And then it’s just us.
The office is quiet but the chateau is settling around us with the creaks and sighs of age. Somewhere inside its walls, Alessandro sleeps, safe and unaware of how close everything came to shattering.
“That was incredible, Ms. Farnassi,” I tell her.
She turns to look at me, and her brown eyes are still burning in the soft light of the office.
“It’s what you pay me to do,” she replies, and then she starts to take a step away.
“Stay.” I take a step towards her. “Please.”
Thepleasecosts me something. I don’t know what yet. But I can see her register it. Her lips part slightly, and she sits down on the desk.
Our hands find each other again, and we stand here in silence, letting our breaths mingle in the space between us. Something has irrevocably changed between us. That much is for sure.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
She nods once, slowly. But when she looks back up at me, there are tears in her eyes. The sight of them sends my heart fluttering in my chest, and I reach up to wipe them away.
She stops my hand, takes a trembling breath, and that’s when she asks.
“Who was Alessandro’s mother?”
35
BELLA
“Haven’tyou figured it out by now,malyshka?” Slava asks me back.
He’s right. I have.
But if I’ve figured it out by now, then why am I still asking him? Maybe I need to hear her name pass through his lips again so that I can see just how much she still matters to him.
So I can understand just how badly my betrayal has cut him.
And maybe, just maybe, once he finds out that terrible truth about me, we can find a way to go back to the people we were. Go back to the way that we were. Go back to hating each other.
Because as long as we can hate each other, I—no,we—can walk away from this with some shred of our hearts still intact.
And before I can hurt him any more than I’ve already hurt him.
“I want to hear you say it,” I reply in a small voice. “Just so that I’m sure.”
He nods, and threads his fingers into mine. I want to pull them back because I don’t deserve his gentleness. I deserve only his anger and his hate. But my arm refuses to move, and so I sit there on the edge of the desk.
His hand tightens. And just like on Don Leo’s yacht, I can’t feel his heat reach me anymore.
“It was Gia.”
My eyes squeeze shut, and the sting of tears is sharp in my nose.
“How?”
“I fell in love with her,” Slava breathes. “Seven years ago.”
Love.
That word sounds foreign coming from him. Everything I’ve ever seen about this man suggests that he has no capacity to love. And yet he does. I’ve seen it. From the closet he keeps locked away, the tightness with which he embraces Alessandro, and the anger that burns every time he sees my necklace.
