♕ ODESSA ♕
EVERYBODY KNEW IAGO LOMBARDI and his family. He was as good as a man could be. And even when we were halfway across the world from where he grew up, the rumours never did bash on my father's name.
"Oh Iago? A marvellous man! He singlehandedly removed a spear from my husband's ass! Such a good man." An old woman had laughed when she told me the story, a bouquet of flowers ruffling in her grubby hands as her chest rumbled with laughter.
"Mr. Lombardi helped me get a stable flow of galleons! He's great." A boy, nearly 28 years of age by now, had come by our house in Italia informing me of all my papa's joyous journeys on helping others.
"Makes food. Good man." Our neighbour had remarked, a grumpy old man with bushy eyebrows covering his eyes.
And with all those claims, I spent the last few months of my life trying desperately to prove them all wrong. Searching and hoping for one person to tell me otherwise and to show that my father was a horrid man.
Because without that proof, I had nothing and no way to understand why, my father, as kind of a man that he was claimed to be, sat rotting in Azkaban.
• • •
IT WAS A SALTY SUMMER WITH POTS of anger boiling in decade old stoves and seeds of burning breaths erupting from the pits of a heat that seemed as though it came from the Great Old Dragon himself.
The serenity of my soul lay lethargically and body lazily plastered under the spread of a wide umbrella. Grains of sand clung to my damp legs as I tossed and turned while nestling into the ground, attempting to find a comfortable enough spot of rest.
My gaze flickered through the printed words of the Domani, a rather popular Muggle newspaper here in Italy.
"An English pureblood famiglia, close friends of mine, will be taking us to London tomorrow for you to be prepared for Hogwarts in September." My mother spoke as she leaned further back into her chair and sighed in content.
I didn't respond. I busied my attention to the newspaper. Fights, money, and exploitation. Sad thing these muggles are but ever so intriguing.
"What is that?" My mother's voice sounded strained and I perched an eyebrow before meeting her gaze. Her sunglasses were pushed into her hair and her glare was scrutinizing on the paper in my hands.
Scoffing, she snatched it out of my hands and threw it as far as she could. It landed with a soft thud a few feet away.
"We are leaving tomorrow, I don't want to see any more of this stupida interest you have in Muggles." She paused and I snapped my gaze down to a pile of sand. "Capisce?"
"My interest in muggles is not stupid. Papa is." My fists clenched as I picked my head up and my mother's jaw tightened.
"You do not say that about your father. He is a good man." After a tense moment of silence, a victorious grin slipped onto her lips.
I furrowed my brows and sighed heavily, digging my toes back into the sand.
"A good man would not be in prison."
I mumbled and my mother groaned in annoyance. She opened her mouth to speak again but I cut her off. "He is... he is an imbecillio! A deficiente and foolish excuse for a man! I was kicked out of Beauxbatons because of him and now we are moving halfway across to world and it's all his fault! My life is here. Not with some British good for nothings that only believe in blood purity, mama."
My voice wavered, anger and rage of everything that was happening overriding any other feeling of serenity.
My chest heaved with anger and hers with annoyance. The waves behind us crashed in tumult, rising and falling as curtains upon a silver stage. Crashing with the shore in patterns of the finest of lace, the sunlight sky pulsed in a rhythmic beat.
I've always loved this particular beach with barely any people and then sun was hot enough for me to feel like I was in the pits of Hell.
"You were kicked out because you are selfish! You do not think of anybody but yourself, do you, ragazza egoista?" [selfish girl]
By the constant increase in my mother's tone and the gritting of her teeth, I wouldn't surprised if she was suddenly louder than the thunderous waves behind us.
But her voice started to crack and her body started trembling. "You are egotistical, and arrogant. Everything is always about you. Have you even considered to ask how I am with my husband in prison? I am falling apart, mio amore."
I didn't hesitate before biting back, "Mama, you hid him from the Aurors and you can't even be bothered to tell me what papa has done! I'm stuck in the dark and you want me to sympathize for you?!"
