In a Forced Marriage, My New Wife Whispered Four Words, and When She Saw My Blood, Her Face Changed

An hour after the wedding ended, my wife sat in the corner of the bed and begged me to finish all this once and for all.

Her voice trembled as if even pronouncing the words threatened her life.

“Just… finish it, please.”

We were on the top floor of New York’s most expensive hotel. Downstairs, the Vitali and Bellucci families were drinking champagne and celebrating the end of a six-year bloodshed. They thought peace could be bought with a gold ring.

Sofia Bellucci was twenty-one years old. Her heavy white dress lay on the floor at her feet, while the dress’s small pearls touched one another with every movement and made a small, cold bell sound. From the outside, she looked like a bride.

To me, she looked like a victim.

“Take off your shoes,” I said calmly.

She believed me immediately. That frightened me more than resistance would have frightened me.

Her fingers could barely undo the straps. The skin around her nails was cut, as if she had been clutching something all evening. When I stood behind her and lowered the zipper of the dress, Sofia flinched as if I had burned her skin.

“Forgive me,” I stopped immediately.

“It’s all right,” she muttered.

But her voice said that everything was very bad.

She sat on the edge of the bed in the bedroom and folded her hands over her knees. I sat opposite her. The old, copper-colored clock hanging on the wall ticked clearly every second. In twenty-nine years I had seen many women, but none had had a look like Sofia’s.

She was waiting for death.

“Look at me,” I said.

She closed her eyes.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Had you been married before?”

She slowly shook her head.

“No.”

“Did anyone explain to you what they expected from you tonight?”

This time she answered me not with words, but with such a tense movement of her shoulders that I understood everything.

“Please, Luka,” she said. “Just finish it. Then I won’t be afraid anymore.”

Those four words went deeper inside me than the bullet that had broken my rib three years earlier.

No one should enter a marriage believing that her husband would certainly hurt her. But Sofia had been taught this. Since childhood. By her own family.

I went into the bathroom, took a knife from the small shaving bag, and cut my left forearm. Blood immediately ran down to my wrist. Several drops fell onto the floor, leaving red stains on the white marble.

Sofia jumped to her feet.

“What are you doing?”

“What both families expect in the morning.”

I went to the bed and placed my bloody hand on the white sheet. The stain quickly grew, like a flower nourished by my blood instead of water.

Sofia covered her mouth with her hand.

“They will think everything happened,” I said, wrapping a towel around the wound. “But tonight I will take only one thing from you.”

“What?”

“The fear you have carried for twenty years.”

She still did not trust me. I could see that. Nor should she have trusted me.

Just then, there were three knocks at the door.

The head of security knocked like that only in special cases. I went toward him, but Sofia grabbed me by the wrist.

“Don’t open it,” she whispered.

“Why?”

For the first time, not only fear appeared in her eyes, but desperate knowledge.

My father’s voice came from the other side of the door.

“Luka, open up. It is time for everyone to see what happened here.”

I approached the lock. The handle moved slowly, and a long shadow slipped onto the floor from beneath the door…

The handle went all the way down, but I did not open the door.

“Father, in the morning you will see whatever you want,” I said.

“By morning it may be too late,” Vito Vitali answered.

Sofia’s fingers tightened harder around my wrist. Her palms were cold as ice.

“He knows,” she said quietly.

“Who?”

Vito’s laughter sounded from behind the door.

“Luka, don’t force the girl to say everything herself.”

My heart contracted. There was no blood left in Sofia’s face.

“What does your father know?” I asked.

“That I must die tonight if you do not obey his plan.”

She pronounced the words slowly, but clearly. As if she were repeating a text memorized long ago.

The footsteps moved away from the door. I immediately called security, but in response I heard only muffled static. The entire hotel floor was shut down.

Sofia took a small brass key from the inner seam of her dress.

“My mother gave it to me. She told me that if I were alive in the morning, I should give it to you.”

“Where does it lead?”

“I don’t know. But she also told me this: do not trust the person who asks you for a bloody sheet.”

At that same moment, another object slid under the door—a folded piece of paper.

I opened it. Only one sentence was written on it: “Ask your wife who killed your brother.”

Sofia lowered her eyes.

“Luka… I did not kill your brother. But I know who did…”

And the key hidden in her hand jingled strangely…

I took Sofia’s hand and led her to the small cabinet standing by the window. The brass key fit exactly into the lock of the bottom drawer.

Only the city lights moved in the room. The distant sound of sirens came from below, while my father’s men waited silently for orders behind the door.

Inside the drawer lay a small voice recorder wrapped in black velvet. Beside it was a second copy of the marriage contract and one photograph: my brother Daniel stood with Sofia’s older brother, Marcos, in the hotel’s back yard. On the back of the photograph was a date—the date two hours before my brother’s murder.

“Turn it on,” Sofia said.

I pressed the voice recorder.

My father’s voice sounded first.

“Daniel, you learned too much. The Vitali family needs one heir, not two.”

Then Marcos’s voice sounded, cold and hurried.

“If Luka finds out, war will begin.”

“War will begin anyway,” my father answered. “But this time we will blame the Belluccis.”

In the recording, a car door slammed. Daniel said something, although the wind covered the words. Then a shot was heard.

Sofia began to cry, but silently. Her shoulders trembled.

The recording continued.

“We will take care of the girl too,” Marcos said. “Sofia will believe anything if we tell her she was punished because of her brother.”

I stopped the recorder.

Such silence fell over the room that I even heard the drop of blood falling from my wound.

“You knew?” I asked.

“Only part of it. My mother told me everything one hour before the wedding. She told me that if I did not come to you, my father would kill both of us.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at first?”

Sofia smiled bitterly.

“Because all my life they told me you were a monster. And because if you did not believe me, I would have nowhere to return.”

I took the recording in my hand.

“Now I believe you.”

A heavy blow sounded on the door.

“Luka!” my father shouted. “Open up, or you will no longer need a door!”

Sofia looked toward the window.

“He knows we found the recording.”

The telephone rang. The name of the lawyer, Elene Moretti, appeared on the screen. I answered the call immediately.

“Luka,” Elene said, “the police are coming toward the hotel. But this is not the worst news.”

“What happened?”

For the first time I heard real fear in her voice.

“Daniel did not die that night. He was alive for another six hours. And before he died, he opened a safe-deposit box at a bank.”

Sofia looked toward me.

“What did he leave?”

Elene was silent for several seconds.

“A letter in which it says that if you learned the truth, the next target would not be me, but Sofia…”