Chapter 15 #2
Instead, I say, “And did you?”
Her eyes flash. “Excuse me?”
“For the wedding.” I let my gaze sweep over her, slow and deliberate. “Did you look good?”
Her mouth parts. For one beat, she forgets to be angry. Then her expression hardens, and she pushes the wineglass away from herself with two fingers.
“You’re revolting.”
“And yet,” I murmur, “you let me inside you earlier.”
The second it leaves my mouth, I know it is the wrong thing to say. Her face closes off. Not in anger this time. In hurt.
My jaw tightens. I push the plate of vegetables closer to her, an offering disguised as impatience. “Eat.”
She picks up another carrot. “Stop ordering me around.”
“Then stop giving me reasons.”
Her laugh is soft and brittle. “You don’t need reasons, Lorenzo. You do whatever you want.”
I say nothing to that because there is nothing to say.
She takes another bite, chewing slowly, and I keep watching her. The aversion to the meat. The refusal of the wine. The pale cast to her face at the mention of salami. Small things, maybe. Innocent things.
Maybe.
But the thought that stirred upstairs stirs again now, darker and more insistent. She was gone for nearly four months… it’s possible. I think back to the tampered birth control. Fuck. Did I set her up to carry another man’s child?
I can’t stop looking at her now. At the way the blouse falls loose over her. At the guarded way she sits. At the careful distance she keeps between herself and everything I offer her. I think back to the dressing room, and how she had the cardigan clutched at her stomach. Fuck. Fucking fuck.
Her head lifts suddenly, catching me staring. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
I set my own glass down untouched. “Eat your carrots, cara.”
She narrows her eyes. “Don’t call me that.”
I watch as she takes another bite of carrot and keeps her gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder, as if she can avoid me simply by refusing to look. I let the silence stretch between us and study her openly now.
My gaze drifts lower before I can stop it. The blouse is loose. Deliberately so. The slacks, too. Not baggy enough to invite notice from anyone who isn’t looking for it, but enough to blur the lines of her curvy body.
Enough to hide changes.
A strange feeling creeps into my chest. The rushed wedding.
The haste. The secrecy. The fiancé waiting at the altar while she played the trembling bride in white.
Something inside me goes very still, and my jaw locks.
Across from me, she reaches for another carrot, but her hand hesitates slightly before she picks it up.
She looks tired. Not just upset. Not just shaken.
Tired in a way I recognize.
A memory rises uninvited—Sienna’s mother, Santee, at one of those endless family dinners years ago, quietly refusing wine with some airy excuse while the older women exchanged knowing looks over crystal glasses and candlelight. She told me that night we were expecting our first and only child.
I stare at Elizabeth.
My pulse slows into something dangerous. Russo was in such a hurry to marry her. The thought lands like a hammer blow to the sternum. I lean back against the counter, my expression giving away nothing, though it feels as if something has just reached into my chest and started twisting.
She notices the silence first.
“What?” she asks sharply.
“Nothing.”
“Right.” She gives a humorless laugh and sets the carrot down. “You’ve been staring holes through me for the last ten minutes.”
I say nothing. Because if I speak right now, I may say something I cannot take back. I’ll ask the question already pounding against the inside of my skull.
Is she pregnant?
And worse—
Is it his?
The idea turns everything black at the edges.
Russo’s child.
Russo touching her, laying claim to her, putting a baby in her body while she smiled for photographs and planned a future that had nothing to do with me.
A fast wedding suddenly makes perfect sense.
A neat, polished solution to an unexpected pregnancy.
And Russo would want to marry her before the child is born.
Otherwise people could say it’s a bastard, one thing that isn’t taken lightly in our world.
My hand tightens around the edge of the counter.
She notices that. Elizabeth always notices every shift in me, even when she pretends not to. She’s the only one who ever does.
Her eyes narrow. “What’s wrong with you now?”
I let out a slow breath through my nose. “How long had you been engaged?”
She blinks, clearly thrown. “What?”
“To Dante Russo.” My voice is flat. “How long?”
Suspicion flickers across her face. “Why do you care?”
Because I’m suddenly seeing every piece arranged in a pattern I want to destroy. Because I want very badly to be wrong, and if I’m right, I may not survive hearing it.
“I asked you a question.”
Her chin lifts at once. “A month.”
A month.
That’s far too fast.
My gaze drops, traitorous and hungry for proof, to the line of her blouse again before I drag it back to her face. She follows it. And in that instant, I know she understands exactly what I’m thinking.
The air in the kitchen changes.
Her fingers curl around the edge of the counter stool. “Don’t.”
I push off the counter and take a step toward her. “Elizabeth—”
“Don’t.” Louder now. Sharper. Her face goes pale in a way that has nothing to do with salami or panic attacks. “Whatever insane conclusion you’re jumping to in that head of yours, keep it to yourself.”
But now I can’t stop. The clues are everywhere. The avoidance. The food. The wedding. The way she guards herself with both hands and fury. The way her clothes suddenly seem chosen not for style, but for concealment.
And, God, if she’s carrying Russo’s baby—his heir…
Something savage rises in me, so hot I almost choke on it.
I smile then, but there is nothing kind in it.
“That eager to marry him, were you?” I ask softly. “I was almost impressed by how quickly you found yourself another savior.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?”
“No.” She stands so abruptly the stool scrapes against the floor. “You don’t.”
The tears that were gone are suddenly back, brightening her eyes, and for one fractured moment I cannot tell if they come from fear, grief, or rage. Maybe all three.
My voice lowers. “Is that why the wedding was rushed?”
She stares at me like she wants to slap me. Or kill me.
“Go to hell.”
Not a denial. My heartbeat turns murderous.
I step closer. “Answer me.”
Her breath catches. She shakes her head once, hard, like she hates me and pities me and wants me far away from her all at once. “You don’t get to ask me that.”
“Then I’ll ask something else.” I stop right in front of her. “Did you really think he would settle for someone like you if you weren’t pregnant?”
The second the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve struck something raw.
Her whole face changes. And for the first time since the thought took hold, something cold slips in around the edges of my certainty.
But it is too late. I’ve already seen the fast wedding, the untouched wine, the hidden body, and built a story out of all of it.
One in which Dante Russo put a child in her and wrapped her in white before anyone could ask questions. One in which I was too late.
Elizabeth’s voice shakes when she says, “You are the cruelest man I have ever known.”
Then she shoves past me. I catch the faintest brush of her shoulder against my arm, and even that small contact feels like being cut open. Because the worst part is that I still don’t know if I’m wrong.