A Call

Ginevra’s fingers dug into Amalia’s shoulders, shaking her with a frantic energy that rattled Amalia’s teeth. "We share this lease, Amalia. I cannot afford the rent on this apartment without you here. We promised to do this together. If you leave, I might have to pack up all my things and move back in with my parents." Tears spilled over Ginevra’s bottom lashes, cutting tracks through her makeup as she wept over the terrifying prospect of losing her roommate to a mafia arranged marriage. "I do not want you to move away from me."

Amalia abandoned her shivering hold on her knees and immediately threw her arms around her friend. She squeezed Ginevra tight, burying her face into her shoulder, feeling terrified of being ripped away from the only safe haven she had ever known. Rhode Island was her home. "I love you. I do not want to go anywhere. I do not want to get married to that man."

"What are we going to do?" Ginevra wailed into her shirt, her voice muffled by the fabric.

"Let’s check the internet again," Amalia said, pushing back and swiping at her own damp cheeks. Clinging to a fading hope, she grabbed the device. "Let’s see if he owns a house here in Rhode Island. He has to maintain a local residence for his operations. I cannot move away from you. There must be something we missed."

They huddled over the glowing tablet screen, their shoulders touching. The two friends scoured the internet for any property, business deed, or legal filing linking Valerio to Providence. They searched his surname alongside surrounding towns, hunting for a single thread, but the search yielded nothing. Every real estate snippet, every corporate holding, anchored the mafia heir to his New York empire.

The tense silence of the bedroom shattered when Amalia’s cell phone began ringing from the nightstand. The sharp noise made both women jump.

Amalia flinched. A deep foreboding dropped into the pit of her stomach like a stone. She did not reach for the device. Filled with apprehension, she stared at the glowing screen. An unknown, unfamiliar number flashed in stark white digits. She let it vibrate across the wood surface, letting it ring out into the quiet room.

"Are you not going to answer that?" Ginevra whispered, her tear-stained face pale in the dim light.

Amalia shook her head. Her throat felt too tight to form words. The phone stopped ringing, and she let out a shaky sigh of relief, only to choke on a gasp when the device lit up again a second later.

"I think you need to pick it up," Ginevra urged, nudging her arm.

"What if it is him?"

"Find out what he wants."

"I am scared."

"Just do it, Amalia."

Reaching out with a trembling hand, Amalia swiped the screen and lifted the phone to her ear. "Hello?" she managed to say, her voice tentative.

"Do not make me wait again, amoré. I am not a patient man."

The blunt, demanding voice sent a shockwave down her spine. It was a dark, abrasive rumble that commanded immediate obedience.

"I am sorry, sir," she whispered into the receiver.

"Valerio." He spoke the name like a physical strike. "You are to call me Valerio. Are you excited for Saturday?"

"Should I be?" Amalia glanced at Ginevra, who sat frozen on the mattress, her mouth agape in pure disbelief.

"Yes. Your life is about to change, Amalia."

"I like my life." She pressed her lips together hard to stop from crying. She reminded herself she was not weak. She was a woman who could endure twenty brutal strikes of her uncle’s heavy leather flogger without making a sound. She possessed a high threshold for pain. She was strong.

"You like working in a mundane dentistry office for a man who reports your every move back to your paranoid uncle?" Valerio mocked her sheltered, restricted life with a cruel amusement. "Have you ever done a single thing in your past without asking for his holy approval?"

"I do lots of things I want to do."

"Name three."

"I went to the movies last weekend, and he did not approve of the film. Ginevra and I went to the summer fair a few weeks ago and stayed out late. We drank a whole bottle of wine with our dinner last night."

Valerio let out a harsh grunt. "I am marrying the patron saint of boredom. I know you've never fucked, but name three boys you've kissed." Before she could process the explicit language, he teased her lack of experience. "I am teasing. I know you've never kissed a man."

Connecting shocked eyes with Ginevra, Amalia felt a sudden surge of rebellion flare in her chest. She lifted her chin and blurted out a lie. "I have too."

