sometimes it hurts
“Cristina!”
She stopped and turned at the sound of her name and a young woman jogged over to her. There was something very familiar about her, but she couldn’t place where they’d met until she smiled – a less potent version ofEzio’s smile – and then she knew exactly who the young woman was.
“Mari? Mari Auditore? How lovely to see you,” she exclaimed, more shrilly than she would have liked, as she leaned forward to exchange quick kisses on either cheek. Although she had rehearsed over and over again in her mind’s eye, more frequently and in far greater detail than she would ever care to admit, what she would say and how she would act if she happened to come across Ezio again, she was completely unprepared for encountering his sister. “I didn’t know you’d come back to Roma.”
Mari was different than she remembered her being when she saw her last – almost two years ago now, Jesus – still vivacious and pretty, same barely tamed riotous hair and copper-glazed complexion, but she also seemed somehow leaner, sharper, harder. There was a new hollowness to Mari’s face – maybe a touch in the cheeks, but mostly in the eyes – that heightened her resemblance to her mother. It was a little unsettling, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly why.
“Just visiting,” Mari replied with a quick, backward glance over her shoulder. “We’re all here for Holy Week before going up to Lucca for Easter Vigil.”
Her heart thumped painfully against her ribs. Ezio’s back in Roma. She couldn’t tell if she was excited or terrified at the prospect of seeing him. She carefully smoothed her suddenly sweating palms down her skirt. Of course he’s in Italy for Holy Week, she hastened to remind herself. His family goes to Lucca for Easter every year. It hurt to remember that last year she’d been invited to join them, by his harridan of a grandmother herself, no less, but she hadn’t gone. With her brother stationed in North Africa, her parents would have spent the holiday all alone. Ezio had been disappointed, but understanding. It felt like a memory from some other person’s life now.
“I like what you’ve done with your hair,” Mari commented, smoothing over the awkward silence that had fallen between them. “It’s very… bold.”
Her hair looked awful. She knew it looked awful. She’d started hacking at it one evening with a pair of scissors, when she’d probably had a bit too much to drink, after reading some academic article on hair cutting and mourning rituals. She’d then let Rosa try to fix it, which only made things worse; it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
“I needed a change; it didn’t really turn out as planned,” she hastily explained as she self-consciously reached up to adjust the kerchief that disguised the worst of her botched haircut. Ezio had loved her hair.
“My hair never turns out as planned either,” Mari replied with a shrug and another swift glance over her shoulder. She tried to follow her gaze to see what, or who, Mari kept glancing over at, but Mari turned back to her too quickly for her to be sure, and there was a sudden jarring sharpness to Mari’s smile that she’d never noticed before.
“What brings you to this part of town?” she asked, trying to keep the conversation going even though part of her wanted nothing more than to turn and run away as fast has he legs could carry her. “It’s quite a long walk from your family’s palazzo.”
“Mother needed me to pick up something from that shady book seller, you know the one.” Mari shuddered and ran a hand down her upper arm, as if to erase where the merchant had touched her. “They made me bring along Taline,” she sighed and scrunched her nose. “She’s been talking to that old Turk for ages now. I had no idea she could be so chatty.”
“Who’s Taline?” she asked, dreading the answer she knew Mari was about to give.
“Ezio’s little parasite of a wife,” Mari replied, mouth twisting as she spat the words. “I’d offer to introduce you, but she doesn’t speak enough – more like any – Italian for a proper introduction.”
She was surprised by the flicker of sympathy she felt for this still faceless stranger; her first year at Beauxbatons had been extremely difficult until her French had improved. The stranger he married. The sympathy evaporated.
“I’m sure she has her charms,” she carefully replied, twisting her reflexive grimace into an approximation of a smile.
“She’s an eager little baker that’s for sure,” Mari sneered. “Didn’t waste any time getting my brother’s bun in her oven.”
“She-she’s pregnant? Already?” she gasped, reflexively clutching her abdomen. Mari arched an eyebrow; she immediately regretted her unthinking gesture and tried to play it off with a grimace.
“Yeah. Almost four months along now. Didn’t you know?” Mari chirped, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. It hurt to breathe.
