Page 31 of Revenge

Dahlia’s fork hand shakes on the way to her mouth. “Let me go, Antonio. Please.”

I shake my head. “Never.”

She gets up from the dinner table, throwing her napkin down over her plate.

I stand when she does, like a gentleman. I studied and practiced refined etiquette from the moment I got out of prison. Not because Benedict King called me a brute. Not to prove him wrong. Because he was right–I am a brute. A complete monster.

No, it was a necessary adoption to enact my revenge plan. To get myself in the right doors. It’s been a very long con to lure Benedict King into investments then arranging the default of those investments. Ultimately offering him the loan on the behalf of Don Beretta.

She leaves the table, and I let her go.

My satisfaction at goading her doesn’t taste as juicy as I’d hoped. Nor does eating the rest of my dinner alone.

Dahlia

Ugh. That man. I'm trembling when I get back to the room, angry and hot and just as needy as I was this afternoon before Antonio got me off.

I seriously want to kill that man. I should have taken one of those steak knives at the table and dug out his heart with it.

Except then he wouldn't be alive to use that glorious tongue between my legs. He wouldn't be able to smirk at me and make me feel beautiful and coveted and dirty all at the same time.

I can't deny the effect he has on me. It's no less potent than it was at my debutante ball seven years ago. Just being in his presence electrifies me.

I strip out of the dress I wore to taunt him and put on a sleep shirt. I dig out the mystery novel I packed back when I thought I would be on my honeymoon with a man who bored me.

Books have always been my distraction, my best friend when I felt alone. But at this moment, even reading doesn't work for me. I can't get lost in the story or the characters’ lives. All I can think about is those smoldering golden eyes staring at me across the dinner table. The way Antonio held his wine glass in that large hand of his swirling the contents as he studied me. As he tempted me.

I do admit that I love his temptation. I love that he's intent on seducing me–his wife. He could just as easily have forced me to marry him and locked me in a cabin on the yacht somewhere. Or worse, he could have forced himself on me. He seems the type of man who's forced a great number of people to do his bidding.

The fact that he remains a gentleman with me and is waiting for me to give him permission to take my virginity, both titillates and soothes me.

Yes, I'm still enamored with the silly notion of reforming the bad boy. Of softening the heart of a hardened man. It’s the fantasy that got me in trouble at my debutante ball.

When my father opened that closet door and found me with Antonio's lips locked on mine, one large hand cupping my ass and one squeezing my breast, he shamed me so thoroughly, I never really recovered. My parents took away all the birthday gifts I received from the ball, and I wasn't allowed to go to Paris for the next two summers.

It became the event my parents threw at me every time I stepped out of line. My mom would get tight-lipped and warn me against ruining the family as I'd nearly done then. My father would threaten to disown me if I ever did.

And I guess, in a way, I have.

No, screw that!

This was all my father's doing. What he did to Antonio was unconscionable. He had no right to treat him like dirt. Not that it excuses Antonio's grandiose revenge plot.

I should be more disturbed than I am about what it says about the kind of man he is. That he could harbor such a grudge to have enacted such an elaborate plan. I have to admire it, though. It took a brilliant man to bring down my father. To climb as high as Antonio obviously has and capture an entire yacht business and the daughter of the socialite in one swoop.

After a couple of hours, I give up on the book. I decide to try out the oval marble bathtub in the bathroom. Filling it with hot soapy water, I strip out of my clothes and step in.

I lean back against the back of the tub. From somewhere out on the deck carries in the sound of Puccini. My soul is instantly soothed.

Music has always been my passion. A passion my mother completely dismissed and diminished.

I listen more closely to identify the song. It's from La Bohème–“Sì, mi chiamano Mimì”–an Aria I learned in Performance Study at Smith. I lift my voice to join along, seeking and finding the pleasure of the notes.

The sound reverberates against the bathroom walls, satisfying me, soothing me.

It feels like a return to self.

I belt out the song louder–because you can’t half-ass opera. I pour myself into the music like I'm Maria Callas holding center stage, singing my lungs out. It feels good to empty my breath, to move energy this way. Like always, singing transforms me. I forget about the rigid constraints my parents and my upbringing imposed on my behavior and my life. When I sing, I exist in oneness. I’m not Dahlia King, socialite and debutante. I simply…am. I’m the song, the music, the words, the wind. I’m a voice and a breath and a soul full of unexpressed emotion.