Page 1 of That's Amore

ONE

Elysa

“What is this?” Dante looked through the papers in his hand and then at me.

“Divorce papers.”

“What?” He threw the offending documents on the antique coffee table in front of the couch where I sat.

“Documenti del divorzio,” I repeated, but this time in Italian. It was petty, but I was done trying to make it work with Dante. I had tried for a whole year, and I had nothing to show for it, not even his respect.

“I understand what they are, Elysa. I’m asking what this means?” He spoke slowly and with arrogance like I was a moron. He’d used that tone with me throughout our marriage.

“You don’t speak Italian?”

“Not fluently. I was born in Italy but raised in New York.” It wasn’t my fault that my mother insisted wespeak only English and my father didn’t bother to have a relationship with me that required us to talk inanylanguage.

He looked at me in disgust. “What the hell was my grandfather thinking asking me to marry you?”

“What it means is that I’m divorcing you,” I explained, forcing myself to relax despite my nerves as I sat in the living room of his penthouse flat inCentro Storico, the historic center of Rome. It washisflat. It never became ours. When I moved here from New York, from my beautiful, cozy apartment, giving it all up because my grandfather and his had made each other a promise, it was because I couldn’t say no to a man who was dying, a man who reminded me so much of my own Nonno. I’d thought I’d make a home with the young man Don Giordano said was one of the best he knew. He mustn’t have known very many young men because the Dante I’d gotten to know was nothing like his grandfather claimed. The man was aloof, arrogant, condescending, and ultimately my heartbreaker. But I couldn’t hurt Don Giordano, so I pretended that I was happy.

But now? Now, there was nothing left. No marriage to save. No Don Giordano to protect. Only a heart I had to heal.

“Why on earth would you do that?” He walked to the bar and poured himself a whiskey. I could see he wasn’t taking this seriously. He thought I was having a snit that he had to indulge.

“Because I know that you don’t think you and I can ever make it work as a couple,” I threw at him, preparing to tear my heart open and tell him that I’d heard him loud and clear when he was talking to his friend Dean last week.

He took a sip of his drink and then raised an eyebrow. “And how would you know that,cara?”

Carameant darling. I knew that even before I started to get better at speaking and understanding Italian since moving here. I wasnotthis man’s darling.

“Because you said so, Dante.” I decided to look at him, see his beautiful face, those piercing blue eyes, the high cheekbones, the mouth that became absolutely stunning when he smiled, which he didn’t often do with me.

He frowned, looking confused.

“I heard you talk to your friend in Don Giordano’s library the night of the funeral,” I informed him.

His eyes flashed with anger. “Eavesdropping were you, little wife?”

“No, Dante, I was coming to the library to ask you if you’d like to say goodbye to your uncle and aunt because they were leaving.”

Instead, I’d heard every painful word he’d said.

“So, how’s life with Elika?” Dante asked his friend.

“Fantastic. I can’t believe how damn perfect it is,” his friend said with such longing that I felt jealous of this woman called Elika, who I didn’t know. “But itlooks like your marriage is going well. Elysa seems like she’s devoted to you.”

What a word to use, I thought. Devoted. Not loving, not affectionate, but devoted, subservient. And I was, wasn’t I? I had walked into this marriage with the promise to myself that I’d do everything I could to make it work. Regardless of having to marry a man I didn’t know very well, to please a dying old man and honor the word of another dead one, my Nonno, I was going to be a good wife and partner. I was going to show Dante, who seemed ambivalent about marriage to me, that we’d be good together.

I may not have been raised in Italy as my mother took me to New York after she and my father divorced—but she’d been a devout Catholic and had raised me to believe when you married, it was for life.

Well, I had news for her. It wasn’t.

“She’s putting on a good act,” Dante said, and I knew that tone of his. It was a mixture of anger and disgust. He used it on me frequently, as if I’d somehow trapped him into marrying me. He could’ve said no to his grandfather.

“Act? Dante, you only have to take one look at her and see she loves you.”

I heard Dante’s harsh laugh. “Dio mio, she’s a good actress. Nonno gave her family their vineyard back for her to marry me. I may have married for the love of my grandfather. She did so for the love of money.”

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