The bell just inside the bookseller’s shop tinkled as the door opened and a girl stepped out. She was slim and slight, with dark hair and pale skin and her eyes immediately found Mari but she stayed by the bookshop, nervously toying with a pendant she wore around her neck on a long chain. My god, she looks young. Mari turned and impatiently waved the girl over.
“No. How would I?” she ground out around her brittle smile as the girl – Ezio’s wife – hesitantly approached. “It’s not like he’s still writing me. Is this her, his wife?”
Mari hummed distractedly. “Try not to make any sudden movements, she’s gotten awfully skittish.”
She leveled her shoulders and forced a smile. “Hello, Taline,” she managed to say heartily when it became apparent that proper introductions weren’t going to come from Mari. Ezio’s manners had been a little spotty at times too, she remembered.
The girl silently studied her, slowly blinking her uncanny green eyes, and Cristina’s skin crawled under her scrutiny as memories of Ezio looped through her mind’s eye. “Marhabaan, Cristina,” she finally replied.
“That means hello,” Mari translated, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know why she’s being difficult; I know for a fact that Ezio taught her how to at least say hello.” She punctuated her comment with an annoyed flick of her wrist and Taline flinched at the gesture.
“I know what marhabaan means, Mari,” she retorted with a sharp spike of annoyance. “I managed to pick that up at least.”
Ezio had never been very forthcoming about his ability to speak, read, and write Arabic. He wanted to be seen and thought of as Italian and didn’t like when she mentioned his proficiency in Arabic around other people or asked him to teach her words. Sometimes, when he’d been half-asleep after sex, he’d softly call her habibata, but he’d never told her what it meant. It was actually from Mari that she’d learned Arabic was probably Ezio’s first language – which explained the slight accent he’d always tried so hard to hide – and that their family almost exclusively spoke Arabic at home. Learning that information only underscored how alien Ezio’s real life was to hers, how numerous and deep their many differences were. It seemed so stupid, now, how much their differences had mattered to her. The reminder of her foolish reasons for throwing away her best chance at a decent marriage stung. It sure didn’t take him long to find someone else. Somehow, that was even more painful. She forced herself to focus on the girl standing right in front of her.
She wasn’t entirely sure what she had expected Ezio’s wife to be like, but it certainly wasn’t anything like Taline. The girl was tiny – far too small for a man as large and robust as Ezio – and timid; nothing like her. If this is how he likes his women, what the hell was he doing with me? They studied one another in silence while Mari pointedly sighed in boredom.
“She’s pretty,” she offered lamely, stomach twisting as she noticed the size of the emerald on the girl’s finger. Christ, that must have cost a fortune. The ring he’d left for her looked chintzy in comparison. “Jamila,” she said to Taline as she pointed to the ring, hoping the word actually meant what she thought it did; Ezio had told her it meant beautiful, but, knowing him, it could just as likely actually mean fuckable. The girl blinked, but did not look offended, which she took as a good sign; her parents may have been muggles, but at they’d at least bothered to teach her the importance of good manners, which was more than could be said for some people.
“Shukraan,” Taline replied and then she smiled, slow and seductive, giving Cristina a glimpse of what must have caught Ezio’s eye.
“Ugh, I’ve missed you,” Mari blurted out, catching hold of her hand and squeezing it tightly. “I wish it was you coming to Lucca with us this year – Easter is going to be such a nightmare once Nana Claudia gets a good look at this one.”
She had the fleeting impression that Taline’s smile dimmed at Mari’s tone before the girl sprang away from them with an eager cry of “Varpet!” She was a little surprised by the girl’s muted reaction to how thoroughly dismissive Mari was being towards her before she remembered that Taline probably hadn’t understand most, if any, of what Mari had said.
“What does that mean?” she asked Mari, resisting the urge to turn around and confirm whom Taline was greeting.
“No idea,” Mari deadpanned. “It’s either Turkish or Armenian. My brother probably doesn’t know either. I’ve decided to translate it as vacuum, it makes it easier to stomach.”
“Little wife,” she heard him greet Taline behind her, followed by an affectionate sounding rush of Arabic, and it took all of her willpower not to turn around or run away.
I was supposed to be your wife, she thought with a galling rush of bitterness. We could have worked things out, if you hadn’t gone off and married someone else. She was completely unprepared for how much it hurt to be near him again. Mari was watching her intently, with an inscrutable half-smile she had to have learned from her reptilian mother. She took a deep breath.
