Broken Promise by M. James
Sofia
Luca is already gone when I wake up, and I’m grateful for that, at least. I don’t know how I would face him this morning, after what happened last night.
I feel achy and sore when I climb out of bed, and I take another hot shower, trying to wash away the memory of it along with all of the physical soreness. But both of them linger, and even though I go through the motions of my new morning routine—washing my face, stretching, getting dressed, going down to the kitchen to find breakfast—I can’t shake the confusion.
So I try to work it out as I open up a yogurt and smear almond butter on toast—I still can’t figure out the espresso machine, so I’ve given up on coffee for now. I try to think about Luca, about my feelings for him.
He rescued me. Okay, one point for him. He saved me from the Bratva.
He forced me to marry him.In his defense, though, Rossi would have killed me otherwise. I can’t give him credit for forcing me against my will, but I can’t deny that he saved my life.
He was an asshole about it, though.
I mentally subtract his one point, swirling my spoon around my yogurt. What else?
He took back his promise to give me my own apartment. He took back his promise to leave me alone after the wedding.
But he hadn’t chosen that. He hadn’t wanted us to be attacked the morning after. Luca might be a cold man, an asshole in so many ways, even brutal in others. Still, I believed him last night in his anger and hurt over Giulia’s death. He wouldn’t have wanted that. I don’t think he really even wants me here in his penthouse still.
He threw himself over me during the explosion. He protected me.
Okay, a point for that. What else?
The front door. The couch. The wedding suite. Last night, in his bed. All times when I swore I didn’t want him, that I wanted nothing more than to get away from him, and yet I responded to him every time anyway, my body is drawn to his like a moth to a flame.
And I’m equally likely to get burned.
I give up on the mental math. There’s no way to make it make sense. Luca is a man I would never have chosen in the real world, a man I would have been too afraid of to ever get close to. The kind of man who exudes power and charisma, who I would never have been brave enough to look at, let alone speak to.
And now I’m married to him. I wear his ring, I took vows, and last night he did things to my body that I never even knew could feel that good. And if I gave in, if I went to bed with him without a fight—
You have to earn it.
His words echo in my head, and resentful anger replaces every other emotion in a hot rush that leaves me feeling dizzy. How dare he treat me like a child? How dare he tell me that I have to earn something I didn’t even want, something—
A knock at the door cuts off my train of thought, and I yelp, almost dropping my yogurt in surprise. I toss it in the trash as I walk out, only half-eaten, but my appetite is long gone.
When I open the door, Caterina is standing there.
She looks elegant as always but pale, her face bare of makeup. She must have eyelash extensions because they still look long and fringed despite her red eyes, but there’s not a speck of makeup otherwise on her skin. It doesn’t matter—she still looks flawless, and I feel a small flicker of envy.
And then I remember what she’s lost, and I immediately feel guilty.
“Can I come in?” she asks quietly, and I back up, letting her step through the doorway.
“Of course. Are you okay?” I ask and then mentally kick myself. Of course she’s not fucking okay.
Caterina smiles thinly. “I just needed someone to talk to. Franco is busy, of course, and—well, Luca said you might be someone who could listen. On account of—” she takes a deep breath. “You having lost a parent, too.”
“Both of them, actually.” A sort of calm settles over me, and I feel a little more like myself. This, I can help with. This, I understand—being a friend, grief, loss. It’s simpler to handle than my strange marriage or my confusing feelings about my husband. Caterina’s presence helps push the thoughts of Luca away, and I shut the door behind her, glancing over at her sympathetically. “Do you want something to drink? I can’t figure out the coffeemaker, but I can still make tea, or—”
“Tea would be lovely.” Caterina follows me to the kitchen, sinking into a chair as I poke around for a mug and tea leaves. Luca has one of those fancy strainers, the kind you put leaves in that sits in the water, but the rest is easy enough. Thankfully there’s a microwave. Even though it looks as expensive as everything else and is built into the wall, I can heat up a mug of water, even if I can’t figure out much else in here.
“I have—peppermint, vanilla, Earl Grey, and—rooibos.” I stumble over the last word, and Caterina laughs, the sound breaking off abruptly as if she’s surprised herself.
“Earl Grey, please,” she says politely. “Just black, no cream or anything.”
“I can do that.” I hope I’m telling the truth as I fill the mug with water from the pitcher in the fridge and pop it into the microwave. “So Luca told you to come to see me?”
