Keeping his bride

Luca Vitale

I WOKE UP early that Tuesday morning, starving. Mama told me my body is going through some kind of growth spurt, and it’s like I can’t get enough to eat. She always makes me a big breakfast before I go to school, so that I can make it until lunch time without my stomach eating itself.

With my guts grumbling, I go downstairs to the kitchen. The house is quiet, but I know Mama will be awake. She’s always the first one up.

When I walk into the kitchen, I slip on something wet and almost fall. Gripping the counter to steady myself, I look down at the tiled floor and see something dark and shiny. My first thought is maybe it’s dirty water or some kind of cleaning product, but it smells like pennies, not bleach.

My feet are covered in the liquid, and I flip a switch nearby to see what the heck I stepped in. It takes a few seconds for my brain to process what exactly I’m looking at.

Blood.

There’s blood everywhere.

Why is there so much blood?

And then I hear it. Something scratching against the tile floor. I walk around the center island and see my mother, crawling towards me. Her throat has been slashed, but she’s still alive as blood pours out of the wounds in her neck.

“Mama!” I yell, panicking. I rush to her side, falling to the floor beside her. She collapses into my arms, gazing up at me with fear in her eyes. Three deep slashes are on her neck, and I can’t stop staring at them.

She’s trying to talk, but no words come out. Quickly, I cover the wounds on her neck with my hand the best I can, but I can feel the blood pushing out between my fingers. “No, no, no!” I cry. “Someone help us!” I yell. I don’t know if anyone will hear me, but I can’t leave her like this.

Mama’s eyes drift closed, and I scream for her to wake up. “Please, Mama! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

Her body goes limp in my arms, and I sit there, stunned. I hold her tightly to me, rocking her like she used to rock me to sleep when I was a baby.

If only I had been a few minutes earlier, I could have saved her. I could have seen who did this. I could have killed them instead.

I rock her gently, and I cry.

My mother’s dead.

She’s dead.

She’s dead.

She’s dead.

“Luca!” my father’s voice roars as he barges into my bedroom, effectively waking me out of the nightmare I was having.

I sit up straight in bed. I’m covered in sweat from head to toe, and it takes me a few seconds to realize where the fuck I am. I don’t have the nightmare about my mother’s death often; but when I do, I always wake up confused and terrified.

My father walks over to the nearby window and rips open the drapes. I squint my eyes against the glaring light and slowly sit up to look at him through narrowed eyes and a growing headache thanks to the rude awakening and my hangover. “Good morning, Father,” I tell him sarcastically. “This couldn’t wait until noon?”

“It is noon,” he hisses.

“Shit!” I grab my watch on the nightstand and realize he’s not lying. I slept half the day away thanks to all that booze last night and the great sex that followed soon after with a girl whose name I can’t even recall. I don’t normally indulge in that much alcohol, but I was feeling particularly sad and depressed last night. Today marks the anniversary of my mother’s death, and I just wanted to feel numb last night, knowing that today would be so hard to get through. But now that I’m awake, I realize I went about it all wrong. I’m not numb at all. I feel fucking horrible. And having such a rude awakening by my father is not helping matters.

“You weren’t answering your phone, so I had to stop by here in person.”Content property of NôvelDra/ma.Org.

Grumbling, I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms. “What did I do this time?” I ask, assuming that’s why he’s here – to gripe about something I did or didn’t do.

“We need to discuss your grandfather’s will.”

I swipe my hand down my face and grumble. My grandfather passed away last week. His funeral was the other day, and it was the second saddest day of my life, after my mother’s funeral.

“Get cleaned up,” my father instructs. “I’ll be downstairs waiting for you.”

And with that, he leaves me alone in my room. I flop back on my bed and stare up at the ceiling as I wonder aloud, “What does my grandfather’s will have to do with me?”

After I’m showered and dressed in my usual attire a tailored and expensive black suit with a black button-up shirt underneath, I meet my father downstairs in the lobby of my condo building. The car ride to his mansion is quiet and filled with tension. I try to pry into his reasoning for bringing me back home to discuss my grandfather’s will, but my father refuses to budge.