“Ezio-” she started, turning to face him. He almost seemed bigger than she remembered, impossibly broad-shouldered and beefy, but his face hadn’t changed, much. Same prominent jawline and hint of a cleft in his chin. Same wide mouth and un-Italian nose he must have gotten from his father’s side, because she had noticed how identical those features were to his uncle’s when she and Rosa had met his family at that party in Lucca. He still had his dimples and high cheekbones and the thin, elongated eyebrows she knew some women would have killed to have naturally. His eyes were different though, not as empty and desolate as that last time she had seen him, when she’d broken both of their hearts, but the previous warmth and humor hadn’t fully returned. The rest of her carefully prepared greeting evaporated when she saw he wasn’t alone.
His arm was around the child he’d married, and he was flanked on either side by his mother and uncle. Santa cazzo cristo!
“Madonna… Messere,” she managed to croak with a weak smile, trying to ignore the very real possibility that she was moments away from dropping dead on the spot.
“Cristina Vespucci,” Madonna Maria drawled, tone icy with disdain. Mario Auditore glowered at her, silent and menacing. She resisted the urge to cross herself. How did I not smell the sulfur?
“Cristina-” Ezio gasped, blanching whiter than she would have thought possible given his complexion.
“Mother, Uncle,” Mari chirped from behind her. “Twice in one day? This truly must be a week for miracles.”
She vaguely noticed that Mario snapped something at Mari in brusque Arabic, tone blistering with disapproval, and that Mari then slunk over to her mother’s side with a pronounced pout, shoulder jostling hers as she passed.
“You look-” she hesitated, unsure what, exactly, she should say. “-good. I take it you’ve been well? Mari says congratulations are in order.”
“Thank you,” he replied woodenly as he continued to stare at her like she was a specter sent to haunt him. His mother and uncle looked at her like they’d like nothing more than to murder her on the spot. Neither Mari nor Ezio’s wife were looking at her; Mari was looking everywhere else and putting on a show of being bored, and the girl only had eyes for Ezio. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this uncomfortable. Ezio finally jolted out of his revere, after his mother applied a sharp elbow to his side.
“Have you been introduced to my wife?” he asked in a terrible parody of good manners. “Taline, may I present Cristina Vespucci-” his voice caught on her name “-Cristina, this is Taline, Auditore.”
There was naked hostility in the glance the girl spared her as she clung even more tightly to Ezio, reaching up to carefully and deliberately touch his chest. It struck her as a very strange gesture. She’s afraid he still loves me, she realized and felt a swell of satisfaction. Good.
“Will you be in Roma long?” she asked, suddenly desperate to prolong their interaction. She hadn’t been prepared for how it would make her feel to see him again. We never should have broken up. Holy Mother, I made a mistake.
“My son doesn’t have time to chat, Cristina Vespucci,” Maria said with her terrifying smile. “Do you, my treasure?”
“Your wife doesn’t look well, Ezio. Be a man and see to her needs,” Mario commanded before Ezio had a chance to respond to his mother, drawing the girl away. He’s right, she doesn’t look well, an unwelcomed voice chimed in the back of her mind. I don’t care, she told herself fiercely. He had no right to marry her. He belongs with me.
“Of course not, Mother. Yes, Uncle,” Ezio mechanically replied, eyes sweeping up over her figure and lingering when they met hers. A thrill of excitement and anticipation ran up her spine.
“It was… nice to see you again, Cristina,” he said as he stepped back, away from her. “Safety and peace be upon you.” He turned and slid one arm around the girl and offered his mother the other.
She stood rooted to where the Assassins had left her, watching Ezio’s retreating form with a mixture of longing and grief. Her heart leapt when he glanced back over his shoulder at her.
She was surprised to find Rosa in the kitchen when she got home, sitting at the table and nursing a cup of tea, covered in soot and grime and sweat and streaked with blood. Tears were silently sliding down her cheeks to land on the tabletop in charcoal-colored splashes.
