He did.
Snatching up his shirt instead, I held it tight to my chest to cover myself, then stood, taking slow steps toward the door. If I moved too fast, he would be on me, and I didn’t have the energy to fight him.
He followed, coming closer to me again, but he was still trying to figure me out. If my words were a mystery, my reaction to this went beyond comprehension.
The pain was too acute inside of me—the meaning behind all of this too obvious and too damn serious.Irrevocable. He had gone behind my back and did this. Hiding his feelings from me, his intentions, on purpose.
While out in that forest he had taken my trust and betrayed it. I felt cheated on.
I slipped the shirt over my head, and it landed below my thighs. My back touched the door when I took another step back. My fingers tightened on the handle. “Don’t come any closer.” I lifted my trembling hand. “I don’t know you—and I—I don’t feel comfortable.”
“Don’t you ever speakto mein such a way,” he said, a growl in his lowered voice. In that moment, all I could hear was Luca Fausti speaking through his son’s mouth. “Iamyour husband.”
“So you claim,” I said, and turning, took off for the front room.
Mia was still asleep. Eunice nodded on and off next to her. She didn’t even notice my clothes, or lack of, or that my skin was blood streaked, as she set down her crochet paraphernalia and yawned, making her way to her room.
For this, I was thankful.
Nino and Donato had gone. I hadn’t tiptoed or made my presence secret for a reason. I wanted them to flee.
Given his current mood, the man in the office might cause some serious damage. Death even.
The need to have my daughter close to me surpassed all else, though.
All of the good that my husband had given me of himself to keep safe came out in her. More than anything, I needed the reminder, and to hold my love as close as possible to my bleeding heart.
16
Scarlett
The dish trembled in my hands. I couldn’t seem to stop the shaking.
Though I put on a happy front for Mia, all that existed underneath the surface was going through hell. Hiding the stress forced it to come out in different ways.
One minute I dreamed of sobbing, and the next of taking the dirty dish and flinging it at the wall in front of me.
Our place in Tuscany had a beautiful window over the sink. I’d gaze out at our property as I did the dishes or washed whatever came from market day. This villa had a wall, the window to the right.
It felt apropos to our life.
A shift in direction, in our path, and we had to figure out how to get the window in front of us again so we could escape this prison.
Mia hummed to herself, sitting at her wooden highchair, eating the omelet I’d made her for breakfast. She had fruit, too, and was currently in conversation with a cut up chunk of grape, delighted with it.
It was safer, and easier, to keep her close to me, so I’d put her to the right, so that the sun could touch her as it filtered in through the window.
“Ishes,” she said, using her grape to point at what I was doing. “Amma. Ishes.”
“Yes, baby,” I said, blowing a bubble her way. “Mamma is doing the dishes.”
She sucked on a piece of grape, hypnotized as the iridescent bubble floated her way. She blinked, shocked, when it popped at the poke of her fingertip.
“Mmmmm,” she got out, kicking her feet, wanting me to do it again.
Again. Again. And again. I started to sing with her to redirect her attention so I could finish what I’d been doing. I’d have to ask around to see if we could get bubbles behind the gate.
The shaking made it harder to keep a firm grip on the slippery dishes. I held in the curse that tried to escape when one of them fell hard into the soapy water, spraying me and Mia with suds. A glop landed on her nose, and she scrunched it up, showing me her teeth. Cracking up.