Her sobs deafened and she bit her lip, drawing her eyes away from me.
"It's what love does. I would do anything to protect him." My mama cleared her throat.
"If that's what love is then I would never be so stupid." I grumbled and pulled my feet out from the sand while lifting myself up.
I snatched my wand off the ground and dusted the sand off before sliding it under my breasts in my bra.
"If anyone is blind enough to love someone as heartless as you, you will know how I feel." Her lips etched into a tight frown.
I scoffed and turned around, trudging over the scorching piles of sand hugging the ocean. As I walked away, I barely caught the end of her words that carried with the wind.
Something along the lines of her friends, the Malfoys, and how they were to arrive tonight at a hotel in the city.
My legs carried me throughout my home city, cars honking and echos of men and women shouting Italian filled the streets of my home. Young girls ran across the street with bright flowers braided into their hair and boys chasing after them as if they were in love.
Gross.
As I walked on and deeper into the city with gelato in my hands, I squirmed as beads of sweat rolled down my barely clothed body.
With an empty hand trailing across the high-maintenance buildings and homes on either side of the cobblestone path, the setting sun was clambering towards its rest, creating hues of bold velvet petals.
Settling in bold blazes, the colours of the brightest tangerines stretched far across the horizon, promising the land a deep sleep.
"Oi! Dove sei stato? È da tanto che non ci vediamo!" [Where have you been, we haven't seen each other in a while!] An easily recognizable voice chanted his greetings, recalling in the distance of time that we haven't seen the other and I grimaced.
I never bothered to remember his name, for while I had a certain fascination with Muggles, interactions with anybody made me uneasy. Perhaps it has to do with the way I was raised. To hate the inferior and cherish the prideful.
Or maybe I'm simply antisocial.
"Oh you know, just papa rotting in prison and that I'm moving halfway across the world!" I plastered a fake smile onto my lips and the fully Italian boy who doesn't understand a word of English nodded enthusiastically.
"Si!" He cheered.
"And I got kicked out of my school of magic!" I matched his enthusiasm with a brighter and faker smile.
"Si!"
"I believe that my papa did something very bad but I can't for my life figure out what it is."
"Si!"
Putting my two thumbs up as a way of showing that I was finished, he grinned and turned around with his hand snaking behind and latching around my wrist as he pulled me through the busy streets of Italy with the sun nearly fully set.
The night rode in on a stallion, under the shine of a full moon and urged by the stars creating a pure midnight velvet canopy. The resting colours of the day dreamt of tomorrow and it's monochrome beauty of the cobblestone paths.
From animal to rock to plant, we all became simpler souls dancing with the shadows.
Except for the raging party of muggles that I was nearing towards. The boy led us through winds of corners and paths, my shoes scuffing against the rough ground. As we moved onwards, the boisterously energetic crowd of partying Italians danced through the night air like celestial bodies. A bubbling pit of excitement brewed in my stomach and it felt almost magical.
Feeding off of everyone's smiles and dances, I pushed past my companion and entered the building that read The Gritti Palace.
Papa and I had stayed here once, saying that it is the only hotel fit for purebloods in a Muggle city.
Chairs were shoved aside and the architectural sturdiness of the Italian buildings vibrated with the loud music playing. Muggles laughed and spun with partners in their arms and their eyes beaming. I could do this all night long and I felt my grin widen.
This is my home.
"Balla con me bella!" [Come dance with me beautiful!] An eager and feminine voice whizzed past me as her dainty hand latched onto my wrist and tugged me into the centre of the room. Everything around me seemed to disappear, no responsibilities. Just Italy and I for one last night.
• • •
"Would you like to dance?"
My eyebrows perched as I turned around from staring out an open window. My jaw almost fell slack at how repulsive he looked.
His hair, gelled up into a massive spike in the middle of his head, stuck like a boulder against the breeze flowing in. Dressed in the brightest of green, the man looked so... grasso. [gross or disgusting. Bleh.]