“He said you would understand. I didn’t want to bother you, but—”
“It’s fine,” I assure her quickly. “I don’t have anything else to do, really. Luca wants me to memorize all the names of all these people in the organization that I might meet at a dinner or something one day, but—” I glance over at Caterina’s pale, drawn face and trail off. “That doesn’t matter, though. I’m glad you came over, that’s all.”
“It was just—” Caterina bites her lower lip. “It was so unexpected. Out of nowhere. I was just in your room with her before it happened, and then we came down and got our breakfast while we waited for you and Luca. We were complaining about the eggs, oh my god—” she puts a hand to her mouth, choking back a sob. “The last thing I ever said to my mother was that the scrambled eggs were dry, and I just—”
She starts to cry, and I abandon the tea, crossing the room as quickly as possible to pull up a chair and sit down in front of her, reaching for her hands to squeeze them in mine.
“I know,” I whisper. “My mother didn’t die out of nowhere. She was sick for a while. But my father did. I was waiting for him to come home when my mother told me he was dead. I remember how pale she was, how she was barely staying upright—she looked like she wanted to dissolve with grief, I know that now—but she kept it together long enough to tell me. I didn’t want to believe it.”
Caterina swallows hard. “I didn’t want to either,” she whispers. “They told me at the hospital—I passed out from all the smoke, and I woke up in a hospital bed. I was fine, not a scratch on me, just a sore throat, and then the nurse came in with Franco, and she told me—” she chokes back another sob. “I told them they must be wrong, they must have mixed her up with someone else, but—”
I sit with her for what feels like a long time, each minute stretching into another as she cries quietly, composed, and elegant even in her grief. I know that feeling too—I’ve never been as elegant as Caterina, but I know the feeling of needing to hold something back, that if you let all the aching sadness in your chest go, you’ll fall apart. You’ll shatter and cry, and cry until you scream until you can’t breathe, and you’re afraid to let that happen.
It always happens, eventually. It’ll happen to Caterina too, but when she’s alone, when she’s sure that she’s safe, and she can break down with no one to see her crumble.
For now, she cries quietly, her hands wrapped around mine until her knuckles turn white, and I let her cling to me. When the sobs slowly fade, I get up and bring her a box of tissue and turn the microwave back on to reheat the water that’s grown cold, and Caterina smiles up at me gratefully.
“Thank you,” she says softly. “I don’t have very many friends. People tend to shy away from me; they’re too afraid of my father. And I can’t—I know it sounds strange, but I can’t cry like that in front of Franco. I just can’t.”
“It doesn’t sound strange at all,” I reassure her. “I don’t think you love him, do you?”
Caterina shakes her head. “No. I don’t,” she admits. “I don’t even really feel that I should—I don’t think my mother loved my father, not in the way we’re told to think about love. She loved the security he gave her and the family—she loved me, and she wouldn’t have had me without him. But she didn’t love him. I always knew my husband would be picked for me. I’m lucky he’s young and handsome.” She shrugs. “He doesn’t love me either. But I didn’t expect love. I did expect—” she hesitates. “Respect.”
I look at her curiously. “You don’t feel like Franco respects you?”
“I don’t know.” Caterina bites her lip. “I shouldn’t say that.”
“I won’t tell anyone.” I laugh a little, shaking my head. “Who would I tell, anyway? Luca? Not likely.”
Caterina smiles at that. “I guess not. Things aren’t good between you, are they?”
I shake my head. “We’re here to talk about you,” I insist. I’m not ready to share what’s gone on between Luca and me—I don’t even know what there would be to share. Certainly not the lust-filled encounters we’ve had over the past weeks. Not his agreement to protect my virginity that her father forced him to break. So what, then? It’s not exactly like we’ve been having real conversations about anything. Every time we try to talk, we end up fighting.
Does that mean something?I don’t know. If it were a normal relationship, I’d say yes, of course. I’d tell Ana that if she had a boyfriend that she just seemed to fight with or end up in bed with.
But nothing about my relationship with Luca is normal.
