Prejudices
Zorah was feeling very intimidated.
The great-grandparents she was meeting were Avaline’s grandparents. However, they’d been connected to the Lucchesi family for generations and were considered elders and important. Icaro when he’d returned to pick her up from the last dress shop of the afternoon, impressed upon her the need to be incredibly respectful to them.
Sidonia and Vodingo’s family were not invited. She’d been surprised by this. Vodingo was in attendance, but he was attending as Icaro’s head of security. Sidonia was returned back to the hotel to pack up her belongings before the flight back home.
Zorah wasn’t sure what she thought was going to be happening when they arrived for dinner in the elderly couple’s home, but this wasn’t it.
A man with deep brown eyes, sat in a wheelchair with a blanket thrown over his lap, glared at her from down the length of the table. His wife, also seated in a wheelchair, also glared at her contemptuously. She couldn’t help but wonder whether she inadvertently stole a precious heirloom or accidentally stepped on their tiny dog and killed it, but it was clear they hated her.
“Nonno,” Avaline spoke loudly for the deaf to hear, “this is Zorah, Icaro’s bride.”
The old man pretended to spit in her direction, “una bastarda.”
Zorah knew this word. She averted her gaze back to the table and blinked away the tears. Of all the people she’d met so far from Icaro’s family, not a single one of them were unkind to her. This man loathed her, and it was clear it was because her mother was unmarried.
Dagoberto shot his wife a look and Avaline nodded.
“Nonno, she is his one and it is not her fault to be born. What her parents did is not of her choosing. You cannot blame the innocent for the crimes of the parents.”
The elderly lady’s voice was raspy as she spoke before her husband could, a string of Italian which Zorah didn’t require an interpreter for to understand was an insult.
Dagoberto slammed his fist on the table, speaking slowly in his native tongue a clear indication he wanted Zorah to understand his words, “I will not tolerate such disrespect. We honored you by bringing the child to you to be presented and this is how you behave. This child of God, a girl who has devoted her entire life to serving in His house on her knees and you would judge her? Who are you to judge the will of God. The Blessed Virgin herself proclaimed our men should have the gift of true love which means this child, this bastard as you called her, was selected through a miracle.” He waved at the excess amounts of religious paraphernalia all around the dining room. “When you pray tonight for passage to heaven, remember whose will it is, you are judging in this moment.”
Zorah felt a tear edge the corner of her eye and she blinked it away. These two were nearly as bad as the nuns she’d been forced to live with.
“Dad,” she whispered across the table. “Let it go.”
“I will not.”
“You must.” She gave a sad smile, “they are your elders and while I would love to have their approval, it doesn’t change the fact I am already Icaro’s wife. What is done is done. Their complaints and arguments and censorship cannot change it. Fighting with them will only cause them to be upset.”
The old woman grumbled demanding to know what Zorah said as she’d spoke English and was not speaking loud enough for their ears to understand.
Zorah could feel Icaro’s rage as he sat still beside her while Avaline translated. Vodingo stood behind Icaro, his guard ever on duty, the way Calogero stood behind Dagoberto. All the men were on edge and what she’d expected would be pleasant introductions soured far too quickly. Everyone was annoyed.
She admitted, it felt good to have a room full of people loving her so much they’d fight tooth and nail against their own prejudiced elders. For someone who’d never really known love, this felt special but at the same time, she felt guilt for driving a wedge between a family.
Then the old man said another blast of Italian, and Zorah picked up the word dancing and she was certain she heard the equivalent of whore. She frowned when the four men all turned to the elderly man in the wheelchair accusingly.
“Where do you hear such things?” Dagoberto questioned furiously.
Nonno huffed and puffed his ancient lungs and waved at one of his own guards to call in the nurse.
“What is happening?” Zorah whispered to Icaro.
“It seems someone reported to my great-grandparents you were in a club last night dancing like a whore for the world to see. Behavior unfitting of a Lucchesi bride and an embarrassment to the family, you were apparently seen and reported back to these old judgemental assholes,” Icaro hissed back not even trying to hide his anger at his grandparents. “I want to know who it was who gossiped about my wife and tainted the view of my bride to my family.”
A pair of nurses came into the room, eyes downcast and nervous. Zorah couldn’t help but wonder if these were two more women from Icaro’s resumé. From the way he squeezed her hand and shook his head, she knew they were not, but she was angry at herself for once again feeling vulnerable to his past.
“What did you tell my grandparents?” Avaline asked the nurses.
“Nothing, Mrs. Lucchesi,” the girl answered in broken English. “We said nothing.”
“You talk now, here while we are being friendly,” Dagoberto followed up his wife’s question, “or we will take you from this house to a different location for a more formal interrogation. Again, we ask, what did you tell my wife’s grandparents?”
The girls shook their heads nervously. Then one of them grew defiant, lifting her head and looking at Zorah with a sneer.
“My sister was at The Walrus last night and saw the new pure Mrs. Lucchesi,” sarcasm rolled off her tongue, “dancing with strange men and flirting like a common whore. She is not befitting the name of Lucchesi, and she brings shame. My brother says she is an illegitimate child of a whore. It seems a whore borne of a whore remains a whore.”
Zorah screamed when Icaro pulled out a weapon from nowhere and shot the woman in the forehead.
“For crying out loud,” Avaline turned to face him furiously. “Not in the dining room.”
“Did you hear the bullshit? The disrespect? She looked my wife in the face and was blatant in her disregard for her station. She is lucky it was a bullet and not time in a torture house.”
The other nurse was curled in a ball on the floor crying uncontrollably. Zorah was wide-eyed and breathing erratically and Dagoberto rose from his seat opposite her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
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