Bella Fortuna Read Free

it will now be my turn to shine in the spotlight. In just five months, on June 14th to be precise, I’ll be marrying Michael Carello in my favorite city in the world—Venice.
    I had secretly admired Michael since I was ten years old. Michael was thirteen, but even though he was three years older than me, he always said hi and tried to make me laugh. Popular at school and in our neighborhood, Michael and his family lived around the block from me, so I often saw him playing football or hockey with his friends on my street.
    He has blond hair and blue eyes, defying the dark southern Italian stereotype. He takes after his mother. Iva Carello is beautiful even now that she’s in her late fifties and is often told she resembles the deceased Princess Grace of Monaco in her twilight years. His father, Joseph Carello, also poses a striking figure, with intense black eyes and a full head of hair at sixty. He always wears a suit, and on his days off from work, he still wears trousers with a button-down shirt, minus the tie and jacket.
    Michael has definitely inherited his parents’ sense of style. Even as a kid when he wore jeans or got dirty playing sports, he always looked good. It’s hard not to notice Michael. But what really branded my devotion to him was when he had come to my defense at Li’s Grocery Store when I was a kid.
    I passed Li’s Grocery Store every day on my way to school. My mother sometimes bought a few groceries there. It wasn’t a real supermarket in the sense that you could get your week’s worth of shopping. Mr. Li, a Taiwanese immigrant, owned the store and never had a smile for his patrons. Maybe that, along with its limited stock, was why hardly anyone frequented the store. But Li’s did have an aisle full of cool school supplies like pretty binders with flower or fairy patterns, spiral notebooks with sparkly glitter covers, Hello Kitty pencil cases, and my favorite—Strawberry Shortcake erasers that smelled like strawberries, of course.
    Every afternoon when I walked home from school for lunch, I would stop by Mr. Li’s to eye the stationery I couldn’t afford. I always politely greeted Mr. Li, who acknowledged me even if it was just a stern “Hello.” So I was shocked when one day he yelled at me as I was leaving the store.
    â€œYou! Yes, I talk to you. What you have in pocket?”
    I froze as if he had a gun cocked right at my head.
    â€œI say what in pocket? Take hand out.”
    I took my hands out of my powder-blue, faux-fur-trimmed coat, holding my palms up to show him they were empty as I whispered, “Nothing.”
    â€œYou come every day. No buy anyteeng. Why?”
    â€œI was just looking.”
    My heart was beating as fast as my cat Gigi’s after my mother had thrown her heavy clog at him for stealing food off our table when we weren’t looking.
    â€œHey! Leave her alone! She didn’t take anything!”
    I hadn’t even seen Michael and his best friend, Sal, standing at the register. Utter humiliation washed over me as my face flushed, resembling the color of the half-rotten pomegranates that lay in the boxes at the front of the store.
    â€œShe here every day. Hide in back. Teenk I no see. I no idi-uht. She never buy anyteeng. She steal.”
    â€œI know her. She would never steal a penny. It’s a free country. She can come in here and look without buying anything. Just because she doesn’t buy your crummy stuff doesn’t mean she’s stealing.”
    Mr. Li frowned and glanced at me again. I lowered my eyes to the floor.
    â€œIt’s okay, Valentina. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
    Michael placed his arm around my shoulders, leading me out. I could feel Mr. Li’s gaze burning a hole through the back of my head as if he was trying to read my mind, still questioning if I’d somehow stolen something and had cleverly hidden it.
    Once outside, Michael turned to Sal.