“Rosa, what’s wrong?” she gasped as she rushed over. “What happened? Are you hurt?” Rosa didn’t react as she started searching for a source for all the blood on her skin and clothing, staring off at some distant point. All she found were minor cuts and bruises, scraped knuckles and broken nails. Her initial rush of relief was tempered by a second, deeper, wave of concern; Rosa was never not chatty.
“Rosa…” she carefully took the half empty cup of tea from her friend’s unresisting hands. It had gone completely cold. “What happened, chaton?” she asked again, gently jostling Rosa’s shoulder.
Rosa turned her head and looked at her for a long, unblinking moment, and then she started sobbing.
Something bad then, she thought grimly as she pulled Rosa to her feet and helped her stagger to the bathroom. She left her sitting on the toilet as she drew her a hot bath; she threw a handful of bubbling powder in just before shutting off the water, a last moment afterthought. Rosa hadn’t moved from where she’d sat her, doubled over and still sobbing tempestuously into her hands. Worry settled with leaden weight in her stomach and billowed up her throat in choking waves. Keep it together, Cristina, she admonished herself. Rosa needs you, don’t you dare let her down. She took off Rosa’s clothes and helped her into the hot bubbly water. She sat beside the tub and waited as the bubbles went from iridescent-bright white to dull smoky-gray and eventually Rosa’s sobs subsided.
“There was an accident at the muggle munitions factory I pass on my way to work,” Rosa finally said, staring at the murky bathwater, now visible between thinning mounds of soapy bubbles. “Something had gone off, turned the place into an inferno-”
Cristina forced her tight throat to swallow. She’d already heard enough to know what happened next – she didn’t want to hear the rest – but she held her tongue and let Rosa continue, to purge the horrors lodged behind her eyes.
“-there was a girl, Christ, barely more than a child, trapped in there-” Rosa’s voice wobbled precariously. “I grabbed her hand, to pull her out, to save her, and her skin slid off her like a glove. I couldn’t get her out, couldn’t get any of them out.” Rosa scrubbed at her hands furiously. “It takes such a horribly long time for people to burn to death-”
“Rosa, it’s not your fault,” she soothed. “You did your best to help them-”
“No, I didn’t.” Rosa turned and looked directly at her. “I could have saved that girl with magic, could have saved more of them, all of them, with magic.”
“Then why didn’t you?” she asked, brimming with impatience at the old, familiar, argument. “The ministry would have cleaned things up, they always do.”
Rosa shook her head vehemently. “It would have been too big, too obvious. They’d have no choice but to send me to the Island and tell my parents to mourn me as dead because I’d never be allowed to come back out.”
She winced at the sting of truth to Rosa’s statement. “You did the best you were able under the circumstances.” It felt hollow even as she said it.
“No. If I wasn’t such a coward, that girl would still be alive, god rest her soul.” They both crossed themselves, nearly in unison. “Damn this secrecy statute,” Rosa murmured. “Maybe Grindelwald is right; we’ve lived in the shadows for far too long.”
Cristina felt the floor open up beneath her feet as though she was suspended in that horrible half-second before the plunge, a hairsbreadth away from falling. Her chest hurt before she realized that she’d forgotten to exhale.
“He kills people, Rosa,” she said, tone flintier than she’d intended. “He uses magic to kill people, not to save them. People like my parents, and your father. What will happen to them – to your mother, who he would label a blood-traitor – if he wins?”
Rosa’s mouth twisted and her fingers curled into claws gripping the edge of the tub. The water dripping from the sodden coils of her hair was a brackish black-brown-maroon.
“He won’t win, not in the end. Evil never does, you know,” she insisted. “He’ll overreach, and it stretching out his arm for that last thing, he’ll fall. Why shouldn’t we use the changes he seeks to create for the benefit of all people, for the real Greater Good?”
“That’s a dangerous road,” Cristina cautioned, watching her oldest friend with carefully concealed concern. “It’s a twisting and corrosive path that changes people, whether they realize it or not.” She realized she sounded like their hatchet-faced Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor back at Beauxbatons and tried not to wince. Mme. Leandres had been fanatical about the perils of dark magic, the dangers of following the wrong path, and, especially, avoiding at all costs something she called The Cathar Heresy. More than one interminably long lecture was devoted solely to the evils of Catharism, their dangerous use of primal magic, and their eagerness to use the darkest and most powerful magic of all: Blood Magic. She and Rosa had always giggled behind their hands together at Mme. Leandres’ fanaticism. Everybody – except Mme. Leandres, apparently – knew that the Cathari had all been wiped out during the Albigensian Crusade.
