Her pulses beat with rapid strength beneath the warm, delicate skin his fingers rested on. The cauldron of nausea in his guts threatened to spill over. “I let you go, and what happens? You think my family will let you walk away after what you’ve done?”
She didn’t blink. “I’ll take my chances.”
“The only protection you have is the protection our marriage gives you. You walk away from it, you’re walking away from that protection.”
“Better to die a free woman than live as a prisoner and a slave.” Her shining eyes held his in challenge. “I’m taking my freedom. Do your worst.”
Stepping away from him, she turned and, without looking back, walked out of the bedroom.
The cobra clamped down hard and unleashed its venom.
Gabriella barely noticed her Vespa was still parked in its usual place. She’d hardly taken in a thing on the long walk from Tommaso’s villa to her apartment.
“Gabriella!”
She turned her head to find Ciro jogging across the courtyard to her. Bitterness at his betrayal punched hard.
“What do you want?” she asked coldly when he reached her.
He looked taken aback. “Just wanted to say hello. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Hostility laced her voice. “How much did he pay you to sell me out?”
“What?”
“You sold me out, Ciro. You knew there was a man in my apartment and you let me believe it was safe to go in there.”
“But it was Tommaso,” he said, as if that fact absolved him. “He told me it was a surprise.”
Gabriella looked hard at him. Took in the youthfulness of a face not yet mature enough to even contemplate shaving. She tried to imagine him defying Tommaso Esposito and came upblank. The adolescents of her world all hero-worshipped him. Those who didn’t were too smart to say it.
She’d been around Ciro’s age when her crush on Tommaso had really taken root, and just like that, her anger abated. Ciro was little more than a child, just as she’d been.
Taking a deep breath, she forced something she hoped looked like a smile on her face. “It was certainly that.”
The relief on his face made her heart ache.
About to apologise and follow it with a gentle lecture about not letting a woman enter her apartment when an uninvited man was in there, no matter who that man was, he knocked her off guard by saying, “Mum says you married him.”
Everything inside her compressed into a tight ball.
Slowly, she raised her left hand. The slender gold band on her finger gleamed under the sunlight. Gabriella’s mother had worn her father’s ring until her death. Gabriella had made sure she was buried still wearing it.
When she’d been Ciro’s age, Gabriella had dreamed of wearing Tommaso’s ring; dreamed she would wear it until her own death.
It shouldn’t feel like she was pulling her heart out of her body to tug it off her finger, and she swallowed before attempting another smile. “Catch.”
“What?”
She lobbed the ring at Ciro.
He caught it and snapped his fingers around it.
She attempted one last smile. “You should get good money for that.”
“Are you serious?”
“Always.”
