Poisoned by His Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: One Bed
At the reception Ruggero toasts an empty chair and Cora hands Sandro a glass of wine; that night Ivy finds there is one bed and no key on her side.
The Vasari house stood behind a stone wall in Roland Park, with a garden and a gate that opened before the car stopped.
It closed behind us with a sound.
A woman in a black dress and an apron came down the front steps, wiping her hands.
She was short and round, with gray hair in a bun, and she took my face in both palms.
"Cara," she said. "Look at you. They squeezed you into that."
"Aunt Gianna," Sandro said.
"Don't Aunt Gianna me. She needs food."
She tucked my arm under hers and walked me into the house.
I had not eaten since a granola bar at four in the morning.
I almost cried at the smell of garlic.
The reception was in the long dining room, forty people at a table built for fifty.
Nobody asked who I was.
They looked at the ring, then at Sandro, then at their plates.
Sandro sat at the head of the table, and I sat at his right.
He did not let go of my hand the whole meal.
He held it on the tablecloth, his thumb moving over my knuckles, and he ate with the other.
Every time I tried to pull away, his grip tightened a little.
It was not painful.
It was a message.
Halfway through the dinner a man stood up at the far end of the table.
He was thick through the shoulders, with a short dark beard and a gold crucifix at his collar.
He lifted his glass.
"I'd like to toast the bride," he said.
The room went quiet.
"I'd also like to toast the empty chair."
He pointed with the glass to the place beside Sandro's left hand, set and left bare.
"My sister's chair. Two years, and nobody has moved it."
"Ruggero," Gianna said sharply.
"I only say what everyone thinks."
He turned his eyes on me.
They were wet and terribly steady.
"I hope you sleep well in that house, signora."
"Sit down, Ruggero," Sandro said.
He did not raise his voice.
He did not need to.
Ruggero drank, set the glass down and sat.
I sat very still with my pulse in my ears.
So that was the brother.
At the other end of the table sat an older man with silver hair and a kind, tired face.
He was Sandro's uncle, who had run the family's money since Sandro's father died.
He raised his glass to me, gently, as if to apologize for Ruggero.
I liked him for it.
I did not know yet what I was liking.
Later, in the hall, Cora found me by the coat stand.
She had been seated near the door, with the cousins, and had spent two hours looking at the silver.
She held a glass of red wine in each hand.
"Sweetheart," she said brightly. "Take him this one. A little something to settle the nerves."
"He doesn't need nerves settled."
"Every husband does on his wedding night."
She watched me take it, and her smile did something odd at the corners.
I carried it back into the dining room and set it in front of Sandro.
He looked at it.
Then he looked across the room at Cora.
She smiled and raised her own.
He stood up, lifted the glass and walked to the tall plant by the window.
He poured the wine into the soil, calmly, in front of everyone.
"I don't drink what I haven't watched poured," he said.
Then he came back and sat down.
Cora's smile went stiff.
I looked at the empty glass and I thought, he is afraid of poison.
Or he knows how it's done.
By ten o'clock the guests had gone.
Gianna showed me upstairs to a big dark bedroom with a bed the size of a boat.
"Where's my room?" I asked.
Her eyes slid away from mine.
"This is your room, cara."
"There's one bed."
"Yes." She pressed a nightgown into my hands. "Sleep well. Eat in the morning."
She left, and I heard the key turn in the lock from the outside.
It turned back a moment later, and the door opened.
Sandro came in and shut it behind him.
He took off his jacket and hung it over the chair.
He did not hurry.
"Your things are in the closet," he said. "Your father's papers are in my safe."
"You locked me in."
"Gianna locked the door against everyone else." He turned to look at me. "I have the only other key."
"That's the same thing."
"Yes."
I stood in Savannah's dress, with the veil pins still in my hair, and I thought about screaming.
Nobody in this house would come.
"I won't touch you tonight," he said, "unless you let me."
He saw my face and one corner of his mouth lifted.
"Don't look so relieved. You'll let me."
"I hate you."
"You've known me eleven hours."
"It's enough."
"Turn around."
It was not a request.
My body obeyed before my pride could argue.
I faced the window with my heart going wild, and I felt him come up behind me.
He did not touch me for a long moment.
I felt only the heat of him, and his breath on the back of my neck.
"I can't get the zipper," I said, to say something.
"I know."
His hands found the pins in my hair, one by one.
Each one went on the dresser with a tiny click.
When the last pin was out, the veil slid down my back and over his wrists.
His fingers found the zipper.
He drew it down slowly, all the way to the base of my spine.
The dress opened, and cool air touched my skin, and I shivered so hard he heard it.
His knuckles traced the line of my spine, and my breath caught.
"Say stop," he said against my neck, "and I stop."
I said nothing.
"Say it, Ivy."
The dress slid off my shoulders and pooled at my feet.
I stood there in a borrowed strapless bra and my own plain underwear, in front of the man who owned my father's life.
His hands settled on my hips and turned me around.
His eyes went down me once and came back up, black and certain.
"No," I said, and my voice shook.
He went still.
"I'm not saying stop," I said. "I'm saying I hate that I don't want to."
Something fierce crossed his face.
"Good," he said.
He took hold of my jaw.
"On the bed."
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