"Understood," I say.
The guilt sits in my chest like something with weight.
The rest of breakfast passes in relative silence. I eat without tasting anything and count the minutes until I can leave this table and find somewhere I can break something without witnesses.
The meeting is scheduled for two in the afternoon at a private estate Salvatore owns forty minutes outside the city.
I drive Isabella there because Matteo assigned me as her guard and because sitting in a car with her for forty minutes is its own particular kind of torture that I'm apparently committed to enduring.
She sits in the passenger seat and looks out the window and doesn't speak for the first twenty minutes.
Then she says, quietly: "About last night."
"Don't."
"I need to say this."
"You really don't."
"I'm sorry." The words come out soft and honest. "For asking you to do this. For putting you in this position. It's not fair to you."
My hands tighten on the wheel hard enough that my knuckles go white.
"You're right," I say flatly. "It's not fair, not only to me, but to you as well. Yet you asked anyway and I said yes and now we're both going to live with it. I will never force you to do anything you don’t want to."
She's quiet for a moment. "You can still change your mind. You can still say no."
I look at her briefly before returning my eyes to the road. "Can you?"
She doesn't answer and we don't speak for the rest of the drive.
The estate is exactly what I expected from Salvatore De Luca, all old money and careful presentation, a house that's been in the family for generations and looks like it.
Vittorio's car is already in the driveway when we pull up.
I kill the engine and sit there for a moment, and Isabella sits beside me and neither of us moves toward the door.
"Ready?" I ask.
"No," she says honestly. "But it doesn't matter."
We go inside.
The meeting room is set up like a small conference space, a long table with chairs arranged formally, a woman in professional attire standing at one end with a laptop and a stack of folders that I assume contains every detail of how this wedding is going to destroy me.
Matteo is already seated with Salvatore at the head of the table, both of them looking at something on Salvatore's phone. Vittorio is standing by the window and turns when we enter. His face darkens in a way that makes my jaw tighten.
"Isabella," he says, and crosses to her immediately, and I watch him put his hand on her lower back in a gesture that's casual and possessive and makes me want to break every finger of his.
She stiffens under his touch but doesn't pull away.
I take the seat beside Isabella before Vittorio can, dropping into the chair with enough casual ease that it doesn't look deliberate. It is completely deliberate.
Vittorio's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. He takes the seat on her other side anyway, his hand going immediately to the back of her chair, his body angled toward her in that way he has that broadcastsmineto every person in the room.
I let him have it.
Rafael is two seats down looking like he'd rather be anywhere else, Dante and Luca are across from me, Luca with his phone face down on the table like he's physically restraining himself from checking it.