The line went dead silent. When Valerio spoke again, his tone shifted from mocking to gruff. "Who? Who dared to put their lips on what is mine?"

The sheer possessiveness in his demand made her pulse jump. Empowered by pushing back against a lifetime of subjugation, Amalia refused to bow to a faceless criminal.

"I might be a virgin, Valerio, but that does not mean a man has never shown interest in me, or that I have never been interested in a man," she countered, her voice steadying. "I have even been on dates."

"With whom? I want the exact names now."

"Will you be providing me a comprehensive list of all the women you have dated?" she shot back, feeling a rush of adrenaline. "Though, based on what I have seen on the internet, there may be men on that list as well. Will you be providing me a sexual health panel along with the names of your past partners? If we are making comparative notes, all I would need to share is a handful of boys who kissed me."

She pictured the naked photos of him wielding weapons, scandalous images plastered across the web. "I do not have my adventures exposed for the globe to look at."

"You kissed more than one man?" he asked, his voice low and dangerous.

"Multiple," she falsely confessed, letting the fiction build her courage. "I have not lived at home or on a college campus for nearly eighteen months. Just because my uncle has spies in my employer, my choir director, and the people of our strict religious community, does not mean I don't sneak moments of freedom away from them to do the things I wish to do."

"What kind of dates?" The words ground through his teeth.

Amalia bit the inside of her cheek to suppress a nervous snicker at his fury. "I have been on dinner dates, trips to the movies, walks in the park, coffee dates. I even went to a place once where they played loud music and we slow danced. I did not know until today I was betrothed. How was I supposed to know I did not need to look for a life partner on my own?"

She took a breath, letting her true desperation bleed through. "Though, I am hoping you do not show up on Saturday and this whole nightmare goes away."

"I will be there on Saturday, Amalia," he warned. "Do not attempt to live an entire lifetime in a single week. If you dare to go on another date, I will know about it, and you will face physical punishment."

Her jaw clenched with bitter resentment. She retorted sharply, "I have been punished before."

Her mind referenced the hidden, brutal physical scars lacing her back. The raised, white welts left behind by her uncle's unforgiving flogger served as a grim testament to her physical endurance. The skin had broken open time and time again while her mother stood by and watched in silence. She had endured those beatings since she was a child. She knew pain.

"Is that so? I cannot imagine your priest of an uncle or your saintly mother would be as cruel as I can be," Valerio sneered.

"Is there a purpose to your call this evening?" Amalia snapped, her nostrils flaring. "Aside from threatening me to keep my chastity lest I be beaten by a thug who likes to be photographed in various forms of undress with more women than exist in my entire congregation?"

"You are not educated as to who I am yet, amoré."

"I am not your love. I refuse to marry you. I do not want any of this. I will not be going on dates this week, Valerio, because I will spend my final week fasting and praying for God to save me from the devil. I will read my bible day and night for a way out of this arrangement." She gripped the phone tighter, her knuckles turning white. "You are not a good man, Valerio Castiglione, and I deserve a good man. I believe in my heart it is what God wants for me."

Through the receiver, a sinister chuckle echoed in her ear, raising cold goosebumps all along her skin.

He dismissed her pious faith with ease, declaring, "You are right about one thing. I am not a good man. But what God wants is irrelevant. You are mine. Not even if God descended straight from heaven and stood at the altar would He be able to rip what is rightfully mine from my iron grip."

Barely breathing, the blasphemous confidence in his tone chilled her to the bone. She whispered into the phone, "You're a viper."

Valerio agreed readily, stating, "You're right. I am. The Viper, if you will."

Amalia's heart thundered against her ribs, the rapid beats making her chest ache. She regretted her bold defiance as his terrifying parting words nearly made her faint.

"You are going to see how much of a wild animal I am on Saturday night when we officially begin our honeymoon," he suggested, his voice devoid of any warmth. "If you should pray for anything this week, you should pray for stamina and endurance, because you are going to need it."