Chapter 9 #2
“Okay,” he eventually agreed. “You can come. But you will wear the wig and wait in the car. Whatever happens, you stay in the car.”
A tear escaped and trailed a thin river onto his chest. “Thank you.”
He squeezed her even tighter and whispered, “Just stay in the damned car.”
It was almost time.
Niccolo’s heart was thumping painfully against his ribs. All the things that could go wrong were playing on a loop in his head.
The whiteness of Georgia’s complexion and the tightness of her features spoke louder than any words that she shared his fears.
The cat-and-mouse game they’d been playing since leaving Benjamin’s house was over. In ten minutes, they would get in the car and he would drive them to the cemetery where Lorenzo Esposito was being laid to rest.
It was for Georgia that all Niccolo’s fears were tied… and he knew all her fears were tied to him.
He couldn’t blame her for wanting to come with him, because she was right – if their roles were reversed, being left behind while she walked into such danger would kill him.
“When this is over, will you marry me?” The words came out before he’d even thought of them.
She blinked sharply and turned her blue eyes to him. “What?” she whispered.
He held her gaze and expelled a long breath. “Marriage. You and me.”
The fear already writ large on her face magnified. She seemed to shrink into herself. “Don’t do this, Nic. Please. Not now.”
But it had to be now. He saw that. If not now, it might be never. He couldn’t go to his grave without Georgia knowing the truth of what lay in his heart.
Swooping onto his knees before her, he took her hands in his. Despite the high spring warmth filtering into their small hotel room, her hands were cold. “I love you.”
Beautiful face contorting, she shook her head. “Don’t.”
“I can’t walk into the lion’s den without telling you how I feel. I love you.”
The contortion of her face morphed into disbelief. “You tell me you love me now, minutes before we’re about to leave to confront the men who want to end our lives?”
“I might never get another chance. I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. Say you’ll marry me.”
Her large eyes filled with panic before she snatched her hands away and croaked, “If you think I’d marry you after everything you did to me, you’re mad. You wanted me to be your mistress. You wanted me to prostitute myself for you.”
He winced but didn’t close his eyes to the pain emanating from her stare. He would never look away from it again.
Hot blood pounding in his head, he cupped her cheeks and brought his face to hers. “That was never what I meant, and you know it. I didn’t want to lose you. I was trying to tie you to me so we would always be together.”
Her fingers gripped hold of his wrists. “If you didn’t want to lose me, why did you walk away without a fight? Why did you let me go without a word of goodbye?”
But he never got the chance to answer. Georgia opened her mouth again, and suddenly she was speaking with such disjointed quickness it was like a stream of consciousness was pouring out of her.
“We spent months as close as two lovers could be. Months, Nic. Months. And they were the best months of my life.” Her chin wobbled, but she didn’t break the hold of their eyes or pause for breath.
“I gave you everything, and I thought you were giving me everything too, but I was living in fantasy land. You whisked me away for my dream weekend in Paris and treated me like a princess, and then at the end of it announced you were marrying another woman and relegating me from being the woman you shared your life with to the woman you visited when you wanted sex. And you tried to make out like it was a good thing, that instead of relegating me, you were promoting me.”
The fingers gripping his wrists suddenly squeezed and yanked his hands off her face.
Twisting away from him, she got unsteadily to her feet.
“You threw cold water over everything I believed to be true between us,” she choked.
“And then when I wouldn’t fall in line with your plan to be your personal prostitute, you dumped me as if I’d never meant a thing to you, and walked away without a care in the world. ”
Niccolo clutched tightly at his hair and pulled it in stunned frustration.
He knew he’d hurt her, had known it would take time to rebuild her trust in him, but after everything they’d been through and shared these last few days and with everything that was coming for them, for her to react like this…
“I had every care in the world on my shoulders, Georgia. I explained everything to you, and…”
“I know.” She finally snatched a breath and wiped a tear away with the sleeve of her top.
