“Why would he do that?” I insisted. “He didn’t know we were secretly dating. That you asked me to marry you.”That I said yes.
Back then, the possibility of having a happily-ever-after seemed so real.
Now, I was trapped in a nightmare, with few options to escape.
“Ah, the answer that’s been tormenting me.” Vincenzo moved. The shadow rose, advancing toward me. “I can hear it in your voice, fiore. You weren’t the one who told him that I proposed.”
“No!” I wheezed. “He didn’t know.”
“He did.” Another step. “Someone told him.” He was close. “He wanted me gone.”
It gutted me fresh, this feeling of keeping the secret all these years. Someone betrayed us, if what he said was true. But it hadn’t been me.
Relief dripped through Vincenzo’s voice. “I’m glad it wasn’t you, and that leaves a lot of questions, but those don’t matter right now. You asked how I knew he was behind my sentencing? He was friends with one of the prosecuting attorneys.”
I went to speak, to prove him wrong. My breath hitched. The words wouldn’t come out.
Vincenzo stood over me, arms crossed, glaring at the bed. “You’re putting two and two together.”
I was.
“Before he became a name partner, before he became the managing partner of the firm, your dad’s old buddy Kirk was a state prosecutor.”
“He was,” I breathed. “How did I miss that?”
Vincenzo shrugged. “I kind of thought you tipped him off.”
“I didn’t! I swear it,” I said quickly.
Oh, lord, all this time!
While I was confused about the silence from Vincenzo, why he chose to end our relationship with a short informal message, he thought I was part of the force that put him behind bars.
“Fuck,” I breathed, the word drawing out on my tongue. There was really no other reaction to that.
“Fuck,” Vincenzo agreed. “It made me suspect the worst of you when I discovered you worked in that firm, but…I believe you.”
Good lord—he thought I would betray him like that? Even now, with the divorce papers filled out and waiting to be printed, I wasn’t that kind of person.
I shook my head vigorously and held up a hand. “You’re telling me that Dad found out about us, brought the case to one of his friends, and made sure you were put behind bars?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because, fiore, you might have a desperate desire to please your father, to have his approval, but at the end of the day, if you had to choose between him and me, we know who you’d pick.”
I went very, very still. Did we?
Vincenzo leaned down and brushed the back of his knuckles down my cheek. “It’s alright now, Mandy. I’m here.”
Despite every fiber of my being screaming at me to reach for him, I turned my head away. “I’m sorry, Vincenzo,” I said politely, the tone of a Karen in control. “For all that happened to you, truly, I am. But the misunderstanding in the past doesn’t mean we have a future.”
He barked a laugh and grabbed my shoulders. Drawing me up against his body, his voice turned to gravel. “My feelings for you never died.”
Funny…mine did. The moment I buried the shell that was once my soul, I let us become the past.
The ironic fact was that now I was pretty sure my soul had new life. I was in danger of wanting this man, and not just for his body.