Caterina hesitates, and I can tell that she wants to ask more about Luca, but she doesn’t, to my relief. “I thought Franco would be more attentive,” she says quietly, turning the conversation back to him. “It sounds egotistical, I know, but I’m the daughter of the former don. He’s—well, he has a checkered past in the family. There were questions a long time ago about who his father was. It was all cleared up, but I thought—I don’t know, I thought he’d be grateful that my father chose him for me. Instead, he acts now almost like I was owed to him. Especially since Luca was made don and Franco is underboss—he’s more arrogant than ever.”
“You don’t think he appreciates you?”
“I don’t know. I thought he would. But I felt so alone at the funeral yesterday.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” I say quietly. “I wanted to be. But Luca said it was more dangerous for me to go.”
“He was probably right.” Caterina wipes at her face, smiling tiredly at me. “It’s not your fault, Sofia. None of this is.”
It feels like it is. I can’t help but think that all of this is because of me, somehow, even though I don’t know why. I never thought I was anyone special. But ever since that night at the club, everything seems to be spiraling more and more out of control.
“And now—” She takes a deep breath. “Viktor showed up at the funeral. Not like at it—” she adds quickly, seeing the look on my face. “But Luca went to go speak with him. He was trying to come to some kind of terms with him, settle things down. But it didn’t work. I’m not sure why, exactly, but he said that my wedding date will have to be moved up.”
“What?” I blink at her, startled. “After what just happened, though—how can he expect you to be married sooner? You just lost your mother.”
“He was apologetic about it. But clearly, it’s important—I could tell that he wasn’t going to be argued with. So—my wedding is in a week. And now—”
“You don’t have your mother to help you plan it.” I can only imagine what she must be feeling. My mother has been gone for a long time now, but I missed her terribly in the week leading up to my wedding, as rushed as it was. I didn’t even have a hand in planning it. Caterina would have been planning with Giulia this whole time. Giulia was probably thrilled to be finally helping her daughter with her wedding. And now it’s all gone—in a flash.
“Yeah.” Caterina chews on her lower lip. “I don’t even know how to move forward. I don’t know how to pretend to be happy about any of it when she isn’t there—” She pauses, shaking her head. “I’m supposed to go tomorrow to shop for dresses again. We went once already. And now I just want to get the dress that my mother liked best. Even if it wasn’t my favorite.”
“I’ll go with you.” I squeeze her hand. “You shouldn’t have to do any of this alone.”
“Luca isn’t going to let you! He wouldn’t even let you leave for the funeral—”
“I’ll figure it out,” I promise, standing up to get the steeped tea for her. When I hand it over, Caterina takes it gratefully, wrapping her hands around the cup as if she’s cold, even though the penthouse is always warm. “I’ll talk to him.”
Truthfully, I don’t think I could convince Luca to let me do anything. Especially not after last night.
But I know I have to at least try.
* * *
True to whatI’d feared, Luca almost laughs in my face when I ask him to let me leave the penthouse with Caterina. “Not a chance,” he says flatly. “Everything I’m doing to keep you safe, and you want to go wedding dress shopping? I’m not even sure I believe that. I told you that you’re staying here, and I meant it.”
After all that coldness, I don’t expect a knock on the door the next day. But right about ten a.m., as I’m finishing up the bowl of yogurt and granola I managed to throw together, I’m startled by exactly that.
I open the door to see a tall redhead in a black wrap dress standing there, smiling brightly.
“Hi!” she says cheerfully. “I’m Annie. I work for Kleinfeld’s. My assistant and I are here for Caterina Rossi’s appointment?”
I stare at her, slightly dumbfounded. Caterina isn’t here, obviously, and I blink at her with confusion for about ten seconds until I hear the ding of the elevator door opening down the hall. A moment later, Caterina appears behind her.
“I have my assistant here too, and the dresses, if I can bring them in?” Annie’s smile doesn’t falter for a second as I step aside, still a little dazed, and the blonde assistant and Caterina follow her in, along with a garment rack frothing with silk and satin and lace.
I pull Caterina aside immediately, of course, as Annie and her assistant are setting up. It takes all of five seconds of talking to her to figure out what’s happened.
Luca called her after our conversation and arranged for the final dress appointment to be at the penthouse instead of the salon. Which, of course, he could have told me that he was going to do—but he didn’t. He opted to let me think that he didn’t care instead and let this happen out of nowhere.
As always, it leaves me confused as to how to feel. I was so angry and frustrated with him for refusing to let me go—and then he turns around and does something like this, something kind for Caterina, something that makes it possible for me to be there for her despite the limitations. And yet, I’m still mad at him for refusing to let me leave the apartment at all.
