My mouth is too dry to speak. My tongue darts out to moisten my cracked lips, but it’s not enough. I can’t form any words.

That muscle jumps in Dante’s jaw again. His brows lower in disappointment. He turns to my mother.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he says.

And with that, he stands up and walks out of the room.

I should jump up.

I should chase after him.

Instead, I vomit directly into my soup bowl. All over the untouched gazpacho.

14

Dante

I shouldn’t have stormed out of Simone’s house.

I knew her father was going to challenge me. I just thought Simone would be on my side. I thought we’d face her parents together.

There isn’t a person in this world who could rip me away from her. I thought she felt the same.

So when I turned and looked at her and saw that doubt in her eyes . . . it put a tear in my heart. I could feel the flesh ripping inside my chest.

I would go through anything for her. As long as we’re in it together.

She was embarrassed of me. I could tell. I dressed so carefully. But it wasn’t enough. I can’t change what I look like, who I am.

I felt like a bear lumbering around in an art gallery. Everything I did was clumsy and wrong.

And then I left in a rage—proving I was exactly as uncivilized as they thought.

I try to call Simone after. Twenty or thirty times. She never answers. I can’t tell if she’s ignoring me, or if her father took her phone.

I lurk around their house for days. I don’t see Simone leaving in the chauffeured car. Only her father, and once her mother.

It’s driving me insane.

The more time passes, the more I think that the dinner was my fault. It was too much to expect Simone to back me up when I was acting like an animal. I antagonized her father right from the start—what did I expect her to do?

I have to see her.

I wait until night, and I sneak onto the grounds again.

But this time, the security team isn’t just fucking around. They’re on high alert. They’ve put up sensors and they’ve got a fucking Doberman prowling around. The thing starts barking before I’m ten feet onto the grounds.

I haven’t planned for any of that. I was too anxious to see Simone. I didn’t think it through.

They chase me off immediately, and I can hear one of the guards calling the cops. I slink off, humiliated all over again.

I look up at Simone’s window, which hangs like a bright, glowing frame against the dark house.

I see a figure standing there, hand pressed to the window. I see her slim silhouette, and her spread fingers on the glass. But I can’t see her face. I don’t know if she wants me to leave, or to try again.

I have no idea what she’s thinking.

15

Simone

The fight I had with my parents after the dinner was terrible. We shouted for hours—or, I should say, my father and I shouted. My mother sat there, silent and pale, shocked at the both of us.

“How could you do this to us?” my father demanded. “After everything we’ve done for you, Simone! What have you ever needed or wanted that we have not provided? Parties, clothes, vacations, the finest education money can buy! You’re spoiled. Horribly spoiled. To think that you’d disgrace us like this! That you’d disgrace yourself! A thug, a criminal, a mafioso! It’s disgusting. I thought we raised you better than that. I thought you had morals. This is what you want for yourself? To be the wife of a gangster? Until he kills you, or one of his associates does. Is that what you want? To be obliterated by a car bomb? Or maybe you’d like to sit alone in a house bought with blood money while your husband rots in jail!”

His words are like razor blades, slashing at me over and over from every direction. No single cut is enough to kill, but I feel weakened by the bleeding.

The problem is that he’s shouting my own thoughts back at me. My own worst fears.

“Even if you don’t care about your future, how could you do this to us? After everything your mother and I have worked for. You’d put this stain on our name and reputation? And what about your sister? You think she’ll keep her job in the banking industry when they know she’s connected to the Italian mafia? Selfish! You’re completely selfish.”

I have to sit down on the couch as his words keep hammering me down, over and over.

Finally Mama speaks.

“Simone, I know you think you love this man—”

“I do, Mama. I love him.”

“You don’t know what love is yet, ma chérie. You are so young. You’ll fall in love so many times . . .”

“No, Mama. Not like this . . .”

I can’t explain it to them. I can’t explain that love may come and go, but my bond with Dante is forever. I’m sewn to him down every inch of my skin. My heart is in his chest, and his in mine. I see inside of him. And he sees me.

I know that I’m young and foolish. But if I’ve ever been sure of anything in my life it’s this: what I feel for Dante will never come again. Not in any other person. He’s my first, last, and only.

Now I really am a prisoner. They take my phone, my laptop. I’m not allowed to leave the house for any reason.

I’m in agony knowing that Dante must be trying to text and call me. I’m terrified of what my father will do if Dante persists.

I cry in my room until I’m as dry as desert sand. No tears left in my head. Nothing but aching sobs.

Mama brings up trays of food and I ignore them.

Only Serwa is allowed in my room. She sits next to me on the bed and strokes my back.

“It was very brave of him to come to the house,” she says.

Serwa, at least, formed a gentle opinion of Dante upon meeting him.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I sob.

She’s supposed to go to London in a few more days, to start her new job.

“I’ll stay if you want,” she says.

I do want that. Badly. But I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “You should go. Maybe Tata will let you call me . . .”

“Of course he will,” Serwa says.

I sleep hours and hours every day. I don’t know why I’m so tired. It must be the thick, black misery choking me.

I try to eat some of the food Mama brings up, so I won’t be so sick and dizzy, but as often as not I end up throwing it up again.

One of the nights, I hear a commotion in the yard—shouting and scuffling. I can’t see anything out my window, but I’m sure it’s Dante, trying to break in to see me. My father has increased our security detail. Dante doesn’t get through. I assume they don’t catch him either, since my father would surely rub it in my face.

Does Dante know I’m a prisoner in here? Does he know how badly I want to speak to him, even just for a minute?

Or does he think I’m caving in to my parents? That I’m going to give him up like they want?

I’m not giving up.

And yet . . .

If I’m honest with myself . . .

I’m not exactly trying to escape the house, either.

It’s not just because I’m ill and miserable. I feel like I’m balancing on the blade of a knife—on either side of me, a ten-thousand-foot drop into nothingness.