It was sweet.
They had great intentions.
Wrong intentions.
But their hearts were in the right place.
I gritted my teeth and pointed to the dress. “Thank you, but I actually, I um… Dante.” I fabricated the lie as quickly as my mind would work. “He actually helped me pick out a dress, and you know how Dante gets when he doesn’t get his way.”
The uncles nodded gravely.
Dante’s temper was infamous.
Though, for the life of me, I had no idea where he got all the anger. After all, my uncles were the tamest men I knew.
As if to prove my point, Gio yawned loudly while Sal reached into his pocket and pulled out a hanky.
I rolled my eyes. If a spider crawled across the floor, they’d most likely rescue it and wave a tearful goodbye as it crawled down the front steps of our brownstone.
Papi leaned heavily on his cane as he entered the room. “There is not enough room for the pig.”
“Pig?” I repeated, dumbstruck. I’d left work with the three of them in tow and marched into my brownstone ready to call every last person who had been invited to the party, only to discover it was going to be nearly impossible to cancel on over forty people.
Forty.
People.
So the only choice left was a public shaming of Nico. Either that or going through with the party and letting him down easy afterwards.
“I told you!” Sal shook his head as his furry eyebrows crinkled toward his nose. “We only need one pig! But no,” He slapped his hand against his thigh and stood. “’Two pigs, Sal, they will not go hungry under this roof!’”
“Well,” I shrugged. “At least they won’t…”
All eyes fell to me.
I sighed. “You know what? Why don’t you three go deal with the food situation while I get ready.”
“Yes.” Gio ushered them out like a mother hen and hesitated at the door.
Frowning, I walked over to him and placed my hand on his arm. “Gio? What’s wrong?”
His eyes filled with tears. “You are my life, my little Val.”
With a grin, I tugged my lower lip between my teeth as warmth spread through my chest. “I know, Gio.”
“I am sorry for the trouble tonight. I only meant to protect you from—” he hesitated and finished. “The world.”
I laughed. “And Nico is the man to do it? What? With his cologne?”
Gio thumped me lightly on the foot with his cane. “He is a big strong man!”
“According to Dante he wears velvet suits.”
“Dante talks too much,” Gio grumbled. “I worry.” His eyes filled with tears. “About your future.”
It was my turn to get emotional as I pulled him in for a tight hug, he smelled like cigars and wine. “Gio, I love you. And I promise, you have nothing to worry about. I have the best uncles in the world taking care of me. What could possibly go wrong?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead he paled and broke eye contact. “Oh, Val, a great many things.” He sighed as if the weight of the world had just been placed on his shoulders. “But first, I check the pig,” he mumbled in Italian while I frowned after him. Why was he suddenly so worried about my safety?
I worked in a flower shop.
And my best friend was my twin brother.
Hardly the troublemaker, the worst thing I’d ever done was lie to them once and go to the safety deposit box, which they didn’t even know about.
My pocket felt suddenly weighted down with that lie. The door creaked as I quickly shut it. My room was on the second level of the brownstone so I didn’t have to worry about anyone peeking through the window.
With shaking hands, I pulled the heavy envelope from my pocket and sat on my bed.
Valentina.
My name was printed across the letter with wide black block letters as if the person took great care in drawing each letter out.
The envelope wasn’t sealed.
I tugged the sheets of paper out.
It had been thick because the paper was thick.
Expensive.
And it smelled…
Like a boy.
No, that wasn’t right. Boys didn’t smell like a mixture of cedar and peppermint. A man, it smelled like a man.
I lifted the thick paper to my nose and inhaled as the scent of paper and a thick, sensual, spicy cologne swirled around me.
Yelling erupted downstairs. The words “pig” and “bastard” were tossed around like a volleyball while I continued sniffing the letter like a crazy person.
Finally, I opened it up completely and stared down at the beautiful cursive writing. Funny, it smelled masculine but the writing was too neat to be by a man.
He was so beautiful. The type of beautiful that made a woman ache, in all the best ways. To find a flaw in the prince would take an eternity and the princess would spend an eternity trying to discover that flaw, because the excitement was in the discovery. Never begrudge the journey, Valentina, for it is the journey that makes the ending happy.
Read a page a day. That is all I ask. One page. Every day. You’ll know what to do when there are no longer any pages.
The truth is around you.
Love, after all, is eternal.
All my love,
R.
With trembling hands I set the pages on my bed. I didn’t count them, I was afraid that if I pulled each individual sheet apart, I’d ruin the surprise and gorge myself by reading every last one.
As a reader, I’d never had self-control. I wasn’t so horrible a person as to read the ending before the beginning, but I rarely started a book and finished it a week later. I absorbed the words like they were my lifeline, as if the lives I were reading about truly existed.