Massimo calling me a slut infuriated me.
Iâd grown up listening to my grandmotherâs mafia goons laughing and bragging when they thought I couldnât hear.
I was an eavesdropper. I liked to hide around corners or sit on the stairs, out of sight.
That was the only way I ever heard the truth from a man: when he thought I wasnât listening.
Around my grandmother, it was, Yes, Signora. Of course, Signora. Absolutely, Signora.
But when they were alone amongst themselves?
You shouldâve seen the girl I fucked over the weekend â Madonn, what tits⦠here, I got her to send me some nude pics, take a look.
She started going off on me, so I smacked her around a little. THAT oughta teach her.
Fuckinâ bitch â I should drop her ass, but theyâre ALL fuckinâ crazy.
Yeah, my old lady has no idea I got two other chicks on the side⦠NONE of âem doâ¦
I learned at a very young age that men were real pieces of shit.
And cowards, too.
They talked a good game when it was only other guys listening â
But whenever their female boss was around â who wouldnât hesitate to have them shot in the head for a big enough fuck-up â they turned into fawning little ass-kissers.
Other than the cooks and the servants, there werenât any other women in the household.
Lots of fuckinâ mafiosos, though.
Lots of opportunity to hear a bunch of sexist, misogynistic garbage.
Nona knew it was a bad idea for me to be around her dipshit lackeys, so she put me into Catholic boarding school for girls. Twenty-four hours a day, Monday through Friday. From age 10 to 18, I only came home on weekends.
I was literally raised in a convent by a bunch of nuns.
I wasnât religious â Nona didnât go to mass and told me I didnât have to, either â so I basically just tolerated the nuns and recited whatever they made me memorize.
But man did I misbehave. I donât think any other girl in school got their knuckles rapped as much as I did.
And there were absolutely no boysâ¦
Even though I was 1000% boy crazy.
I got picked up by some middle-aged asshole in a suit on Friday afternoonâ¦
Escorted back to the palazzo where I spent the entire weekend in lockdownâ¦
And then taken back to the convent bright and early Monday morning.
The only boys I saw were as we rode through the canals on a boat â
And the television shows I watched online.
And did I watch me some shows online.
Only Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max, though. Nona wasnât exactly up on how the internet worked, but she knew enough to get her consigliere Silvio to block any porn sites. (I think he had to do it, anyway, because otherwise all the mafia goons would watch porn on their phones over wifi.)
However, neither Nona nor Silvio thought to bar me from watching Netflix or any of the other streaming services.
So I had a field day.
Euphoria⦠Elite⦠Bridgerton⦠some Spanish show I donât remember the title of, but it was basically a bunch of hot twentysomething roommates fuckingâ¦
And the movies: 50 Shades of Grey and the sequels⦠365 Days⦠The Next 365 Days⦠365 Days This Dayâ¦
(You can tell I liked the 365 Days movies.)
One thing I noticed, though:
They were all about showing tits and ass, but very little dick.
Certainly no hard dicks.
And I realized that all those shows were the equivalent of my grandmotherâs mafia thugs:
Talking about the women they fucked, and showing the women they fucked, and lots of times mistreating the women they fuckedâ¦
All from a male viewerâs perspective.
(Mostly. Bridgerton was pretty cool.)
But despite all that, I was still dying to start having sex.
So when I finally got to leave the convent and enroll in university, I entered my âopen for businessâ era.
Yes, I slept with a lot of guys.
(Well, what I could accomplish while having to be back home at the palazzo by 2 AM on Friday and Saturday nights. Weeknights were even worse.)
And no, most of the guys werenât very good in bed.
None of them were that satisfying. I only came twice, and that was because I took matters into my own hands, if you know what Iâm sayinâ.
Most of them just sucked. Three minutes and it was over.
A couple of times it was, like, 60 seconds or less.
And Iâm only counting the ones who werenât too drunk to get it up. There were another dozen of those.
Four or five were pretty good. Those were the ones who got invited back.
But even those guys I didnât keep around very long. I fucked âem a few times and threw âem away.
Once I got bored, they were gone.
Orâ¦
â¦once I started to feel something for them.
Were they pieces of shit outside the bedroom?
Well â they were men, right?
But I didnât find out. Not conclusively. I didnât let them hang around long enough to show me they were like the assholes who worked for my grandmother. That was one thing I wasnât about to chance.
Iâd heard too much shit sitting on the stairwell at nine years old to ever trust a man farther than I could throw him.
So the vast majority of the guys I went home with were one-night stands. A few I hooked up with a couple more timesâ¦
But I never had a boyfriend.
I definitely never fell in love.
Besides, my vibrator was a hell of a lot more satisfying. And consistent, too.
I mean, having sex was fun. Donât get me wrong.
The best part was the flirting⦠and the build-up⦠and the anticipationâ¦
But the âmain eventâ was usually anticlimactic, to say the least.
But if I wasnât really into the sex, then why do it?
I think it was because I was locked up in the convent and Nonaâs palazzo my entire life. Couldnât do anything, couldnât go anywhere, definitely couldnât see any boys.
I mean, I was raised in a literal convent, for Godâs sake.
So when I was finally free at 18, I went wild.
Because I could.
Because everybody told me You canât â
So I was like, Fuck you. Hold my beer.
But the thing that infuriated me the most was knowing how Iâd be judged if people knew what I was doing.
A guy sleeps with 20 women by the time heâs 21, heâs a fuckinâ stud.
A woman does it, and sheâs a slut, a whore, a â whatever horrible name you want to call her.
It was like the system was designed by all those fucking mafia assholes I listened to from the stairwell when I was nine.
They could do whatever they wanted⦠lie, cheat, insult women, abuse themâ¦
And nobody would ever call them on their bullshit. Not even my grandmother.
And they would badmouth the women they were sleeping with.
The women who gave their bodies to these men â
In some cases, who gave their hearts to them â
Those mafia douchebags would just shit all over them behind their backs and laugh about it.
To be honest, I kind of hated men.
And itâs a special kind of hell to be attracted to something you hate.
Even worse, to be attracted to something that could kill you.
So when Massimo called me a slutâ¦
I wanted to kill him.
In that second, he was like every other mafioso scumbag Iâd overheard in the stairwell.
Iâd started to think Massimo might be different â
But he wasnât.
He was judge-y â
So quick to label me â
And a coward.
I knew he wanted me.
He just wouldnât act on it because he was scared shitless of Nona â just like all the rest.
But he sure as hell felt comfortable telling me what he thought of me.
Heâd judge me all day long.
Put me down with insultsâ¦
Just like all the fuckinâ mafiosos did with every woman in their lives.
Fuckinâ asshole.
It was a good reminder that no matter how hot Massimo wasâ¦
And no matter how much he said he wanted to keep me safeâ¦
He was still the enemy.
Never forget that.