Matthew held her gaze for a moment then closed his eyes and winced. ‘Sit down.’
‘No. Assolutamente, no!’ Margherita refused.
‘Just sit down,’ he snapped, and Sarah noted the defensive edge to his voice. ‘Please. Hear us out before you draw any conclusions.’ He looked to Riccardo. ‘Riccardo,ti prego.’
Despite his raised eyebrow, Riccardo sat down and pulled Margherita by his side. ‘What is this all about?’ he asked, his gaze flitting between the two.
Matthew gestured for Sarah to also sit down, and made his way behind her. Securing his hands reassuringly on her shoulders, he began. ‘Sarah and Iaremarried.’ This was met with an incredulous guffaw from Margherita. ‘Weare. We got married so that I could fulfil a ridiculous fifteenth-century inheritance clause and assume the D’Adamo estate. I needed to be married. I had a legal team help me find a partner who would marry me for an agreed period of twelve months to ensure the handover. That involved signing a marriage agreement, a prenuptial agreement and a certificate of marriage. It’s all above board. We are legally married.’
‘It’s true,’ Sarah said, her head slightly tilted, trying to read the puzzled expressions on Margherita and Riccardo’s faces. ‘We got married.’
‘You married a stranger?’ Riccardo asked Sarah. She nodded, reaching up and placing her hand on Matthew’s. ‘Weren’t you afraid of what might happen?’
Sarah’s eyes hit the ceiling. ‘We met on Zoom a few times. He was in Singapore, I was in Sydney. And no, I wasn’t afraid.’ She felt her stomach tighten. ‘I needed this. I needed to know what it felt like to be in a relationship in which I couldn’t disappoint the other person. For once, I could just be myself, with no expectations of . . .’ Her breath hitched in her throat, and her eyes snapped shut.
Matthew’s grasp on her shoulders tightened and he dropped his lips to the crown of her head. ‘It’s ok,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to share that. It’s private.’
Sarah’s eyes filled with tears and she looked at Margherita squarely across the bench. ‘For once, there was no expectation for me to be a mother. To have babies. To carry on a family legacy. Because I likely can’t. Ok? And that has ripped my soul to shreds since I was a teenager. You can’t imagine the toll that carrying that kind of burden inflicts on you. Decades, Marghe. Literallydecades. This marriage, with a perfectly defined and controlled plan, was the safest way for me to do that. I could finally just be me and have an adventure of my own.’
Margherita’s eyes softened and she quietly said, ‘I didn’t know.’
‘I never told you. It’s my baggage to carry.’
Matthew moved his lips to the side of Sarah’s face and found her left cheek. He nuzzled into her warm skin, just wanting to make them disappear so that he could hold her. ‘I told Sarah from the start, whatever she needed, no matter the ask, I was here to support her. If she found that freedom – freedom from the pain and pressure – in this marriage, then I am glad that she finally had some time and space from that torment. Because that’s what it has done to her. Both physically and emotionally.’ He gathered the pages of their contracts and righted the edges so they sat in a neat pile. ‘I’m the product of a mismatched marriage; my parents, I love them, but they don’t share romantic love and never have. They have always been more like business partners. That was the only experience I ever had of marriage in my life. That was my model. It made perfect sense for me to engage someone in a . . . transaction, in order to move my life forward.’
Riccardo cast a meaningful sideways look at Margherita. His body language softened. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Should we have lied to you?’ Matthew asked. ‘No. Did we want to?No. Did we have any other choice?No. For that, we are sorry.’ Sarah nodded, wiping the final remnants of her tears from her cheeks. ‘This,’ he gestured down to Sarah, ‘. . . our coming together, was manufactured. But wearein love.’
Margherita suddenly straightened in her chair. ‘You what?’
Sarah smiled. ‘We love each other.’
‘Romantically?’ Riccardo clarified.
Matthew nodded. ‘More than I’ve ever loved anyone.’
Margherita’s bottom jaw started to quiver, and her eyes hit the benchtop. ‘I’m sorry. I just assumed . . .’
‘This is a totally unconventional situation. We know that. But this . . .this. . . brought us together.’ Sarah beamed.
‘You have fallen in love through all this?’ Riccardo asked again.
‘Yes.’ Sarah laughed. ‘Can you imagine what it’s like to go to bed and lie next to someone you’re married to, but who is a complete stranger?’ Both she and Matthew playfully raised their hands as if responding to the rhetorical question. ‘We literally went from zero to one hundred the moment we met at the airport.’
Riccardo was curious. ‘And . . . have you . . . you know . . .?’
‘Riccardo!’ Margherita scolded, giving him a sideways shove.
‘Many times,’ Matthew assured him.
Sarah’s eyebrows raised, sending a secret validation of Matthew’s sexual prowess to Margherita, which prompted a giggled reply.
‘Are we ok here?’ Matthew asked, somewhat exasperated.
Margherita piped up. ‘Yes. I’m sorry we just exploded in here, but we were . . . shocked. And disappointed. We didn’t know the whole story.’
Riccardo added his approval, then asked, ‘But what happens next? At the end of the contract?’