My eyes involuntarily stuck to his frame, dragging up and down his body and I didn't care to hid my obvious grimace.
Who does he think he is?
Scoffing, I pushed him aside and weaved through Muggles until I was near the middle. Everything felt louder, like a liquid adrenaline.
It felt like freedom to dance and to feel a vibrant movement for a soul so guarded as my own. My eyes closed and head rolled back. It was as if I was drowning and coming up for a gasp of air full of nourishment.
Sweat dripped off my body and to the polished floor below and I could keep going until it formed a puddle to see my own reflection.
I felt hands grabbing at me and attempting to match my rhythm but I swatted them away, fully engrossed in my own company. They prodded for entrance of my body, trying to claim me as their possession. Voices aired through my mind, asking and pleading for just a dance and with each question came a reflected grimace and scoff.
It was a long while after until I had finally decided to get a drink and quench the burn of my throat. Pushing past Muggles and slapping away their grubby hands that came to close, I made my way to a counter that had drinks lined up against the rim.
"Why is it that at every opportunity, you have denied all those poor boys a dance?" A smooth but toneless voice modulated from behind me and I let my eyes roll to the back of my head in annoyance.
Great, an English tourist.
Keeping my body facing the counter and my hand on my own glass, I lifted it to my lips and tilted my head back, my nose scrunching at the overwhelmingly strong taste.
Setting my glass down and fiddling with my fingers I muttered, "Look, I'm not about to make an emotional connection or whatever it is these desperate guys want."
I thought as though that he had left after a long stretch of silence and I nodded with content until I felt a cool breath fanning ever so lightly on my shoulder. A tall but lean presence pressed against my back and I froze in place, shivering as his ice cold hands trailed along my exposed collarbone.
"Do you have the same reaction towards a physical connection?" His voice felt almost hypnotic, and the whisper of his words sent chills down my body.
"You want to find out?" My eyebrows shot up at my own response. With a silver whisper of a chuckle, his fingers moved up my neck and lightly gripped my jaw.
He tilted my head back with my body his lead, and I finally saw him.
Oh mio dio.
My eyes widened and I felt my stomach flip just at his looming height. He tilted my head up and I met his gaze and it's safe to say that I have never been so stunned.
"I do now." He muttered but I barely payed attention to it.
Not one feature of his surpassed the other, though his eyes came very close.
They were... grey?
Like a sliver-fire and I was shivering the cold, his eyes had memories of monochrome, stuck in a colourless world where his eyes were the colour of the sky.
His gaze urged me to feel how his full lips would feel in a kiss or how his sharp jaw would feel under my skin. I wondered how it would feel to touch his cheekbones, high and sharp.
From the soft ruffles of the platinum blond curls on his head to his black sleeves pushed up to his elbows to reveal his sinful hands, I felt every inch of myself getting warmer.
He had the kind of face that stopped you in the street, just to stare. I suppose he must have been used to that, a long and sudden pause in a person's expression when they looked his way obviously followed by a weak smile and a nonchalant gaze as if they hadn't just seen someone so... unexplainable.
I would've thought that he'd be modest of his looks and shoot me an awkward smile but by the smug upturn of his lips, I knew that he most probably didn't even know the meaning of modest.
"You're not hideous." His voice was controlled and modulated, but more relaxed than anything.
I scoffed at the cocky undertones at his words. "What a wonderful way to compliment a woman."
"There are other ways that I could demonstrate my attraction to you."
I bit the inside of my cheek, feeling hot under his unwavering gaze. Feeling small, I straightened my posture and held out my hand to him. Looking at him through my eyelashes with an eyebrow cocked I tilted my head and said, "Dance with me."
• • •
[A/N] WELCOME SLUTS! how much did you love this chapter? am i amazing or what??
Are the translations helpful or would you like me to edit them out?
⚠️⚠️⚠️ [16+] content next chapter!
aka pants off condoms on. ⚠️⚠️⚠️
question of the day, how many chickens would it take to kill an elephant?
-stay hornish
.key