Doomed to Love the Mafia Boss.

Chapter 15

Then she sits down and waits for me to do the same.

Suspicious, I sit as she expects and rest my hands on the bottle, too cold for London’s weather, but pleasant enough to ease the pain in my hands, which I am now beginning to feel, after the effect of adrenaline has passed and the hatred has eased.

“Do you know how to keep secrets, Valentina?” she begins.

I stand up, startled, but Elinor keeps her serene expression, like someone waiting for five o’clock tea to be served in a dark, gloomy storage room. I swallow hard at my teacher’s senseless question, her clever eyes scrutinizing my soul as she waits for answers.

“What is happening?” I ask.

“Valentina, let us be objective, all right?”

“I do not know what you are doing, or where you are going with this. First, what is this place?”

“Trust is a difficult thing, isn’t it? I myself trust no one. Even now. I am willing to trust you, girl, but I need to receive the same.”

“Miss Elinor, I…”

“Elinor. Outside those walls, we are equals.”

I am dazed, in too much pain to understand her goals, and afraid. I cannot say anything. Stubborn woman!

“I do not know what you want to tell me, but just do not tell me, because I will not do the same,” I ask. “I cannot say what happened. I am sorry.”

Shit! I want to cry. I want to tell her. I need to speak and understand what happened before the memory drives me mad. I need to move and find Alexandra.

Omertà, Valentina.

Silence is the shield of the Cosa Nostra, and it is the only thing protecting me today. The code of silence is the only thing that makes sense, and she is asking me to break it. Once violated, death is the invitation we receive, and it waits for me with excitement. I know it does. Death was my dinner companion that night. I looked it in the eyes, and it only smiled back.

“Let us do this. If I come close to what happened, you answer my question, all right?”

“You want to guess?”

“Exactly. Do you agree?”

“Considering that you probably do not have the slightest idea what happened, or the reasons that led to that moment, I accept your challenge,” I say, confident that this absurd situation will soon end if I give her at least something. A challenge she will not win, so fine.

“Excellent.”

She stands and sits at the table in front of the chair where I am. Straight posture, challenging gaze, and expressionless face as always. Hiding with her face what is happening in her mind and speaking only with her eyes.

And I, for the first time, understand what she is telling me. Even before she opens her mouth, I understand that I have lost the challenge.

Even so, she makes sure the words enter my ears.

“You are Valentina De Luca, daughter of Dante and Gianna De Luca.”

“You know my family. That proves nothing.”

“You are too bold, too defiant, and too self-sufficient. Everything is too much, and that does not fit De Luca’s daughter.”

“My temper. You know how to read people,” I state, as if none of her conclusions are truly worth anything, but I feel my body tremble and clench my hands so she will not notice.

“Your mother died after a beating, contrary to what the newspapers said at the time. No, no one told me that, but she was your mother, was she not?”

“How do you…” I try to speak, but she continues as if I were not questioning her.

“And you have already started receiving your own beatings too, have you not? And I should add that you were sent to me to be molded. Horrible word, is it not? As if you were a brainless mass with some meaningless purpose. And this was not your first beating. I am sure of it. Well, as for the reason for your punishment, I dare say you confronted your father and were punished for it. Too independent for business.”

She waits for me to say something, but what would I say after that?

“So, Valentina, do you know how to keep secrets?”

I lower my head.

Unbelievable.

She must be an associate, but that would not fit at all with her fiery speech about not being moldable, about rising from the ashes. It does not fit, because associates are subservient. Soldiers are obedient and Capodecinas are authoritarian, but they are never women.

“Who are you?” I ask, curious.

“Come on, Valentina! Do you have a word or not?”

“I cannot. You know, Elinor, I do know how to keep secrets, and that is exactly why you cannot win the challenge, because I will not tell them.”

“I already won, and I admire your silence. I admire that you know how to keep secrets and that no word leaves your mouth. But I won. Your eyes, your body language, absolutely everything in you revealed that I am right. And based on everything I suppose you have gone through until today, tell me: how can you sleep at night, remembering what happened? How many mirrors will you break, wanting your mind to silence all the information they poured into you?”

“Stop,” I ask, while staring fixedly at the floor.

“How can you survive knowing that he won again?”

“Enough!” I scream as I stand and go to the corner of the room, in a useless attempt to protect myself from her and from her words.

“You sleep, and his orders keep repeating night after night in your head, do they not?”

“What do you want from me? Just say it!” I shout, placing my hands over my ears like a cornered child.

“For you to abandon that victim posture!”

That destabilized me. She accuses me of feeling everything that happened without even knowing about Alexandra. She does not know. She only assumes I was destroyed. But I carry guilt on my shoulders, and it weighs too much.

“What? Do you also think it is my fault? You are like them!” I accuse.

“No. I have never been farther from that in my entire life than I am in this moment. You may feel, foolish girl. You may hate, rage, and do whatever you want. But do not waste your energy on that or on lamentations.”

“I cannot! I already tried, and look at me!” I scream, angry at the universe by now. I scream as if she knew my story.

“Keep trying.” She calms her voice and expression. My tears fall, and she remains untouchable after our shouted dialogue. Elinor lowers herself in the corner of the wall until she is level with my eyes and pulls my hands away from my ears, forcing my concentration. “If you victimize yourself, shrink back, and cannot bear it, you lose, Valentina. Is that what you want?”

“Let us leave,” I refute, decided. “I cannot tell you absolutely anything, no matter how much you have a minimal understanding of my family. Believe me, this is not even the tip of the iceberg.”

“With that, you answered my question, my dear.” My eyes widen. She can only be insane. “You know how to keep secrets, but you need to be more silent than this. You need your whole body to know how to conceal what your tongue has already kept to itself.”

“Like you do,” I conclude. No one does that better than she does, not even my father, who is a spectacular actor.

She is the rigid etiquette teacher at a girls’ school. But she is the mystery that speaks with her eyes and silences them whenever she wishes. She herself is a secret, and if I have uncovered it now, it is because she allowed it. She reveals only what she wants.

And that gives me ecstasy and fear.

“Like me. You need experience, the same experience I keep in this room. Do you want to learn to keep secrets like me, girl?” she asks when she is certain I understood that she is not just a teacher. I do not know who she is, but I understand that the Elinor the world knows never existed.

“I already do that. But yes, I want to become better at that art,” I say a little more calmly, without informing her that what we do most in the Mafia is have the talent to keep secrets.

“Then rest, little mafia princess.”