Did she?
He followed after her as she walked into the castle, and once inside, there was no mistaking it. He could see her face in the lights of the entry hall.
She looked sad. His heart began to kick at him, hard.
Her eyes were overbright, and if he wasn’t mistaken, that was moisture he could see gathering there along the rims.
Antonluca decided, then and there, that what pounded in him, what swelled and grew too unwieldy and took him over like a wave, wastemper.
Because it had to be temper. Because whatever was happening here, he couldn’t bear it.
“What is the matter?” he asked, and it was only when she jumped a bit at that, looking startled, that it occurred to him that his approach could have been a bit softer.
“Nothing is the matter,” she said. But she lied.
Because even as she said it, a tear formed and tracked its way down her cheek.
And that unwieldy weight inside of him shifted, hard. He nearly staggered under it. Instead, he reached over and scowled at her as he brushed that tear away from her cheek. He stared down at it, then at her, as if she had betrayed him.
Again,something in him reminded him.She has betrayed youagain,and what will keep her from continuing?
“Why the hell aren’t you happy?” he demanded.
He had never heard himself sound so rough.
Hannah’s mouth dropped open and he saw a mix of reactions move across her face—but there was something sharper still in her gaze. He reached out again because another tear threatened, but she caught his wrist as he went to wipe it away.
“Why aren’t you?” she asked.
Her voice was barely above a whisper, yet Antonluca heard it everywhere, as if from on high. He could feel it drum its way deep into his bones, as if the noise inside of him had summoned preciselythis.
A question like that.
A question that no one should dare ask, not of him. He wasn’t the one weeping in a castle. He wasn’t the one whose marriage had changed the entire course of his life, from a tiny rented cottage to a life of ease, and was still unaccountablysadon a holiday even he knew was supposed to bejoyful.
“I am perfectly happy,” he told her, not managing to keep the note of arrogant astonishment—or perhaps it was straight outrage, now that he thought about it, because how dare she—out of his voice. “I couldn’t spend all my money if I dedicated the rest of my life to the attempt. I bought myself a castle on a whim. I will never have to want for anything, ever again, for as long as I live.”
“That’s your portfolio. I wasn’t talking about that.”
It was as if he couldn’t hear her. Or he couldn’t stop, anyway. “I raised not only myself, but each and every one of my siblings out of poverty,” he threw at her, his words like bullets. “I created an entire corporate entity to make certain that they were taken care of for the rest of their days. I didn’t simply pull them from the street, I made them rich, too.”
Hannah shook her head, still gripping his wrist, her tearstained face far too close to his. “You’re still talking about money.”
“I understand that your family has not treated you the way you would like,” he thundered at her, full now with a righteous indignation that he had been holding inside him for as long as he could remember. Since he’d been a kid washing dishes. “I’m not discounting that, but it isn’t the same thing. It is a privilege to have the space and time, not to mention the full belly, to worry about yourfeelings.”
He had wanted to say that, to a great many people, for a very long time.
“But you are safe now,” Hannah replied quietly, her green eyes direct and sure. “You have all the privileges in the world, don’t you? Castles. Private jets. A whole empire. Ample time to dig into your own feelings without worrying about starving, I’d think. So what about them? How do youfeel, Antonluca?”
“I don’t know what you mean. I am Antonluca Aniello. Why should I feel anything but perfectly fine?”
She dropped his wrist then, and that was how he realized that he’d forgotten she was holding it. Then she crossed her arms, and did not shift her gaze from his. Not even for a second.
“There are many ways that I might describe you, Antonluca,” she said in that same too-quiet, too-sure way. “Butfineisn’t one of them.”
“I have nothing to complain about,” he threw at her, and he didn’t like the fact that his heart seemed to be working overtime in his chest. He didn’t like that he was entertaining this discussion in the first place when she was the one who was crying, for no reason. He was certain that it was her fault that he had this great mess of unwieldy nonsense inside of him in the first place. “If I do find that I have something to complain about, I fix it. Immediately. Or I have someone else do it for me. I have no issues, with anything, at all.”
But Hannah was not the least bit cowed by this unassailable bit of knowledge. On the contrary, she leaned in closer—and the high heels she was wearing allowed her to put her face almost directly into his.
