Page 36 of Bad Bishop

I also knew I’d have to face Tiernan at some point. Considering last time we stayed in the same room together I tried to kill him, and he fed me his blood, I wasn’t looking forward to that.

A silly part of me hoped if enough time passed, Tiernan would eventually forget about my existence. That quietly, I would slink back into my old life. Back in my parents’ house. To those summers in Ischia. To the universe my mother so carefully crafted around me to protect me from the underworld.

“Has he touched you? Has he tried to take liberties with you?” Mama demanded to know now, in the back of the Cadillac that took us from Long Island back to Hunts Point. She signed the question in ASL, so that our driver and bodyguards wouldn’t notice.

“No,” I signed back, my mind drifting to my wedding night. To the reckless, fleeting pleasure I found in devouring his blood. “I never even see him.”

“Thank goodness. We need to get you out of there before he strikes.” Mama moved her hands with the same precision she did her hair and makeup and chose her frocks. She was a beautiful, well-kept woman. But I looked nothing like her or my father. “The man is a ticking time bomb.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“I’m talking Luca into finding a way to break the arrangement. He was never fully on board with this union in the first place.”

“Do you think he can do it?” Despite sinning on an hourly basis, my father considered himself a devout Catholic. He would never let me birth a child out of wedlock.

“If not, I’ll try something else. I’ll save you, bambina mia. No matter what.”

The car turned the corner into my neighborhood. I gnawed on my lower lip, tempted to tell Mama how I was really doing. I hadn’t been sleeping—not since Luca’s wedding, really—living off two or three hours of interrupted naps every day. I wasn’t eating well, either. Only a piece of avocado toast in the morning to push down the nausea. But it seemed as though she was sick with worry as it was. I didn’t want to make her anxiety even worse.

“I pray that Luca succeeds,” I signed.

“He will. In the meantime, I want you to take this.” She rummaged through the Birkin bag in her lap, pulling out a shiny, top-of-the-line cell phone. My heart stuttered to a stop. I had never owned a phone before. Mama was vehemently against it. She didn’t even give me our Wi-Fi password for my Kindle. If I wanted to download a book, I had to go through her first.

She placed the phone in my hands. “Promise me you won’t go on the internet, Lila. It’s awful there. Full of terrible things that will ruin your innocence.”

How much more was there to ruin, I wondered? The worst had already happened to me. I was raped and got pregnant. I couldn’t even remember my rapist’s face, so I wouldn’t get justice or closure, either. Were there other reasons my mother was so adamant I stay away from the elusive internet? Not that it mattered. She was my only ally in this world. I didn’t want to upset her.

“I promise.”

“Good. I put my contact number there, as well as Imma’s and your brothers’. Also 911. You can text me when you getlonely. But remember, only contact the others in case of an emergency. They’re not supposed to know you’re literate.”

My brows knit into a frown, and I asked the question that had been sitting on the forefront of my mind all week. “Why does it matter? I’m already married. Our plan didn’t work.”

She stared at me for a beat, anger flushing her face ruby.

Leaning forward, she gripped my arms almost painfully. “You think you have nothing more to lose? Your pain hasn’t even started. There is still so much more to suffer through in a marriage to a mobster. If Tiernan finds out you are not a person with intellectual disabilities, he will demand to consummate the marriage. You will be raped not once, Lila, but every single night. Sometimes multiple times a day. He will put another baby in you, and then another one. He will continue seeing his mistresses, which I am sure you are not dumb enough to think he doesn’t have. He’ll parade them around, just like he did on your wedding day. Their perfume will be on your sheets. The scent of their desire on your husband. He will not wash himself before he enters you. He’ll want you to smell them. To know you are nothing but a tool for him. And when your beauty fades, he will replace you with someone younger and stop touching you altogether. But by then, you will feel different about him. Sex forms attachment, Lila. You will want him to be yours like you are his. You’ll fight back, and he’ll beat you. This is what Mafia men do. They break your heart first, and then they break your spirit, and finally, they break your body. We might still be able to get you out of this marriage if people think you are not sentient. You have to keep the secret alive, Lila. You must.”

Tears made her bottomless onyx eyes glitter. I hadn’t seen her this upset since my family found me on the shore, battered and bruised, a man’s semen dripping down my inner thigh.

I knew she was speaking from experience. From a place of deep, all-encompassing pain. I also knew I had an older brother somewhere in the universe, the fruit of an affair my father had with someone else, and that this brother—whoever he was—was Papa’s favorite child. He still saw him often. Showered him with gifts, attention, and guidance. His identity was securely wrapped up in mystery, a privilege no Ferrante sibling was ever afforded. We weren’t given a choice about who we were. We were born into the world of blood and violence, of unspeakable sins, our paths carved by the bloodied hands of my father.

The idea of going through another rape shook me to the core and grounded me back in reality. No way was I going to let that happen.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t know,” I promised, ignoring the knot forming in the pit of my stomach. “Don’t worry, Mama.”

She pulled me into a hug, her tears soaking the front of my lavender chiffon dress.

CHAPTER TWELVE

LILA

Another week passed.

I still couldn’t eat or sleep and was plagued with thoughts and fears about my faceless, nameless assailant. He was always there, prowling in the periphery of my existence, ready to pounce.

He was a free man. Living among the Camorra and Irish. After all—he was at Luca’s wedding on a secluded, invitation-only island. If he did it once, what stopped him from doing it again?

Tiernan had warned people off from touching me, but so did my family the minute I was born. If the monster who put a baby inside me didn’t fear Don Machiavelli, what guarantee did I have he’d fear my husband?