Page 58 of One Filthy Kiss

Fuck!She has a point, but I’m not giving up without a fight.

“You … this … us … is the only thing in my life worth fighting for, Meggie. Tell me what I can do.”

I pull her into my arms and stroke her hair. She is still my fiore, but she’s already rebuilding that shell around her, the one that I cracked when I brought her here and made her feel loved and protected and safe.

“I don’t know, Gio.” Her body shudders with the sobs that she has been holding in. “I don’t know if there’s anything you can do. I can’t even think about it. I need to get Amber away from here. Away from him.”

I feel the panic coursing through her veins. Lucia was an unwanted distraction, but now that she has let Amber’s father back in, the fear is consuming her all over again.

Suddenly, I know what to do.

I know how to prove my love to her.

I release her from my arms and, holding her hand tightly, I drop down onto one knee.

“Marry me, Meggie.”

13

MEGAN

“Wh-what are you doing?”

My mind is blank. I still haven’t processed the news that Gio is engaged to be married to the beautiful woman who was here a short while ago, and now this…

I shake my head, turn around, and walk towards the elevator. And back again.

I can’t leave without Amber.

I can’t leave, period, because there’s a fucking sociopath out there watching me.

I should never have come to America. I stare at the closed elevator door, wondering who is going to step out of it next. Gio’s sister, Bianca? Someone else Gio promised to marry? Amber’s father? If it’s such a private elevator, how did Lucia get into the apartment?

I turn around and face Gio. My stomach feels as though I binged on cold semolina and it’s making me feel nauseous. Ofcourse, Lucia got into the apartment; the concierge would’ve recognized her.

“Get up, Gio.” I don’t even recognize my own voice. It sounds flattened. Dead. Only I don’t have time to wallow in self-pity because I need to get Amber away from here.

He rises, but something in my tone stops him from coming any closer.

“I’m serious, Meggie. I want to marry you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to adopt Amber so that we can be a family.”

“Ha!” I scoff. “Aren’t you forgetting something? You’re engaged to someone else.That woman—” I throw my arm manically behind me in the direction of the elevator, loathing this side of me that he has brought to the surface “—is wearing your ring. You… You bought her a diamond!”

The implications are only now starting to hit me. At some point, Gio visited a jeweler’s and chose a diamond for Lucia, so that he could propose to her. Elisabetta I could forgive—they were childhood sweethearts encouraged to marry by their families—but this is different. This was a conscious decision made by an adult.

Did he go down on one knee when he proposed to Lucia?

“I know how it sounds, Meggie, but I didn’t buy her a diamond ring. She has her mother’s engagement ring.”

“Oh, well that makes it alright then.”

Somehow, I seem to have found my mom’s voice, the one she often used before she divorced my dad. The one laced with sarcasm and bitterness and smothered with black honey.

“Why didn’t you say so sooner?”There it is again. “Maybe Lucia and I could’ve got acquainted over a coffee and a slice of cake. We could’ve compared notes on how long it took you to get into our panties.”

The tears surface like a volcano erupting. I don’t want him to see me cry, but I can’t seem to stop them. I’m angry with him. I want to pound his chest with my fists and make him hurt the way I’m hurting right now, but somehow, my pussy never got the same memo. Because I know that if he ripped my clothes off me and bent me over right here in his foyer, I’d still beg him to fuck me till I can’t walk.

Warm hands grip my arms and pull me against his solid chest. Gio folds his arms around me, strokes my hair, murmurs sounds that I can’t decipher through the sobs racking my body.