The magic, it turned out, was Giaco. And when he’d gone he’d taken it with him. All of it.
Leaving Ivy with…herself.
Her decidedly less magical self, who found that his absence meant she was suddenly called upon to figure out what, exactly, she planned todowith herself now that she was outside the tractor pull of this attraction she had to her husband.
When she’d spent most of her own life knowing precisely where she needed to go and what she needed to do.
It was a bit humbling to have spent no small part of her youth watching her mother lose herself in a man, and having assured herself thatshewould never allow herself to be at someone else’s mercy like that. Only to discover that she was no stronger or better or more immune than anyone else. She had simply been lucky, before Giaco, never to encounter any man who could affect her like this.
Maybe it was more than simply abithumbling, really.
His note had not exactly been illuminating.
An urgent matter to take care of, he’d written.You know how to reach me.
It was tempting to assume the worst. That he had lost interest overnight—something it seemed he’d done many times before, according to all available information about him. Ivy might have believed that she could read the intensity in him, that she could feel the way it matched her own—but he wasGiaco Tavian.
Everyone who met him thought they knew him. What made her anything special?
Aside from the fact she was his wife, of course.
But the thing was, she knew that mattered to him. The way he always touched her rings. The way he called hermy wifein that growly voice of his that never failed to make her heart skip a beat. If she stepped back from second-guessing herself because of his reputation and his past and thought about everything rationally, it made sense that he would simply take himself off to do whatever it was he did when he wasn’t creating fantasies for the media to overdose on.
They had both agreed that this marriage would last three years, as required by the stern and upright Pau Calixto. It was what Umberto had promised the man and demanded of Ivy and Giaco. So whatever urgent matters Giaco had to attend to, the marriage would lurch along. Because it had to.
She assured herself that knowing such a thing was comforting. When the truth was, she did not feel the least bit comfortable, here in this magical place that felt more like exile without him.
It took her days to conclude that thatlurchingwas all she really needed to focus on. The rules of their relationship had always been clearly outlined in the agreements they’d made with Umberto and, naturally, in the itinerary. What might or might not have happened on their honeymoon had no bearing on that.
Just because Ivy felt that they were in a completely different place now and would have sworn that he did too, that didn’t change the fact that they were doing all of this for their own, very specific reasons.
That being a whole lot of money from a terrible, exploitative person they both despised.
She didn’t think that finding herself alone on a gorgeous Italian island gave her the right to call Giaco up and demand that they change every aspect of the relationship they had both agreed on some time ago. Not just because it was her personal doom to be so deeply in love with him.
That wasn’t the sort of magic that left when he did. It felt a lot more like a curse, and it had not exactly improved during their time on the island. Quite the opposite.
Ivy hadn’t had the slightest idea that it was possible to love another person like this.
Heart. Mind. Soul.
And every last centimeter of her body.
A not inconsiderable part of her wanted to rage at him for doing this to her. For making her laugh. For teaching her all the things two bodies could do together, an ever-changing adventure through emotion and excitement. For making her understand that she was the best version of herself when he was a part of her, and how was she supposed to pretend she didn’t know that now?
How was she supposed to pretend she was still the same person who’d seen him rise up out of that hot pool like a Roman god returned to earth to rule at will? She couldn’t. Ivy wanted to share her feelings about that with him, too.
But he would have to come back for her to rage at him about anything.
And he didn’t.
Finally, a week after she’d woken up to find him gone, Ivy decided that she was done with this. She felt a similar surge of clarity to what she’d felt the night of her mother’s funeral, when she’d looked around at the guests in the castle—and the family that had never been hers in any real sense—and had realized that the only thing that tethered her to these people was gone. She didn’t need to stay and suffer with them.
She didn’t need to do anything with any of them, ever again.
Five years ago, that had felt like freedom. She tried to tell herself that this did, too. Because the more she thought about it, the more she thought that she never should have demeaned herself like this. She never should have put herself in a position where Umberto could direct any part of her life.
Yes, she wanted her inheritance—for good reasons—but she wasn’t sure that it was worth allthis.