“I know you had no choice but to fall in with Lorenzo’s blackmail.
” Her face contorted with disdain even as her chin wobbled again.
“You fell in with it right until the point you couldn’t go through with the marriage.
You stopped caring about the blackmail then, didn’t you?
You didn’t walk away from it for me; you walked away because of whatever was going on in your head.
I’m just collateral damage because of the baby.
If Rico hadn’t warned you that his brothers were coming for me, you’d be anywhere but here with me. ”
“Doesn’t the fact that I did come for you tell you something?” he demanded urgently. “As soon as I knew you were in danger, I came straight to you.”
“I know that, and I’m thankful for it, but it doesn’t change what you did or change that you broke my heart.
You broke me, Niccolo, and I have spent all these months hating you and loving you and trying to protect you from everything that’s happening to us now, and now you want me to marry you?
When you wouldn’t even be here if Rico hadn’t left you that message? ”
“I would have found my way back to you.” Of that he was certain.
“Bullshit!” she cried, now pacing the room. “You’d have disappeared off the face of the earth. I was never in your plans, and I’m only in them now because of the baby.”
Disbelief slammed into him like a punch to the solar plexus. “You can’t believe that.”
“If Rico hadn’t left you that message, you’d have dropped off the face of the earth, and I’d have had no way to even tell you about the baby!
” she shouted. “You walked out on me and you walked out in Siena without a word of goodbye to either of us, so how could I ever trust you wouldn’t do another disappearing act?
And if I ever was stupid enough to get over that fear and marry you, I’d only spend the marriage waiting for the day you announce that you’ve got yourself a mistress and expect me to put up with it like all the good little wives who inhabit your world.
Well, I won’t do it. I won’t be that woman.
I will not live with the sickness that comes with knowing the man I love is enjoying some other woman’s body, so fuck you and fuck your proposal. I will not marry you.”
The stunned silence that followed Georgia’s furious outburst was broken by the buzzing of the burner phone they used to communicate with Dante.
The buzzing meant the funeral party was on its way to the cemetery.
Georgia gripped tightly to the straps of the holdall on her lap.
The morning sickness she’d suffered with in the first couple of months of the pregnancy was nothing on the sickness roiling in her guts now.
Next to her, Niccolo, his jaw clenched and his body as tightly contained as her own, driving them through the streets of Naples, grimly avoiding the streets lined with the public mourners expressing their grief at the loss of Italy’s most beloved man. Thousands upon thousands of mourners.
They hadn’t spoken a word since the call telling them it was time to leave.
Oh God, why had she reacted to his proposal the way she had? It was like that terrible day in Paris when she’d lashed out, but much, much worse. Unless she found the words to take it all back and apologise, Niccolo was going to walk into the lion’s den believing she hated him.
This felt very much like that return journey from Paris. Coldness where there had been warmth. All affection cut off. A longing deep inside her to cross the divide and apologise.
She didn’t hate him. Of course she didn’t. She loved him. But she’d loved him before, and look where that had got her. She trusted him with her life, but how could she trust him with her heart, after everything he’d done?
His proposal had made her think of things she didn’t want to think about. Things she’d successfully pushed away while they’d been cocooned away from the world, and pushed away even harder with the clock to the endgame ticking down.
Every word she’d spoken had been the truth, but she hadn’t needed to be so cruel about it. Hadn’t needed to scream at him like a frightened child.
But that’s how she’d felt. Frightened.
Oh, what had he been playing at, proposing at such an inopportune time? Why add pressure to a situation that was on the cusp of erupting? Why couldn’t he have let them deal with whatever fate had planned for them now and worry about everything else later, if later existed?
She was so, so frightened of now because now was almost here, and the man she loved was minutes away from entering the lion’s den, and, God, he believed she hated him…
Her heart jumped into her throat and stuck there. He was pulling over on this street lined by a high white wall that itself was lined with impossibly high trees.
Forget minutes away. Forget seconds away.
They were here. Now was here.