But he hadn’t. Whatever resolve he’d had faded, and that made her anger win. She stood, violently enough that the chair nearly toppled behind her. She stepped toward him, fury propelling her.
“Not take the coward’s way out? You are nothing but a coward! But I do not for the life of me understand what you are afraid of.” She shook the papers. “Success? Hope? Happiness? Commitment?” Despair wound through her, but it had nothing on fury. “A fake one at that.”
“This is not fake, and you know it,” he said starkly. “It has become…something else.”
Oh, that should not make her heart soar, especially the despairing way he said it. And still… “A coward too afraid to say what is true. But I am not. You’re afraid of love?”
“I am notafraid. I have chosen a course of action that will keep us both…” She watched him struggle for the word, when he never struggled for words.
“You have chosen to be an absolute idiot.”
His mouth firmed. His eyes narrowed. There was anger there in his strained shoulders. “I have given you what you want. I have given you Ascione.”
“I don’t want—well, no, I still want Ascione.” She could not lie about that. Holding the papers was like holding a golden goose. But it was still just athing. She didn’t only want a thing. “But I don’tonlywant Ascione. I wantyoualong with it. I want this—what we’ve built these past few weeks.” She realized in this moment, that she had also been a coward. Because she had been waiting, putting off the inevitable, afraid to tell him what might drive him away.
And he’d driven himself away anyway, so why not drop the bomb he didn’t want?
“Luciano, I love you. I think you might know that, but maybe you cannot fathom it. I love you. And I want to marry you. For you. With no worries or concerns about AscioneorValli.I want there to be an us.”
* * *
Luciano had prepared himself for many responses. Tears. Accusations. Violence, even. That is what he was used to when going into spaces he wasn’t wanted.
He should have prepared himself for her ice, and maybe he had tried, but it had still hurt. Gotten under his skin in ways he’d convinced himself it wouldn’t. But he’d been holding his own.
Until this.
He had not prepared himself for love. Even knowing she might have convinced herself she had some soft feelings for him, he had not assumed she would use it like…
“Why?”He had not meant to question this out loud. Hated the look of soft concern, too close to pity, that chased over her face.
“Luciano—”
“No.” He slashed a hand through the air to get his point across. “No. I have made my choice, my decision. I have given you all that you wanted when you came into my club that night. From here on out, I will focus on my club, which is whatIbuilt. And you may focus on this.” He gestured at the folder. “If your lawyers have qualms on the paperwork, my lawyer will be happy to discuss it with them. This…” He gestured between them. “This cannot be.”
She did not have a quick retort to that. So he should leave. Take this silence for what it was and retreat.
His legs would not move. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The dress was simple, but it made her look like an angel. She wore the ring he’d picked out for her and little pink diamonds on her ears that matched. He needed to leave because everything in him screamed to move forward, touch, grab.
Beg. For things he still did not fully understand.
Success? Hope? Happiness? Commitment?
She accused him of being afraid of those things. And love. Maybe he was, but it wasn’t fear of having them that kept him rooted to the spot.
It was the fear of failing to hold on to these things that mattered. He could fail anyone and everyone. He had, to some extent. But he could not bear the thought of failing her.
“Cannot be,” she finally murmured. “Why? What is it that would be so awful about getting married and loving one another? So awful that you would sign away your legacy, retreat to the caricature of yourself you created and pretend that you do not want all the things I know you do?”
It was everything he’d thought, and he did not understand. She couldn’t… She couldn’t possibly see him for who he was, no matter how right she was in this moment. “You do not know me. What I want.”
“I do. Better than anyone,” she replied in that clipped, calm way of hers. “Because I believe I am the only one you have ever actually been yourself around.”
Yourself.
He shook his head—because he didn’t know what being himself even was anymore, but he knew it couldn’t be anything she wanted.
“Then you should have the good sense to take this deal and run, Serena. If you claim to know me, then you would know…” That no one ever loved him. That nothing he did or did not do could change how another person felt.
