But panic doesn’t listen.
When the nausea hits, it’s sudden and alarming, a hot, hollow churn low in my belly that makes me gasp and brace my hands on the dresser.
No.
Not this.
Yet I swallow hard and reach for my phone, already knowing exactly what I’m going to do even as I tell myself I shouldn’t.
I sit on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched, screen lighting my face in the dim room.
Isabella Bellandi.
The name looks wrong typed out in black and white. I hesitate for half a second, then hit search.
The internet answers mercilessly.
She’s insanely beautiful. Because of course she is.
Dark hair, glossy and disciplined. Features sculpted rather than softened. The kind of elegance that doesn’t need explanation or apology. Photographed at charity galas, art openings, events where money whispers instead of shouts.
She’s cultured, composed. And nothing like me.
Jealousy slithers through me, hot and unwelcome, winding itself around my ribs with vicious precision.
I scroll faster than I mean to, pulse thudding, my chest tight. As I surmised, she looks like she belongs in Giovanni’s world.
And the thought of her in my place, standing where I stood, wearing his name with ease, understanding his silences instead of flinching from them, makes my stomach heave again.
I drop the phone onto the bed as if it’s burned me.
God help me, I’m still wildly attracted to my husband.
The realisation lands hard, humiliating in its clarity.
I want him.
I hate him.
I want him.
And the thought of another woman in his arms makes something feral rear up inside me, something venomous and furious and sharp-edged enough to scare me with its intensity.
If that isn’t a weakness just waiting to be exploited by Giovanni Dragoni, I don’t know what is.
I drag a hand through my hair and laugh softly, breathless and brittle.
Isn’t this better?
The thought creeps in quietly, insidiously.
Surely my absence clears the path. Surely my removal solves his problem. He marries the woman he was meant to marry, the woman bred and trained for this world, and the knives aimed at my throat turn elsewhere.
I hadn’t had the courage to say it at the dinner table.
But the logic is there.
Clean, cold. Relentless.
