“I told you. I had to do it. I had no other choice. Max, my life was destroyed back then by what happened. I needed to become someone else.”
My heart is thrashing in my ears, my throat tight as I struggle to breathe.
I feel utterly betrayed. Betrayed, humiliated, angry. Hurt.
“I told you things that I’ve never told anyone before.”
She hangs her head. “Yes.”
“I trusted you, and now I find out from some journalist that you’ve been lying this whole time? Every conversation we had, every moment you saw me vulnerable. Was any of it real? Or were you just gathering material for your story?"
“No! It was never like that, Max. I promise you.” Her throat works. “I'm so sorry.”
I stare at her in utter disbelief.
With my jaw set, I grind out, “I think it's time you left.” My voice surprises me with how calm it sounds.
“Max, please.”
I pull my lips into a line and shake my head from side to side. “There is nothing you can say that will change the way I feel.”
Her chest rises and falls with each breath she takes as a tear makes a track down her cheek. “I understand,” she says softly, and then she collects her things, and heads to the door. When she reaches the hallway, she looks back at me one last time.
I turn away, a sharp ache tearing through my chest. The woman I thought I was falling for just broke my heart—and the worst part is, she never even existed.
Chapter 27
Valentina
I stumble home, my heart heavier than a sky that’s lost its sun. I drive through the busy Villadorata streets, unshed tears blurring my vision, replaying the scene over and over in my mind, blindly hoping for a different outcome. An outcome in which I still have Max in my life. An outcome in which he looks in my eyes and tells me he understands, that he forgives me for what he knew I had to do.
That he loves me.
But no matter how many times I roll throughthe scene, it always ends with the look of shock and betrayal on his face.
His sending me away.
It being over between us.
Part of me knew this day would come, the day in which my Fabiana Fontaine mask was forced to drop, and I became me again. I thought I would be the one to control it. I would be the one to win. But now that it’s happened, I never imagined it would hurt this much.
I may have been pretending to be someone else, but my love for Max is real. I fell for the man he is, the man who has qualities the length of the longest river. I may not have shared all the details of my life, but what I did share was the truth. He saw the real me, even if he thinks it was all lies.
What started out as a need for protection, at first a sanctuary from what had become of my life, ended up as a prison, and in the end, I was too busy protecting myself that I destroyed the one thing worth protecting.
The cruel irony is that I was finally ready to tell him the truth when it was ripped away from me. How would he have reacted if I’d had the chance to tell him myself? Would he have been this hurt, this angry, this betrayed?
I’ll never know.
When I park outside our dilapidated house, my instinct is to run upstairs and hide, bury my face in my pillow, and sob until my tears are all dried up. Instead, I pull the article up on my phone and read the whole thing from start to finish. It was written by Miranda Thorne, the journalist I’d met at the state dinner, who got my back right up. She’d dropped hints that she knew more about me than I’d want her to know, and it turns out she was right on the money.
But where did she get her information? No one knows who I really am. I’ve been Fabiana Fontaine for years.
I open a social media app and do a quick search for Fabiana Fontaine. A bunch of people are already talking about Miranda Thorne’s revelations, some questioning if it’s true, some deciding it has to be, and I should be thrown in jail.
Jail!
I click my phone off. I can’t take it right now, not when my whole world has imploded around my ears.