“Doing nothing is changing me,” Rosa growled. “Seeing people suffer, and having to stand by and do nothing to help them is killing me, bit by bit. I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“Rosa-” she protested.
“Don’t.” Rosa scrubbed her hands across her face. “I don’t want to talk about it – don’t want to think about it anymore. Tell me something distracting, Cristina.”
She swallowed and studied the ring on her finger, the one Ezio had left for her. She didn’t know how to even begin to unpack how seeing him again had made her feel, but it would certainly distract Rosa.
“I saw Ezio today,” she started, words clogging her throat like cold molasses. “On the street, in the wizarding district-”
“You didn’t speak to him, did you?” Rosa asked, eyes wide and expression vaguely horrified. Irritation pricked across her skin and she didn’t want to think too hard about why.
“Briefly,” she admitted, thrusting a washrag and the current sliver of soap they were using at Rosa. “I talked to Mari – his sister – longer. She seemed… happy, enough, to see me again-” she hesitated, nervously twisting the ring on her finger. “And she introduced me to his, his wife.” The last word of that sentence nearly choked her.
“Blessed Holy Jesus,” Rosa exclaimed, dropping the soap and hurriedly crossing herself. Cristina suddenly remembered that they both had given up blaspheming for lent; it hadn’t gone particularly well, for either of them.
“Is she pretty?”
“Rosa!” she scolded, something broken and jagged unfolding in her chest as she considered the question. Is she pretty, prettier than me?
“What?” Rosa protested. “Not that it’s actually important or anything. If Karl and I broke up I don’t know if I’d want his new girlfriend to be pretty or not.”
“Why does it matter?” she asked, shoving her ring hand out of sight under the side of her thigh.
Rosa sighed and shook her head. “Of course it’s important that she’s pretty – it means he has good taste – but it’s also important that she’s not too pretty, you know?”
“It doesn’t matter how pretty she is; she’s pregnant.” She wasn’t prepared for how much it hurt to say that – she’s pregnant – to acknowledge that another woman was having Ezio’s child. He might have left a wife to come back to her, but he’d never leave a woman carrying his child. He’s gone. He’s really, really gone. I’ve lost him.
Rosa went perfectly still. “Oh, chaton, I’m so, so sorry.”
Rosa’s pity was even more painful.
“For what? I did this. I did this to myself.” She got to her feet and carefully smoothed her skirt. “Is there any flour? I’ll make spaghetti for dinner.”
“There’s flour, things aren’t that dire yet,” Rosa replied. The bathwater sloshed dangerously close to the rim of the tub as she hunted for the soap she’d dropped.
“Am I cooking for two or three?” she asked over her shoulder when she reached the bathroom door.
“Three, I think. Unless you’d like me to try to catch Karl before he leaves the bank and put him off?”
She shrugged. “You must want to see him after the day you’ve had, and I don’t actually mind his company. There’s no point putting him off.”
“Putting who off?” Karl asked, closing the front door behind himself.
Cristina gritted her teeth and strode past him to the kitchen. Karl having a key to their apartment was still a sore point between her and Rosa. She wished that he would at least knock before letting himself in.
There was flour, like Rosa had said there would be, it was salt they were dangerously low on. Enough for another week, if we’re careful, she mentally noted as she sifted some salt and flour together into a large ceramic bowl and let the tap run until the water was warm before carefully adding just enough to make the dough come together into a ball. She dusted the counter with a little more flour and dumped the ball of dough onto floured counter and kneaded it – quarter turns and firm pressure – until she was satisfied with the consistency and got out the hand-cranked pasta machine her parents had bought them as a housewarming gift.
“I have something for you,” Karl said, setting small corked bottle down on the counter next to her hand, before shrugging off his overcoat and carefully hanging it over the back of one of the chairs. His suit was a conservative dark navy wool and the toes of his Balmoral shoes gleamed dully with polish. Boring banker’s clothes.
“What is it?” she asked, not even sparing the bottle a quick glance as she divided the dough into smaller pieces.
