CHAPTER EIGHT

The shouting got to one half past eight and woke her up. Aria had figured out by the time she had been at Adrian's penthouse for three days that his place was a temple of silence. Thick walls, the staff moving like ghosts, and Adrian communicating in a tone that was, to all purposes, sub-vocal. A brisk exchange in the hallway would be the loudest thing in the whole place. So when she was hearing the voice of a woman, very loud, sharp and a tone intended specifically to carry,she instantly pulled herself out of sleep and her heart was beating loud in her chest. She got a robe and went out to look for the woman. Speaking the house staff with a look of contempt, the woman was in the main foyer. She was a kind of beauty that you can see in expensive things, a cover that has been polished, a very precise type of a kind that, from a distance, looks very effortless, but has, in reality, taken a lot of effort. She had black hair, light skin, and a stance that showed that she had been in many places and knew how to take control in all of them. She was wearing clothes for a lunch she had not yet arrived at and was talking to one of the household staff members in a way that showed that she was the kind of person who believed that service was the most humble form of beneficence." She paused when she noticed Aria. Silence tightened the room. "You, " the woman uttered and that single word gave forth a whole emotional story, anger disbelief the particular shame of being supplanted. "I'm sorry, " Aria said carefully. "I don't think we've met." "You've destroyed my engagement." The woman walked toward her with the slow and deliberate pace, as if she had practiced this moment in her mind for a long time. "I was going to be Adrian's wife. Our parents decided. Now, because you ", she looked at Aria's stomach  "a crazy, convenient pregnancy " "I can see that you are angry, " Aria said, calmly. Suddenly the slap occurred without any sign. It was a palm blow to the left side of the face, quite hard and crisp, and it made Aria's head tilt involuntarily. For a moment, she barely moved, her face blushing, the very echo of the sound was hanging in the air of the entrance hall. She remembered all the times she had been hit either physically or emotionally and had run away. She remembered being in her parents' sitting room while her stepmother was insulting her, and Jeffery was sitting at her father's chair and watching with empty eyes. She thought back to the four years when she chose to remain silent because she thought love is something that you deserve by making yourself small enough so that you do not bother anyone. She looked at the woman again. And she slapped her before that. It wasn't a vicious one, a performed one, a theatrical one no it was the accurate, the corresponding response of a woman who had not yet told the world, but the sign that she was not going to be that person anymore was somewhere between signing a contract at 3 a.m. and having the best scrambled eggs of life. Christiana was totally dumbfounded "I really have no idea on what kind of deal you had with Adrian, " Aria, her voice was soft and very composed. "I don't really care about Adrian and the rest of you." She said while turning around, almost as if she was about to get out but then stopped and faced the woman again. "But don't you forget that this is his home and I am going to be his wife, and if you will come here again….to our home, I will not be as polite as I was just now.” 

Christiana looked at her. Then, with the cunning of a person who had survived social battles by knowing when to switch tactics, she gave in. It was a calculated surrender, a plan to bring forward witnesses. Christiana's legs gave way and she touched the marble floor with the effortless elegance of a woman who had been practicing fainting in a mirror. Just then Adrian showed up. He walked out of his study and took in the situation Christiana down, Aria standing above her with her bathrobe tied and her chin level but his eyes betrayed nothing. Then he glanced at his house manager who was standing near the foyer. "Call her driver, " he said. His voice was level, completely calm. "She is leaving." "Adrian, " Christiana said, one hand stretched out to him. "Christiana." He was quiet. He seemed never to be raising his voice. "Whatever we might have been we aren't. We were nothing more than our parents' arrangement, and I think we both understood that." He didn't look at her with malice. He looked at her as if giving the last, irrevocable courtesy of a closed door. "I hope you find what you are looking for. It won't be here." The driver arrived four minutes later. Christiana left without uttering another word. The foyer was empty. Aria realized that her hands were trembling a little adrenaline, not fear and she pressed them flat against her thighs. She was waiting for him to say something about the slap, the scene, her reaction to it. Adrian kept staring at her for a while. "Are you okay?" he said. She hesitated. "Yes." He gave a small nod. "Go have breakfast. Marianna has made a frittata." He returned to his study. Aria was standing in the empty foyer, the pain on her cheek disappearing, and she sensed a different kind of warm and comforting emotion flowing through her heart. He had defended her. She had prepared herself for the usual scenario the disbelief, the denial, telling her that she was overreacting or that she had provoked it. It had happened so many times with Jeffery that her nervous system had learned to expect it just like one expects a door to be stuck. But Adrian Morelli had looked at a woman whom he had known for years a woman whom his family had once expected him to marry and believed Aria's story without a doubt or even a question. She lightly touched her cheek with two fingers. Then she went out to find the frittata.