I’m not good enough. Tears of terror and self-pity well up.
It’s exactly as I worried. However hard I work, I’ll never be the sort of wife he needs. Or loves. I’d have settled for being acceptable, but really, I want Dante’s love.
Crave it, in fact.
“Don Angelini is so wrapped up inyouhe didn’t notice that the ‘threat’ I’ve been telling him about is me, dressed up,” he scoffs. “I needed an imaginary scapegoat to blame when you died.”
Ohhh no. That makes sense. And Dante didn’t realise because he’s focused on external threats to the Angelini family.
I’m not part of his family.
That thought more than any other breaks me apart.
Dante isn’t my real husband. Lucia isn’t my sister-in-law, I’m not an aunt. Dante is far too good for someone like me, and I was fooling myself that I could fit into his life.
That he might come to care about me. Love me, as I do him.
I stop fighting. There’s no point. I just go limp as Giovanni half-drags, half-carries me out into the garden. I guess the cameras have been tampered with or whatever so Dante won’t see this.
Maybe he wouldn’t care, anyway. I’m only his accidental wife.
He could dispose of the bed’s decorative cushions if I’m gone.
“He’ll marry a good, Italian girl who can help him run his business,” Giovanni continues. “Who is from one of the Italian families in Clerkenwell and will solidify his alliances and understand his culture.”
Giovanni is voicing all my secret thoughts of how I’m unworthy.
“Not someone like you, who isn’t part of this community and never will be, and who takes his mind away from his job.”
That’s one of a wife’s duties, isn’t it? To be supportive of her husband’s job. I’m a failure.
“I’m the only one who can see what a disaster this is for Clerkenwell. He wants me to do this, you know?” Giovanni says, and it’s a stab to my heart.
Dante. I tried to be a good wife to you.
Tears are streaming down my face.
It’s not like I could fight him anyway. Giovanni has a gun, I don’t. He’s stronger, and experienced in combat. I’m just a girl who got accidentally married to a mafia don.
Giovanni stops by a high wall that borders… Well, I’m not sure what.
“Walk away,” he orders, pushing me from him, and my mind stutters.
What?
Is Giovanni staging this somehow? Making it look like an intruder caught me from behind as I was in the garden?
If Dante wanted me gone, he’d do it himself, I’m sure of that. And all he has to do is ask for a divorce or wait for the annulment to be granted.
Even if Giovanni is saying he’s doing this for Dante, I don’t believe him. And if Giovanni thinks he knows best about me, he might undermine Dante’s authority on other, more important things.
And that’s what makes me finally decide to fight for my life.
I can’t allow Dante to be betrayed. Giovanni might be correct that Dante deserves a better wife than me, but Giovanni isn’t the one who gets to choose. I’m Dante’s loyal wife until the paperwork says otherwise.
And even then, I think I’ll love that man until I die. At the very least, I want Dante to know that Giovanni isn’t what he says he is.
“No.”