“Something to fix your hair,” he replied with a one shouldered shrug as he straightened his bright blue and gold striped tie. “You and Rosa made such a hash of it, I thought you might appreciate some assistance undoing the damage.”
“My hair isn’t damaged, it was cut,” she retorted, using one hand to turn the machine’s crank and the other to feed the dough into it. The noodles were coming out wonderfully thin and consistent.
“And this will make it grow back.”
“Maybe I like it like this,” she snapped, pointedly ignoring his derisive harrumph in response, and refrained from doubling down on her rather obvious lie.
“You make spaghetti like a muggle,” he commented, watching her work. She watched him fiddle with his wand from the corner of her eye.
“It tastes better this way.”
“That’s because you aren’t very good with magic.”
She gritted her teeth and reminded herself that it had probably sounded better in his head; Karl was continuously surprised when she took offense to the things he said, or at least he made a good show of pretending to be. Stop being so cynical, Cristina, she scolded herself. Do you want to die an embittered old spinster? The answer, of course, was no – not that what she wanted ever seemed to matter much in the grand scheme of things.
“Should I interpret that as an offer to make dinner tomorrow?” she retorted. “So we can compare your magic-made spaghetti to mine?”
“I’m not very practiced with woman’s work spells,” Karl replied tersely, shoulders assuming a defensive angle. “Besides, it wouldn’t be a direct comparison anyway. I only know how to make spätzle, and we haven’t got enough eggs.”
“Please don’t start you two,” Rosa sighed as she entered the kitchen, dressed in a fresh skirt and blouse with her hair still wrapped in Cristina’s towel. “How are things at the bank?” she asked, dropping a quick kiss on Karl’s cheek.
Karl shrugged and slumped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Same as always. You know how banking goes; the gears grind ever on, long after there’s no one left to turn them.”
“Maybe for people with lots of money, but that’s not the case for the rest of us,” Cristina replied, dropping a handful of fresh pasta into the pot of boiling water Rosa had set on the stove.
Rosa sighed and rubbed her hands together, as if she was still trying to scrub them clean.
“People like Ezio’s family?” Karl suggested, propping his chin on the side of his fist. “I saw him today in the wizarding district, just to warn you.”
She grimaced. “Yeah, I know.” She scooped the cooked spaghetti out of the boiling water and added another handful of raw pasta to the pot. “I ran into him on my way home. It was awkward.”
“At least it’s over with,” Rosa offered, setting the table with a swish and flick of her wand. She and Rosa glanced at each other and then crossed themselves.
“You wouldn’t happen to know whom his family banks with, do you?” Karl asked as he filled their glasses with the thin red wine Rosa had charmed from vinegar. “His mother’s pearls alone must be worth a fortune – unless they’re fake, of course.”
“They’re real.” She set the bowl of spaghetti down with slightly more force than necessary. “Family heirlooms from Persia, Ezio said. Why are you asking about Mrs. Auditore’s pearls, Karl?”
He shrugged and started serving Rosa spaghetti. “It would be a real coup for me to attract a wealthy new client to the bank. I’d get a promotion, maybe even enough of a raise for Rosa and I to get married now, instead of having to wait-”
“You haven’t asked me,” Rosa snapped, shoving her plate away from herself. “Where would we live? Your family hates me, Karl, remember? My blood’s too muddy for them, isn’t it? Maybe I don’t even want to get married at all!” Rosa’s hair tumbled out of Cristina’s towel as she leapt up from the table and stormed out of the room; the bedroom door slammed a moment later. Cristina belatedly shook off her shock at Rosa’s outburst and went after her at an almost undignified pace. Their bedroom door was locked.
“Rosa?” she called, softly rapping her nails against the wooden doorframe. “Please, come talk to me. Unlock the door, chaton.”
“Go away, Cristina. I just need to be alone for a while,” Rosa replied, voice distorted and muffled with tears.
“Rosa-”
“Go Away!” Rosa screeched, followed by the crash of something being dashed against the wall and the sound of breaking glass.
That sounded like a picture frame. She sighed and hoped it wasn’t one of hers. Karl stood when she returned to the kitchen and reached for his overcoat.
“My apologies you had to witness that scene. It seems that my continued presence is, unwelcomed, so I bid you goodnight.”
