“The wedding you were earmarked to be the bride for.”
She gave a grim, tight smile of acknowledgement.
His voice quietened a touch. “I knew you could do it.”
She sipped her wine to stop herself looking at him. If she didn’t meet his eyes, she could get through this, whateverthiswas.
“Everything you wanted, you’ve got,” he said. “That must have taken some guts.”
“It helped that Siena was on my side. I don’t think it would have happened without her support.”
He laughed, a deep, forced rumble. “I would never bet against you, Chicca.”
She couldn’t stop her gaze from flying to him.
When their eyes locked together, it felt like her heart came to a stop. A tremor came into her voice. “Why are you here?”
His chest rose, nostrils flaring. Unable to bear seeing the circles beneath his eyes and what they represented, she cast her stare away again and tightened the hold on her glass.
“I think…” She heard him inhale, and then quietly he said, “Nothing has felt right since you left.”
“Since you released me as your hostage,” she corrected with equal quietness.
“Since I released you as my hostage,” he agreed, and then he laughed again, with as little humour as his first laugh. “May God forgive me for doing that to you, and may God forgive me for the way I let you go.”
“You let me go exactly as you promised you would.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
“How am I supposed to know what you mean? If your conscience is playing on you, then it’s a priest you need to make your confession to, not me.”
“A priest can give me absolution, but he cannot…” Gino sucked in a long breath and tipped a large quantity of bourbon down his throat. He hadn’t imagined this would be easy, but he hadn’t thought it would be so hard. The ache to touch her was mutating, gaining in strength with each passing breath.
He needed to do it, though, because he couldn’t live like this anymore. Couldn’t live in denial of his feelings, not now that they’d punched him so hard and forced him to confront them.
How could he deny it any longer when one look at Francesca and one shake of her hand that morning had shifted the tectonic plates he stood upon? Siena had seen it, and if she’d seen it in him, he had to pray she’d said what she said because she’d seen it in her cousin, too.
He’d believed that kidnapping Francesca to force the Espositos to bring him into their fold would be the biggest gamble of his life, but he’d been wrong. That game of poker with Francesca had been the biggest gamble, and he hadn’t even known it. He knew it now though, and knew the gamble he was there to make would surpass it.
The gamble he was there to make was the gamble of his life. This was the gamble for his heart and his soul.
“Since you’ve been gone, I’ve become impotent.”
Her beautiful, slender frame froze.
“I’m impotent, and I live in a haunted apartment.” He cast his stare steadily on her. She wasn’t looking at him, but if her feelings were anywhere as strong as his, she would feel it. “You were with me for only one week, but your ghost won’t leave me. I see you everywhere. I hear you everywhere. I try to work inmy office, but all I see is you stretched out on the sofa reading. I try to sleep, but the bed is so empty without you that all I do is lie there and think of you and wonder where you are and what you’re doing. I go in the kitchen and see you sitting on the counter with your legs dangling, and I see you at the breakfast bar eating and smiling and laughing, and so I eat in the dining room to escape you, but there’s no escape because all I can think is that I never let you eat in there.
“And it’s not just my apartment haunted by you. It’s my clubs too. It doesn’t matter which one I visit, all I think when I walk into them is how beautiful you looked that last night, and all I see is the misery on your face that I caused. I wanted to kill your feelings for me, but all I killed was the last of any peace of mind I will ever have. I stole you from your family, and then I stole your virginity, and then I deliberately hurt you. I am a worthless piece of shit who doesn’t deserve God’s forgiveness and I certainly don’t deserve yours, but still I am here to beg for it.”
He was on his knees before her before he was even aware of his body moving.
Removing the wine glass from her frozen hand, he placed it on the floor, then clasped both her hands in his. “Please, look at me, Chicca.”
She closed her eyes. He could feel the tremble of her body.
“I don’t deserve a second chance, I know that, but still I beg you for it. I beg you forgive me. The life I’ve created for myself is empty and meaningless, because without you,everythingfeels empty. My parents never had much, but they had each other, and they still have each other. They’re always there for each other, supporting each other and protecting each other, just as you protect me.”
He felt the tiny flinch of her body at his words.
