Page 52 of My Dark Ever After
It felt like a death, coming under those grape-stained hands knowing they’d frequently been tainted by real blood, knowing as they parted my thighs gently that they had taken lives violently, knowing as he praised me for taking him inside me that he had threatened men more than twice my size into submission ...
It was something out of my most depraved fantasies. Thoughts I only ever allowed myself at night without a stitch of light to lend them any kind of reality.
And there I was, hunted and fucked open beneath a clear sky, just a hillside away from a group of sixty people toiling away in the vines.
When I cried out, a small, wanton part of me hoped they would hear it.
“Did you have fun on your walk in the vineyard?” Martina’s voice pulled me from my revelry. I blushed at the look on her face, dark eyes sparkling, brows raised as she took a sip of wine.
“It was stimulating,” I responded in the blandest voice I could summon.
We stared at each other for a moment before we both burst into laughter.
“You are not so much theingenuaanymore, are you, Vera?”
“No,” I agreed. “Though I’m not sure exactly what I am anymore, to be honest.”
“You have time to find out,” she said, but the smile fell from her lips, and her eyes were matte black, the color of a gun. “You should take it. All the time you need. Because once you make a decision about this kind of thing, there is no going back. Trust me.”
“I know. The problem is, I feel like I made the decision before I knew exactly what I was agreeing to,” I admitted, sneaking a glance at Raffa, who had his head bent to Renzo, nodding at something intently.
Martina hummed, studying the quality of the wine by hovering it above a candle flame. It shone darkly, like stale blood.
“I was married before. Did you know this?”
“No, I had no idea.” It was hard to picture the strong, no-bullshit Martina with anyone but Renzo, even though I knew they weren’t really together.
“I fell in love when I was very young, just sixteen. Umberto hung around with some of the local crew, and he was beautiful, with hair that curled over his head.” Her voice had a distant quality, a voice-over playing over an old memory. “I used to put my finger inside the curls and pull. We got married when I was eighteen, and I moved from my parents’ home into one he bought for us. We both joined theforze armate italiane, him for the prestige he sought and me because I had always been drawn to combat.
“I realized quickly that I didn’t know Umberto like I thought. Seeing him after school for a few hours a handful of days in the week and on weekends was not a large snapshot into what he was really like. I had not seen him stressed or in pain or slept with him after a particularly bad day.”
She paused to take a long draft from her glass and then carefully set it down to show me her left ring finger. The shape of it was wrong, crooked like the gnarled trunk of a tree.
“It wasn’t until Raffa left for England that he started to get physical with me. We had moved away from town to a military base in the south, and there was no one, now that Raffaele was gone, to check in on us. Renzo and Carmine had gone with him. The first time he hurt me, it was because the butcher I went to every week called out hello to me when I went for dinner with my husband. Umberto was livid. He thought I was having an affair. He broke my finger so that the ring would never come off.”
I hissed at the horror of the story, reaching out to run my own finger down hers. There was no ring at the base anymore, not even a tan line.
“The emotional and physical abuse started to get worse when I was promoted over him in the ranks. Umberto was mean and impatient, and you can be mean in the military, but impatience never goes over well. The second time I was promoted over him, he beat me so badly, I passed out and woke up in the bathtub with a broken arm, clavicle, and eye socket.”
“Martina,” I murmured, clasping her hand in both of mine.
It was almost impossible to comprehend someone as strong as Martina being abused, but I knew it happened to many women across the globe. I made myself stay still and silent for the rest of her story even though feminine rage surged like bile up my throat.
“I called Raffa that day,” she continued, staring down at our hands and then offering me a thin smile. “He knew the moment I said hello that something was wrong, mostly because I had been avoiding his calls until then. Somehow, I didn’t cry when I told him what Umberto had done.”
“He must have been furious,” I murmured. “What did he do?”
“He told me to check into a hotel, where a doctor he trusted would meet me to do an exam. He said not to waste time on packing anything, to get out of the house as fast as I could. When the doctor came, he was holding a plane ticket and my passport. I caught a night flight out of Naples to London, and Renzo and Carmine were waiting for me at the airport.”
At my frown, she huffed out a breathy laugh. “Raffa wasn’t there because he was already on a flight to Naples. By the time he came home two days later, I had been honorably discharged from the armed forces, and Umberto was dead.”
Her stare burned into mine, holding my gaze without flinching. She had her chin tipped, eyes narrowed, shoulders squared as if she was daring me to come for her or Raffa.
“Depending on your perspective, Raffa could be seen as the hero or the villain of that story,” she said in a low hiss that undercut thecacophony of chatter at the table. “The truth is, he’s often both, or one in order to be the other. Life is so much more complicated than slotting people into boxes, don’t you think?”
I swallowed, my dry throat clicking. “Yes.”
“Don’t give him hope if you don’t mean it,” she said, kinder this time even though she took her hand from mine. “He deserves someone who is willing to be both the hero and the villain for him as well.”
