He grinned, but it sent a shot of fear through my system, something no one had done since Janis. My sister used to say I needed it—a dose of it to keep me from getting myself killed.
I’d found myself in the most dangerous situation of all, and I was finally feeling it, like my body had saved it all up for this moment.
The situation was a man who only spoke the truth, when all I’d done my entire life was run from it.
He leaned in close, and I could smell the blood on his hand. He’d busted his knuckles. “She told you something that scared you. That has brought to life your old instincts. You did not tell me those things at the museum just to be honest with me. You are trying to push me away with knives. You knew it would make me go insane to think of you with other men.” His knuckle slid down my neck and hovered over my racing pulse. “You are not afraid of running any longer.Youare terrifiedIwill. You are testingmeto see how faryoucan push me.”
I shoved against his chest, but he didn’t move. “Let me go, Nazzareno.”
“I will never. You aremine.”
Three words that sent a thrill and a shiver through me:you are mine.
I wanted to say,don’t I know it!But all I said was, “I said let me go!”
“Did she tell you I would fall in love with my wife? I will start to regret you?”
I beat against his chest. “Fucking move!”
He grabbed my wrists and leaned in close. “Did she tell you I will stop coming home to you? That my wife will change my mind and the direction of my heart? She is the one I will make vows to. It is only natural.”
“No,” I seethed, even though he had not only punched a tender spot but stuck his finger in it and made it bigger. “I didn’t tell you about my history because of Rosaria Caffi. I told you about my past because I wanted to kill you like you’re killing me.”
Okay, that was mean, and meant to hurt, and it just came out. And I realized…I had two reasons for telling him about my past, but that was the main one.
It was killing me that he was going to marry her! So, I used my past as dagger against him.
He was right, too, though. I recognized it after he’d said it. I wanted to see how far I could push him. How much of me he would take before he left. Before he realized how I was not worth his blood. And he’d have someone there for him when he realized it.
His wife.
I’d be left in fucking shambles again.
This time, though, I couldn’t survive it. The Fausti family had always been my safety net. My sole focus. It didn’t matter what else went on in the world, I could lose myself in them.
If Nazzareno decided I wasn’t worth it, Iwouldbecome his fucking ghost. I’d become one of those pining spirits clinging to him wherever he went, lamenting about how he took everything with him. I had no other love to take with me when I left this world, and I wouldn’t be able to move on.
Rosaria had either known my fears and voiced them out loud, or she was just seeing it from her perspective, because she’s the wife, and her truth and mine collided from different sides. But what she probably didn’t know was how much this family meant to me.
They had been everything, and he was a part of them.
Nazzareno would not only toss me aside, but he would leave me empty, without a purpose—like his villa in Orvieto.
I had no fucking clue why Janis kept coming up in my head, but not only was I like her when it came to leaving, but the abandonment issue she created inside of me was like a ravaging river. The fear of getting lost in its eddy came close to swallowing me whole.
“I am killing you.” His voice was deathly quiet, but under the surface, I felt something brewing.
“Yes.” Something was brewing underneath mine too.
In a move so fast it made me flinch, he grabbed the chair he had been sitting on and flung it across the room. It hit glass and shattered it. He picked up the chair again and threw it against another. He stood there, hands on his hips, breathing heavy, staring at the floor.
“Tell me what you want me to do.” His voice was full of gravel. “Speak the words, Ava. This is all you must do. And I will fall at your feet.”
“I don’t want that either!” I shouted. “I don’t want you to fucking fall!”
“I am who I am. Perhaps you did not know the extent of what came with my name, but you knew enough.”
“Knowing and living it is two different experiences and you know it!”
