Seven Minutes in Hell

My fiancé, Luca, dragged me along to a party with his crew. We had barely walked through the door before his boys were hounding him to play "Seven Minutes in Heaven."

"Angelina, babe, come join us!" Fiona, Luca’s "best friend" from back home, called out to me with a smirk.

I shook my head and slipped onto a barstool, my fingers nervously tracing the rim of my glass. I watched them huddle in a circle, drawing cigar bands with names scribbled on them.

Luca drew Fiona. They shared a laugh before disappearing into the storage room behind the bar.

"Seven minutes! Starting... now!" someone hollered, followed by a chorus of whistles.

But seven minutes came and went. The door stayed shut.

Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty...

I finally stood up, my heart hammering against my ribs, ready to see what was going on. Just then, I heard Luca’s friends whispering in a thick Sicilian dialect.

"This American guy... her head is greener than a lemon tree in Palermo and she doesn’t even know it."

"I bet Luca and Fiona are having the time of their lives in there right now."

"Poor Boston girl. Look at her, sitting there like a loyal little dog. Hilarious."

I froze. My blood turned to ice, and the air felt too thin to breathe.

Suddenly, the storage room door creaked open. Luca walked out, wiping sweat from his brow, followed closely by Fiona, who was busy smoothing out her rumpled shirt.

"Whoa, how was it? Seven minutes in heaven live up to the hype?" someone teased.

Luca smirked, his eyes glazed with satisfaction. "Better. I didn't want to leave."

Luca strolled over and draped an arm around my shoulders, playing the part of the doting fiancé perfectly. It wasn't until he leaned in that I saw it—the smear of lipstick on his collar and the fresh hickey blooming on Fiona’s neck.

I slumped back onto the barstool, my soul feeling like it had been hollowed out. I dug my nails into my palms so hard they bled, trying to keep the tears from spilling over.

His friends started badgering him in Sicilian, fishing for the dirty details. Luca, perhaps feeling a flicker of guilt, glanced at me before sitting down and pulling me into his lap.

"Hey, what are you nervous for? She doesn't understand a word of Sicilian. If we were speaking English, then you’d have a reason to sweat!"

"She’ll never wrap her head around the dialect. Right, boys? Hahaha!"

"You guys are mean, picking on poor Angelina just because she's a Yank."

Hearing his friends' reassurance, Luca finally relaxed. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my lips. "Don't mind them, Angelina. We’re all from Sicily; we just slip into the mother tongue when we’re together. Force of habit."

I clenched my fists until my knuckles turned white. What they didn't know was that my grandmother was Sicilian. I had been fluent in the dialect since I was a child.

Taking my