I wish I’d never met him, I think as I sink onto the couch, watching Caterina talk to the assistant quietly, touching each of the dresses as she looks at them. I wish none of this had ever happened.
But even as I think it, I’m not entirely sure that it’s true anymore. Without Luca and our forced marriage, I’d be graduating in a few weeks, getting ready to go to Paris and then London. I’d be on my way to leaving Manhattan forever, becoming an accomplished member of an orchestra, starting a new life far away from the memories here.
When I imagine that now, though, it feels like a dream. Like a life that belonged to someone else. And the thought of never seeing Luca again makes me feel almost like I’m losing something.
Like a drug that I don’t want to admit I’m getting addicted to.
“I’ll try this one on,” Caterina says, jolting me out of my thoughts. “What do you think, Sofia? Is it nice?”
I glance over at the cascade of lace that she’s holding up and force a smile. I’m supposed to be supporting her today, not lost in my own thoughts. “It’s gorgeous,” I tell her, which is easy to say. Anything would look good on her.
She tries on a few dresses, changing in the downstairs bathroom and then coming out for me to see. They’re all beautiful—the first is a fitted white lace dress with a v-neckline and elbow-length sleeves, another is a strapless lace bodice with a floaty tulle skirt, and the third is a sleek mermaid made of heavy, plain white satin.
And then she comes out in the fourth. It’s simple, made of heavy off-white satin, an off-the-shoulder neckline, and a fitted bodice that flares out into a full skirt. There’s nothing fairy-tale or princess-y about it. It’s an elegant, gorgeous dress, one that makes Caterina look like a queen. Her tanned skin glows against the soft candle white of the satin, the dress clinging to the lines of her body in a way that’s beautiful without being too sexy, and when the assistant pins a veil to her hair, sweeping the tulle around her, I feel the prickle of tears at the corner of my eyes.
“This is the one my mother loved,” Caterina says quietly. “I thought I wanted something more ornate. But now that I’ve put it on again—” she hesitates, looking in the mirror that the assistant set up for her. “I think it’s perfect.” She glances back at me, biting her lip. “What do you think, Sofia?”
My chest tightens, and it takes me a moment to be able to speak. We don’t know each other that well—it’s only through circumstance that we know each other at all, and I want to say the right thing. This is an important moment in her life, one that she should be sharing with her mother, or a sister, or a close friend—anyone closer to her than I am. But I’m all she has.
“I think it’s perfect, too.” It’s true—I can’t imagine a more perfect dress. The others were gorgeous, but this suits Caterina as if it were made for her. “And it’ll feel like she’s there with you, at least a little bit.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too.” Caterina bites her lip, crossing over to the couch and sinking onto it next to me while still in the dress. She reaches out for my hands, grasping them in both of hers as she smiles through the tears that are starting to run down her face. “Thank you so much, Sofia. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you were with me today. It feels like I have a friend.”
My chest tightens with emotion as she squeezes my hands. Like that moment at our engagement party when I caught a flash of what my life could be like with Luca if we actually loved each other, that moment where we were joking and teasing one another, I see a glimpse of what my life could be like if I were actually a part of this family. If I accepted my place as Luca’s wife, I worked to be a good one, support him, and love him. Caterina would be my friend, married to Luca’s underboss. I can see the dinners we would host, the parties we’d go to together, the events we’d help organize. I can’t imagine a day when Ana isn’t my best friend, but I can see the place in my life that Caterina would occupy too, and the place I would have in hers.
And it wouldn’t be bad. It would probably even be good, a happy, fulfilling life in many ways.
But in order to have that, I’d have to let go of all of the ideas I’ve always had about what my life would be. I’d have to come to terms with my feelings about what Rossi and his thugs did to my mother, the fact that Luca is now occupying the spot that Rossi used to, and the way I’ve been dragged into all of this.
I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I can find a place here when I resent how it all began so much. When I don’t even understand my feelings for my own husband. When I’m alternately unsure if he’s someone I could fall for or someone who I should be terrified of.
But I do know one thing I can do.
I squeeze Caterina’s hands back, looking at her with a smile on my face. “You do have a friend in me,” I tell her firmly.
And that, I know I mean. More than anything I’ve said in a long time now.
