“We might not have time.” Seeing that he’s waving a red flag in front of an enraged bull, he stands. “We’ll do everything in our power to give you that time,fratello.”
He leaves, and I turn back to watching my wife over the security monitor. She may not technically be my lawfully wedded wife yet, but she is my wife in my eyes, mind, and heart.
And I willnotlose her.
Chapter 20
Gina
One month later
“Youshouldberesting,il mio sole.”
My heart flutters every time Tommaso calls me that, claiming me as his sun. And when he tells me I’m his sun, his light, and his queen…I’d do anything for him.
Honestly, the way my heart beats for this man is shocking.
But he’s totally pushing my buttons right now.
“I’m tired of resting,” I say like a brat. We’ve been arguing about this because he’s turned into a tyrant. “Both Reese and Johnathon said—”
“It’s Reese and Johnathon now?” He cocks one of his dark brows on his unfairly gorgeous face. “Not Dr. Albans and Moretti?”
“Yeah, Reese and Johnathon,” I say rather disagreeably. I’m not sure why I’m in such a mood.
It might be because I feel like Tommaso is keeping me locked away. I go outside and walk the estate’s beautiful grounds, but only for short periods because the bright sun still bothers me. Otherwise, I haven’t left the house or the estate. The only guests who have come here are Tommaso’s brother, Marco, and his best friend, Silvio.
Other than Adolfo, Jerome, and Etta, the staff who live onsite with us, no one else has come here that I’ve seen. Tommaso only leaves for short periods of time and works as much as he can from his home office.
“You need to stop treating me like I’m made of glass, Tommaso.” I turn to face him while I sit in front of my vanity. I’m dressed in a blue silk pajama set with a robe, and I was testing different make-up to cover the lingering bruises on my face.
He stands in our bedroom beside the large four-poster bed. In most bedrooms, it would dwarf everything due to its size, but with the scale of this room, it fits perfectly.
Just like everything else fits perfectly in this house. Just like Tommaso himself, in his power suits and neatly styled hair.
The only thing that doesn’t fit here is me. Or at least…it feels that way.
You’re a nobody, a voice whispers in my head.
Those whispers have been happening more often lately. Not always that statement; sometimes it’s just a word or another phrase. Sometimes the whispers are said in my voice, other times in another woman’s voice, or more frequently, in a man’s voice that makes the nausea rise within me and my healing wounds throb with pain.
When I told Reese about the pain, he explained it more as phantom rather than actual pain, likely caused by some trauma related to my accident. He encouraged me to see a therapist, but I declined, something warning me that I really don’t want to digin and unpack that trauma. So far, Tommaso has supported my decision.
But I still feel less than. I’m unable to remember anything of my husband before waking up in the hospital. Not even being able to remember our wedding day. There aren’t even any pictures from it. If Tommaso didn’t have pictures of me talking and laughing with an older couple in a coffee shop or sitting in the moonlight at some ruins by the ocean, I’d question if we had even known each other prior to my waking up and being told he was my husband.
A logical person might question it, but I have no family to ask since I was an only child, and my parents are gone. If I didn’t feel the love for Tommaso that seems to come from deep within me, and how intensely, almostobsessively, he loves me, I might question it more.
But he has answers to questions I’ve asked about myself, including where I was born, my birth date, and where I went to school. He even has my birth certificate along with all my other ID. I’m still struggling to believe I went to a private all-girls school in Italy; it doesn’t feel like something I would’ve chosen.
Not all the questions that I’ve begun to ask have answers, though. Or if they do, it doesn’t feel like a complete answer. Including those of the actual details surrounding what caused my face and head wounds.
I study my husband, standing so tall and broad, as he walks over to me and crouches down. From his lowered position, he stares up at me and brushes my hair back from my face before running his knuckle over the healed cut on my cheek.
“Why haven’t you touched me?” I ask a question that’s been burning in my mind.
He sleeps with me every night, holding me close, but we’re both clothed. I haven’t had the courage to undress in front of him, and he hasn’t pushed me. Each night, I can feel hishardness pressing into me, but he never does anything except hold me.
At first, I don’t think he’s going to answer, or that he might give me an answer that I suspect isn’t the whole answer.