And by the time we reach my childhood home, I know something isn’t right.

We walk into the house and go straight to my father’s study on the first floor. He motions for me to take a seat as he goes to stand over papers spread out over his large, mahogany desk.

“What the fuck is that?” I ask him, curiosity getting the better of me. “A new contract?”

“Something like that,” he mutters in annoyance. My father never had any patience when it came to anyone or anything, especially me. “I need you to read over this and sign it right away.”

I notice the bold heading on the first page, Last Will and Testament, and cock a brow. “This is my grandfather’s will?”

He nods once.

Intrigued, I sit down in a chair and begin to read the paperwork. At first, it’s all the usual legalese. But then the terms and conditions start coming to light, and my fingers tighten around the papers, clenching them tightly as I read what can only be described as archaic bullshit.

“He can’t fucking do this!” I exclaim, rising out of my seat.

My father shrugs nonchalantly. “But he did.”

“I am not going to marry a Moretti!” I spit out, cursing the name on my tongue.

“Both of the grandfathers agreed to this bullshit clause in their wills.”

Valerius Vitale and Marcello Moretti died within a few weeks of each other. And this is what they agreed to?

“This can’t hold up in court. This is ridiculous!” I yell, my voice rising to dangerous levels.

“We need to honor their wishes,” my father simply says.

Banging my fist on my desk, rattling everything on top of it, I tell him, “No. No, I will not agree to this. I haven’t even seen Verona Moretti in years.” Slamming the papers down on the desk, I say, “There’s no way she will agree to this.”

“She’s already signed the necessary paperwork. Her father faxed me the copy this morning,” he tells me, causing my world to come to a complete stop.

Shaking my head in disbelief, I walk away from my desk and pace the room. “There has to be another way.”

“None of us get the money, the estates, the properties, the mansions, the cars, anything unless this comes to fruition.”

“Why would they decide this? This is some kind of sick joke!” Valerius Vitale and Marcello Moretti were adversaries, some say from birth. Our families feuded over land, territory, everything for years. And then, when my mother was murdered, everything came to a head. Rivals soon turned into sworn enemies willing to go to war with each other.

And now my grandfather is requesting that I marry one of them?

“I suppose the old men reached a point of peace and agreement in their final days. I just wish my father would have told me about his plans, because I most certainly would have talked him out of it,” my father explains.

“This is about peace? There will be no peace if I’m intertwined with the Morettis!”

My father considers this for a moment, but then says, “Maybe this will be the end of the war. We can’t continue to go to war if we’re family. And I think that’s what your grandfather was trying to resolve before he died. He didn’t want us fighting anymore or tearing each other down at every turn.”

A dark chuckle releases from my mouth. “If I have to marry her so that we don’t lose everything we worked so hard for, then so be it. But I won’t be faithful. I won’t ever love her.”

“No one said anything about love, my dear boy. We are talking about marriage after all.”

I scoff at his words. He can say what he wants, but I know he loved my mother. And the day she was murdered, I saw my father cry for the first and only time in that kitchen while he held her lifeless body in his arms. Sure, their marriage had its ups and downs, like all marriages tend to do, but he loved my mother. And he also had the privilege of knowing his bride before their wedding day. They met in high school, dated, got to know each other, had a chance to fall in love.

Me, on the other hand, I have to marry a girl I haven’t seen since I was a kid. There will be no courtship, no easing into this. “How long do I have?” I ask my father.

“One week.”

Of course I would be delivered this horrible news on the anniversary of my mother’s death. It seems fitting almost. Tragedy upon tragedy. That’s what my entire life has been composed of.

“Will you sign the papers?” he asks impatiently.

“Do I have a choice?”

He doesn’t even hesitate when he tells me, “No.”

“Then I’ll sign.”

I’ll marry Verona Moretti. I’ll follow the terms of the will so that my family isn’t destitute and out on the streets with nothing. But there’s nothing saying I can’t take my anger and frustration out on my new bride to be, that I won’t treat her like my own little plaything. She will be my wife in name only. And I’m going to make her regret signing the contract. I’m going to make her life a living hell.