your last chance, Giovanni. You fix whatever is going on with Arianna and get this engagement turned back on, or you can quit calling yourself a Romano.”
I stared back at my father, into those eyes that were so like my own. Never before had I felt such hatred toward the man. Never before had I doubted whether he even loved me. I’d always had a feeling that he sometimes didn’t like me, and I knew that he was far harder on me than he had ever been on any of my brothers. But I had always chalked it up to the fact that I was the oldest. I figured that deep down, he was the toughest on me because he ultimately planned on leaving me with the family business and wanted to ensure that I was responsible enough for it. And I’d always wanted to believe that this was all because he loved me. But now, all of that had changed because I finally knew how he really felt about me.
I stepped back, unable to stand to look into his face for another second. As far as I was concerned, he was no longer a father of mine. A real father cared more about his children than his money, and that couldn’t be said in the slightest for Luca Romano, at least not when it came to me. Luca Romano was the devil from what I could tell. And if he could denounce me so easily from the family without bothering to take my side of the story into consideration—to so easily believe the words of strangers over his own flesh and blood—then so be it. I was done with him.
And if I could help myself, I was done with Arianna Marino and her two-faced ways as well. Never mind that she had been the first girl that I’d ever truly felt something for. Clearly, she was an unstable, conniving little bitch who liked to toy with people’s emotions. The innocent and pure stuff was probably just an act that she had mastered for the sole purpose of wreaking havoc on the lives of unsuspecting men like myself. Sure, I had played the field as far as women were concerned, but never had I done anything as tactless as this.
Arianna had just taken it to a whole new level.
I slammed the door to my father’s office, hoping to break every window in the building with the force of it. I got into my car and sped off, feeling as if I could go the rest of my life without ever seeing that man again.