“Oh sit down, Karl,” she replied, a touch ungraciously. “The table is already set and I don’t like to eat alone. There’s too much spaghetti for only one or two people anyways.”
“I couldn’t possibly-” he sputtered as she took his hat back off of his head and dropped it on Rosa’s empty chair.
“Sit. Eat.” She sighed. “Tell me how foolish I would have been to continue on with that tizzone. And how miserable I’d be with his family who doesn’t like me.”
Karl sank back into his chair and shrugged. “You liked him well enough, once.”
“But I could never marry him. Think of what people would say! What it would do to my parents! I couldn’t bear for them to be shunned by their friends and neighbors, people they’ve known their whole lives, because I saddled them with a mixed race, barely even Italian mongrel son-in-law. Ezio had to have known that on some level. He’s not that oblivious to what people are like.”
“Apparently he thought you felt different.” He sighed and shook his head. “You were having sexual relations with him, Cristina. You can’t blame him for not seeing things that way. He clearly thought you weren’t the type of girl who would do that with a man she didn’t intend to marry. You can’t fault him for having a higher opinion of you than you deserve. You led him on.”
She felt the fiery sweep of a blush rush up her chest and neck and over her face as she avoided meeting Karl’s eyes. Even her scalp felt like it was blushing. He’s not wrong.
Karl flashed her a quick, sympathetic, grimace. “Honestly, I had thought that if things ended between you two that he would be the one to end them. Not that he would leave you,” he hurriedly added when her eyes narrowed. “Just that, one day, he might not come back, is all…” He flushed and shoveled a large forkful of spaghetti into his mouth; he made a show of masticating vigorously.
“Yeah,” she sighed and carefully buttered her noodles. “I thought that sometimes too.”
To the best of her knowledge, Karl didn’t know what Ezio did for a living, what his sardonic references to the family business had really meant. Unless Rosa told him. She took a bite of spaghetti and chewed it slowly. She knew Rosa had an idea – gleaned from their trip to Lucca – but probably not much more than that; they hadn’t talked about it much. Although, in all honesty, she herself hardly understood what being an Assassin really meant. Ezio hadn’t liked to talk about it. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, he used to say with a strained smile. He would leave if she kept questioning him, and it could be weeks before she saw him again. She learned to just not ask.
“Do you think you could arrange an introduction for me?” Karl asked, voice slightly louder than he had been using previously. An embarrassed flush heated her cheeks when she realized that she’d been lost in her head and he’d had to repeat himself at least once already.
“Sorry, Karl,” she mumbled, self-consciously rubbing her flaming cheeks. “Who do you want me to introduce you to?”
Karl sighed. “Mrs. Auditore, of course. As I was saying earlier, it would be quite good for my career to bring a wealthy new client to the bank-”
“Not her,” she said abruptly, not even waiting for Karl to finish his sentence. “I’m serious Karl. Stay far, far away from the Auditore family. They’re dangerous.”
Karl rolled his eyes. “She’s a madam, she owns whores and runs a brothel; how dangerous can she really be? It’s not like I might catch the clap from talking to her.”
“She hates me.” She stabbed her fork into her spaghetti. “She won’t have anything to do with you once she learns of your connection to me.”
“Ezio might-”
“Stay away from Ezio,” she snapped, throwing her fork down. It bounced off the table and onto the floor. Cazzo. She gritted her teeth and crossed herself as she leaned over to pick it back up. It felt like too much bother to get up for a clean fork, so she settled for casting a quick cleaning charm on the one she’d been using. “Don’t look for him, don’t talk to him, just stay far away from him, okay Karl?”
“Huh,” he replied, hunching his shoulders slightly as he leaned over his plate. “Does this renewed bitterness have anything to do with that girl he was with? You can’t blame him for trying to move on with his life, Cristina.”
There was a lump in her throat she couldn’t swallow. “That’s his wife-”
“His wife?” Karl’s nearly colorless eyebrows shot up.
His hair might actually get darker when he eventually goes gray.
“Yeah,” she croaked. “His wife. His pretty, pregnant wife-”
“Bah,” Karl said with a dismissive flap of his hand. “You’re good-looking enough. Men like a red-blooded woman, not some little Kestner doll they have to handle with care and keep on a shelf.”
