And Mina just stands there.
Frozen. Pale. Devastated.
I’ve seen that expression before. I saw it five years ago when she was staring at me through a car window as she slowly pulled away.
“Tommaso,” I roar. “Get back in here.”
A nauseating suspicion is swirling through my stomach.
It can’t be fucking true.
A moment later, Tommaso is standing in front of my desk again, wariness in his eyes. I don’t waste time on preamble.
“Ariana Barone is wearing an engagement ring.”
“Yes, Don Cristiano.”
My blood runs cold.
“Who is she engaged to?”
Tommaso’s brow furrows, confusion flickering across his face. “She’s engaged to you, of course.”
I push myself to my feet. “What are you talking about?”
“What do you mean, what am I talking about?”
“I’m going to ask you one more time.” My voice is deadly quiet. “And you’re going to give me a very clear answer. How has this happened?”
“Because you wanted it to happen,” Tommaso exclaims.
“I most certainly did fucking not.” As soon as I got home from that dinner, I put Ariana out of my mind completely.
Tommaso starts explaining, getting angrier by the second. “It was a few days after the dinner. We were discussing you and Andreas and the Barone sisters. Everything seemed promising with both young women, and Andreas was planning to move ahead with a proposal to Lucy Barone. I asked if you wished to proceed with an engagement to Ariana, and you said yes.”
I remember that conversation. Vaguely. I was sitting in this office while Tommaso droned on about the Barone family’s position in Malus. My mind was miles away.
With Mina.
I’d just asked her mom about her, and I knew. I’d never stopped loving her. Tommaso’s voice had been background noise, meaningless words washing over me while I drowned in thoughts of dark hair and brown eyes and the girl I’d made hate me because I loved her so violently.
“No.” My voice comes out strangled. “We were talking about Andreas. Not me.”
“We were distinctly talking about you, Don Cristiano.” Tommaso retorts. “I asked specifically whether you wished to see the jeweler yourself, as Andreas was doing, or if I should arrange things. You told me to get on with everything without you.”
I remember saying that, but I was talking about Andreas, my annoying fucking cousin who turned out to be a Sokoli spy. Now Mina is standing in my spa, staring at an engagement ring that belongs to a woman she thinks is my fiancée, looking like her heart has been ripped from her chest.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I round the desk, and Tommaso takes a step back. “You bought an engagement ring and sent it to a woman on my behalf. Without confirming with me. Without even showing me the ring.”
“A don must be married.” Tommaso’s chin lifts, defensive and pompous. “I did as your father would have wanted, for the sake of the Montoni—”
I grab him by the lapels and slam him into the wall. His head cracks against the plaster. “What were you going to do, email me a calendar invitation to my own fucking wedding?”
Fear flickers in his eyes.
