The Men Who Abandoned Me Watched Me Marry a Mafia King

"Gioia, if you've got something against me, you come at me directly. Why take it out on poor Vera?" asked Lizetta.

In her arms, the cat let out a pitiful whimper, as if it had been terribly wronged before the whole room.

Tommaso and Geffri rounded on me without a breath between them. "Gioia. We know cat fur sets you off, but that doesn't give you the right to lash out at Vera and Lizetta."

As he said it, Tommaso pressed an entire blister pack of allergy medicine into my hands.

"Maybe you should think about why you're the only one in this circle so sensitive to a cat. I don't believe you'd still have a reaction if you took this whole pack."

Did he actually expect me to swallow all of them? I wondered.

I took just one and forced it down. "One is enough," I told them.

That only made Tommaso and Geffri more displeased.

"Lizetta's right. How does anyone end up that badly allergic to a little fur? Looks like the whole hospital stay was an act."

The words left the dissolving medicine bitter at the back of my throat.

There had been a time when a stray cat wandering within five meters of me would have put them both on alert, treating it like a threat to be answered. Now my allergy had become my original sin.

First they'd let that cat roam free in my room until I went into anaphylactic shock. Then they'd accused me of faking it to land myself a hospital bed.

Now, after the thing had nearly gone for my throat, I was the one branded too fragile to be taken seriously.

Lizetta was weeping her heart out beside us, the picture of a woman lost.

"I don't know what I did wrong, but if I upset you, then it's my fault. I'm sorry. Please, will you stay and celebrate my birthday with me, please…" she pleaded.

Her tears came down without pause, with practiced precision. They had arrived a half-second too fast.

Tommaso was so undone by the sight that he went straight to wipe them away, while Geffri pulled me aside to reprimand me under his breath. "You've taken the medicine. So even if you kissed the damn cat, it wouldn't kill you."

With that he went back to stand beside Tommaso and comfort her. "Don't cry, Lizetta. Let me apologize for Gioia. She's been spoiled rotten since she was a girl. Don't take her to heart."

The two of them competed to appease her, eagerly laying out every flaw I had like tribute.

Right on cue, Lizetta's tears gave way to a smile. When she glanced at me, her eyes were full of smugness, and underneath it, a quiet challenge.

That was the moment I understood how little I mattered to them.

When the music started, both men rushed to claim her hand for the dance.

She chose Tommaso and left Geffri standing there, sullen. Then Geffri turned to me, frustrated, and held out his hand for the floor.

I rubbed at the rash spreading hot and itchy across my skin and shook my head.

My refusal didn't seem to bother him. Instead he dropped into the seat beside me, drink after drink going down, his eyes fixed on the couple swaying together.

"Gioia, do you think Lizetta likes Tommaso?" he asked. The disappointment and the jealousy in his voice were plain to hear.

It was obvious to anyone with eyes that she preferred Tommaso over him.

My silence pushed Geffri up from his chair.

The instant the song ended, he was back across the floor, pulling Lizetta away from the other man. I had no stomach for watching two men brawl over one woman, so I rose to take my leave.

Then, through the crowd's gasps, Lizetta found me and dragged me bodily back toward the floor.

"Gioia, please, talk to Tommaso and Geffri. They're fighting over me again and I can't stop them." For all her pleading, she couldn't quite bury the boast in her voice.

I refused her outright. "If you can't stop them, what makes you think I can?"

But the crowd gasped again. This time Tommaso had taken a fist to the face, and blood was running freely from his nose.

That finally snapped Lizetta out of the performance and into real panic. She yanked me with all her strength, nearly hauling me into the middle of the brawl.

The thing they were fighting over was where she would stay. Her neighborhood wasn't the safest stretch of the territory, and now they argued over whose held ground would shelter her.

Geffri's reasoning was that since Tommaso had already taken the first dance, the right to keep her under his roof fell to him.

I had no desire to part the two of them, and it was a sorry thing to watch. Yet somehow, their heated argument turned toward me.