“I’m going to assume you meant that to be a compliment,” she replied wryly. Good-looking enough, indeed! Next he’s going to tell me I have fine child-bearing hips. She almost choked when she tried to swallow the overlarge bit of spaghetti she’d taken.
“Ja, that’s why I said it,” he retorted before downing his entire glass of wine. “Will you tell Rosa to owl me later, when she feels like talking, or maybe seeing me? She needs a little space, I think.”
Coward. Why are so many men frightened by women’s tears? Weaker sex indeed, she mused as she sipped her wine. It was worse than she thought it might be. Rosa really is terrible at that spell.
“You should try talking to her now, maybe bring her a plate of food,” she suggested. “She needs the comfort; she’s had a hell of a day. You should try asking her about it, maybe.”
Karl grunted in response and took his plate to the sink to wash it. She listened to the water gurgling down the drain as she finished her wine. Karl wordlessly took her plate and finished clearing the table. Once there was nothing left for him to wash up he returned to the table and picked up Rosa’s plate with a resigned sigh.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t take it to her?” he asked. His tone suggested that he didn’t really expect her to say yes, but a flicker of hope remained.
She turned and leveled her best stern librarian look. It was remarkably effective on rowdy children and clueless individuals manhandling books, and it didn’t fail to work on Karl either; he turned from the table with a resigned sigh and strode from the kitchen with precise, determined steps – like he was facing a firing squad rather than the girl he hoped to marry. She was not entirely unsympathetic.
She heard the bedroom door open, the low murmuring of voices, and then footsteps retreating further into the room. Peace offering accepted then. The surface of her wine glass was cool and slightly rippled beneath her fingertips. She slowly counted to twenty before standing up. She pocketed the hair regrowth potion Karl had left on the kitchen counter for her before going to the bathroom to brush her teeth and prepare for bed. The curtain was drawn across Rosa’s half of the room when she entered their bedroom. Good for them, she forced herself to think instead of dwelling on how lonely and jealous she felt. She closed her eyes as she knelt beside her bed and said her nightly prayers under her breath.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.”
She thought of her brother, Amerigo, languishing in an Anglo-American POW camp in North Africa. The handwriting in his most recent letter had been shaky and she was worried that the leg wound he’d taken before being captured was becoming septic. Ezio had been very familiar with the cities and geography of North Africa, from Tangier in Morocco to Damascus in Syria, and he knew far more about the muggle troop movements and supply lines than was reported in the papers. After her brother was captured while on a reconnaissance run, just before Christmas, her parents had asked if her friend – the one you mentioned who spoke that Arabic, patatina – would be able to help find information on Amerigo’s condition. It had hurt so much to be reminded of Ezio and see the faint glimmer of hope leave their faces when she had to say, no, Papa, we fell out of touch. You know how it’s been, with the war, and everything. The fear that she might lose her brother because she hadn’t kept Ezio’s baby haunted her.
“Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae.”
Holy Mother keep him safe. Most benevolent and holy mother, please, he mustn’t die.
“Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.”
Her night dress was worn shabby soft against her skin and her bed was cold and empty. She snuggled down into her bedding and unwillingly thought of her chance meeting with Ezio earlier that day; the soft tenderness in his voice when he’d greeted his wife was so similar to how he’d used to speak with her when they were alone, but there had been an emptiness in his eyes when he’d looked at her that had never been there before. He had spoken to her like they were hardly more than strangers, like all the years between them had never happened. It would have gone differently if his family hadn’t been there, if we’d met again when he was on his own. She was sure of it. She thought of the girl’s strange green eyes – some lost girl he found in a cabaret, Mari had written – and shivered. Ezio had grown up in a brothel, he’d heard all the hard luck stories there were a thousand times over; he wouldn’t have rushed off and married a professional girl. So she was a virgin, or good as. What on earth was she doing dancing in a cabaret? There’s more to that girl than simply just some cabaret dancer. She was sure of it. Her hand drifted down the flat plane of her stomach and she tried not to remember that she would have had his baby in March, if she’d kept it. Not that it matters now. She curled up on her side and buried her head in her pillow.
Her dreams that night were of Ezio, and what might have been. She woke up miserable the next morning.