Page 33 of Souls and Sorrows

My hand reaches out, just grazing the bronze door handle, before someone grabs my shoulders from behind and shoves me into an alcove to the side.

Papà’s dark eyes find mine as he whirls me around, pushing me into the wall.

“What the hell are youdoinghere?” I hiss, glancing over his shoulder to ensure we’re still alone. As if he’d ever take that chance.

“What, you think I would miss my own daughter’s wedding? I’ve been dreaming of this day since you were a little girl, Ari.”

A scoff of disbelief dies in my throat. “How did you even get out?”

“It’s temporary. I only have an hour, and there are two officers just outside, waiting for me.” He leans back, lifting the pant of his suit to reveal a clunky monitor wrapped around his ankle. “But I’ve come to give you my blessing,cara mia.”

I swallow over the baseball lodged in my throat. “But I’m not marrying Vitus—”

He waves his hand. Reaching into his suit jacket, he plucks out a small bouquet of red roses, violets, and some pink flowers with wide petals that curl up at the ends. Taking my hands in his, he gives me a smile, and it feels so completely foreign, coming from him—so warm and soft, which I’veneverseen him be—that I just stand there, staring for several beats of my heart.

“Your sisters aren’t here, right?”

I shake my head, embarrassment staining my cheeks, but he just nods.

“Good, good. They don’t need to be. In fact, I want you to keep this from them. At least for a little while. Enjoy the honeymoon phase while you can.”

Tucking the bouquet between my fingers, he pushes them into my chest, then cradles the underside of my jaw with rough, callous hands. They’re hot to the touch, and I try to pull back, concerned that he has a fever, but he holds tight.

“The ways I have failed you in this life are incalculable,” he says, voice gruff.

Acid burns in my stomach, melting my muscles.

“If I could take you out of this predicament, this monster’s reach, I would.”

I don’t say anything because whycan’the take me out of it? The entire reason I’m marrying someone against my will is because he coerced me into a relationship with Vitus in the first place, which gave Cash the opportunity to step in.

If Rafael Ricci wanted to stop all of this, even from prison, he could.

That’s the problem.

He doesn’t really want to. Just wants to ease some of his guilt by giving my pretty words, as if they’ll make up for everything.

So why am I falling for it?

“My father didn’t teach me how to apologize. I’m afraid I wouldn’t know where to begin. All I know is that if I could do it over, I wouldn’t waste a single second of my time with you. Would try more to keep our family together and instill those values in you my mother always wished I had.”

The sincerity in his tone reaches down my throat, uprooting the poisonous flowers planted inside of me by years of neglect and hatred. From growing up in the shadows of my sisters andla famigliaand never feeling seen or good enough unless I was onstage.

It dissolves my resentment from giving up ballet, sprinkling the diseased emotion like soft, dewy rain. For a moment in time, I believe my father when he looks at me like he loves me.

I believe there’s regret in his heart for the way our family turned out. For howIturned out and the things that had happened to me right under his nose.

Or maybe it’s wishful thinking. Maybe, before I cross this chapter of my life and step into an entirely new one, I just want to believe him.

For once, I want to have the benefit of the doubt and be able to extend it to him.

I’m a child again, standing outside the door to his office while he blows out a rat’s kneecaps, waiting to show Papà the glissade I just learned, knowing it’s the only way I can get his attention. My heart breaks with each muffled shot inside, and the bloodcurdling screams of a wrongly accused man are what I’ll hear each time my foot switches from fifth position for the rest of my life.

Yet I stand there, still waiting, because anything from Papà has to be better than what I get from Mamma.

And now, I’m here, accepting whatever it is he’s willing to give even if, deep in my bones, I know he doesn’t mean it.

Can’tmean it.

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