I pushed my chair back from the table. The legs scraped against the marble floor, and the sound was obscenely loud in the silence.
"Coming here was a mistake."
"Mia!" Xavier's voice followed me, sharp with authority, as I rose and walked toward the arched doorway that led to the estate's rear courtyard. I heard his chair scrape back, heard his measured footsteps trailing me through the corridor lined with oil paintings of Salvatore patriarchs, their dead eyes watching from gilded frames.
The night air hit me like a wall. It smelled of wet stone and approaching thunder.
"Mia, Mom didn't mean it like that." He caught up to me on the flagstone path, his voice shifting into something that was meant to sound reasonable but landed closer to a command. "Come back inside with me. Right now."
I stopped walking but did not turn around.
"To tell you the truth, Xavier." The words tasted like iron on my tongue. "My parents are very much alive. And if I had listened to them in the first place, I would have never chosen such a terrible place for myself. A place where I have never once been welcomed."
Xavier's hands found my shoulders. He turned me to face him, and I watched the disbelief settle across his features like a mask. He shook his head slowly, the way one does when confronted with something too absurd to entertain, as though I were a grief-stricken woman inventing fairy tales to soothe her own wounds.
"Mia, let it go this once." His grip tightened, not enough to hurt, but enough to remind me of his control. "You have to be a good daughter-in-law. A good wife."
"Xavier!" The voice came from the doorway behind us, breathless and urgent. Colino Ferrara stood in the warm rectangle of light spilling from the house, his gaze darting between us with visible hesitation. "Vanessa is having trouble breathing. You need to come. Quickly."
Something shifted behind Xavier's eyes. A calculation. A choice being made in real time.
"Mia, come inside." He released my shoulders and took a half step toward the house. "It's going to rain heavily. I need to help Vanessa, so for the time being, please wait."