I’d grinned at him and felt the relief of it all the way down to the marrow of my bone, the truth of it. “Always was.”
He left after that.
“Your sister,” I repeated.
“Yes!” And it seemed like flames shot out of her mouth. “My sister! She was here, was she not?”
I breathed a sigh of relief. This. This. This I could handle. My heart could deal with this truth, but it refused to deal with her falling for another man. A low growl vibrated in my throat, and just the thought of it felt like it was going to send me off that fucking cliff, except, I wouldn’t die. I’d become inhuman when I touched the ground.
“Ah no!” She shoved at me. “You do not get to make those noises at me!” She growled back. She was speaking in Englishand Italian. “I am the one who gets to ripyourthroat out, if what she said to me was the truth!”
“Tell me,” I said easily, though on the inside, lava flowed through me, “what did she tell you. That I fucked her?”
She sucked in a breath. Her eyes narrowed. The hazel color glistened with the soft light in the room, but it was a trick of the light. It was a death stare. Two hands could easily come out of it and go for my heart. I’d allow her to.
“Not in so many words,” she said, and it was the total opposite of what it had been. Wild. She was reigning her temper in. “Why did you take Remo from the palazzo?”
My eyes narrowed against hers.
“Tell me,” I said, rolling my shoulders, “do you care, my wife.”
“I only care about the reason,” she said.
In that moment, lies and truth were warring. My mind and my heart.
“The reason,” I repeated. “Tell me, did you fuck him.”
“Fu—him?” She stumbled over the words and gasped, then her hand came up and slapped me across the face. I turned my cheek to give her the other side. “Fu—him!” she repeated, outraged, like the fire had truly made it to the wick of her temper.
She exploded, reaching for decorations around the room, throwing them at my head. Some of them were breakable. Some not.
“Did you fuck her or not?” she shouted at me, and it was a shout from deep inside of her chest, the kind of yell that could become a battle call.
“Did you fuck him or not?” I repeated her words but twisted them to fit the roles.
“I should have?—”
This time, I was on her, and she couldn’t fight against the strength of my body. Her back came against the wall, and she went to claw at my face. I took her wrists in my hands, pinning them against the wall, one on each side of her. She was shoving with all her might, her hands turned into claws, but she couldn’t move me.
“Let mego!”
“Say it,” I dared her, my voice calm, collected, the exact opposite of hers. “Finish that fucking sentence. Tell me, you should have what,mywife.”
“I should have done the same thing you did to me! Ripyourheart out.”
“Tell me,” I said, getting close enough to her for her to bite my lip. It opened the wound from last time, and I was bleeding. Fucking good. We’d mark the occasion. Even if she couldn’t touch my chest in this moment, she was fucking ripping me to shreds. I leaned close to her ear. “Withwho.”
“I do not have to tell you anything!”
“Ah,” I breathed out. “But you do.”
“Make me!”
“That,” I said, “I can do.”
“Not with your cock,” she snapped at me. “It is too big, and I am not sure if it will hurt the…”
I released her to her feet. She used the wall to balance herself as I turned away, fixing my suit, going toward the door.
