“I can’t walk into the lion’s den without telling you how I feel. I love you.”
The contortion of her face morphed into disbelief. “You tell me you love me now, minutes before we’re about to leave to confront the men who want to end our lives?”
“I might never get another chance. I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. Say you’ll marry me.”
Her large eyes filled with panic before she snatched her hands away and croaked, “If you think I’d marry you after everything you did to me, you’re mad. You wanted me to be your mistress. You wanted me toprostitutemyself for you.”
He winced but didn’t close his eyes to the pain emanating from her stare. He would never look away from it again.
Hot blood pounding in his head, he cupped her cheeks and brought his face to hers. “That was never what I meant, and you know it. I didn’t want to lose you. I was trying to tie you to me so we would always be together.”
Her fingers gripped hold of his wrists. “If you didn’t want to lose me, why did you walk away without a fight? Why did you let me go without a word of goodbye?”
But he never got the chance to answer. Georgia opened her mouth again, and suddenly she was speaking with suchdisjointed quickness it was like a stream of consciousness was pouring out of her.
“We spent months as close as two lovers could be.Months,Nic. Months. And they were the best months of my life.” Her chin wobbled, but she didn’t break the hold of their eyes or pause for breath. “I gave you everything, and I thought you were giving me everything too, but I was living in fantasy land. You whisked me away for my dream weekend in Paris and treated me like a princess, and then at the end of it announced you were marrying another woman and relegating me from being the woman you shared your life with to the woman you visited when you wanted sex. And you tried to make out like it was agoodthing, that instead of relegating me, you were promoting me.”
The fingers gripping his wrists suddenly squeezed and yanked his hands off her face.
Twisting away from him, she got unsteadily to her feet. “You threw cold water over everything I believed to be true between us,” she choked. “And then when I wouldn’t fall in line with your plan to be your personal prostitute, you dumped me as if I’d never meant a thing to you, and walked away without a care in the world.”
Niccolo clutched tightly at his hair and pulled it in stunned frustration. He knew he’d hurt her, had known it would take time to rebuild her trust in him, but after everything they’d been through and shared these last few days and with everything that was coming for them, for her to react like this… “I hadeverycare in the world on my shoulders, Georgia. I explained everything to you, and…”
“Iknow.” She finally snatched a breath and wiped a tear away with the sleeve of her top. “I know you had no choice but to fall in with Lorenzo’s blackmail.” Her face contorted with disdain even as her chin wobbled again. “You fell in with it right until the point you couldn’t go through with the marriage. Youstopped caring about the blackmail then, didn’t you? You didn’t walk away from it for me; you walked away because of whatever was going on in your head. I’m just collateral damage because of the baby. If Rico hadn’t warned you that his brothers were coming for me, you’d be anywhere but here with me.”
“Doesn’t the fact that I did come for you tell you something?” he demanded urgently. “As soon as I knew you were in danger, I came straight to you.”
“I know that, and I’m thankful for it, but it doesn’t change what you did or change that you broke my heart. You brokeme, Niccolo, and I have spent all these months hating you and loving you and trying to protect you from everything that’s happening to us now, and now you want me tomarryyou? When you wouldn’t even be here if Rico hadn’t left you that message?”
“I would have found my way back to you.” Of that he was certain.
“Bullshit!” she cried, now pacing the room. “You’d have disappeared off the face of the earth. I was never in your plans, and I’m only in them now because of the baby.”
Disbelief slammed into him like a punch to the solar plexus. “You can’t believe that.”
“If Rico hadn’t left you that message, you’d have dropped off the face of the earth, and I’d have had no way to even tell you about the baby!” she shouted. “You walked out on me and you walked out in Siena without a word of goodbye to either of us, so how could I ever trust you wouldn’t do another disappearing act? And if I ever was stupid enough to get over that fear and marry you, I’d only spend the marriage waiting for the day you announce that you’ve got yourself a mistress and expect me to put up with it like all the good little wives who inhabit your world. Well, I won’t do it. I won’t be that woman. I will not live with the sickness that comes with knowing the man I love isenjoying some other woman’s body, so fuck you and fuck your proposal. I will not marry you.”
The stunned silence that followed Georgia’s furious outburst was broken by the buzzing of the burner phone they used to communicate with Dante.
The buzzing meant the funeral party was on its way to the cemetery.
Georgia gripped tightly to the straps of the holdall on her lap.
The morning sickness she’d suffered with in the first couple of months of the pregnancy was nothing on the sickness roiling in her guts now.
Next to her, Niccolo, his jaw clenched and his body as tightly contained as her own, driving them through the streets of Naples, grimly avoiding the streets lined with the public mourners expressing their grief at the loss of Italy’s most beloved man. Thousands upon thousands of mourners.
They hadn’t spoken a word since the call telling them it was time to leave.
Oh God, why had she reacted to his proposal the way she had? It was like that terrible day in Paris when she’d lashed out, but much, much worse. Unless she found the words to take it all back and apologise, Niccolo was going to walk into the lion’s den believing she hated him.
This felt very much like that return journey from Paris. Coldness where there had been warmth. All affection cut off. A longing deep inside her to cross the divide and apologise.
She didn’t hate him. Of course she didn’t. She loved him. But she’d loved him before, and look where that had got her. Shetrusted him with her life, but how could she trust him with her heart, after everything he’d done?
His proposal had made her think of things she didn’t want to think about. Things she’d successfully pushed away while they’d been cocooned away from the world, and pushed away even harder with the clock to the endgame ticking down.
Every word she’d spoken had been the truth, but she hadn’t needed to be so cruel about it. Hadn’t needed to scream at him like a frightened child.
