Chapter Twelve #2
He scrolled through them, one by one. The perfunctory kiss to seal the marriage in the registry office, so perfunctory their lips had hardly touched. No pictures of them being strewn in confetti because there hadn’t been any confetti. The bride’s pretty white dress had remained untouched.
Only a handful of ‘official’ pictures in the pretty garden of the manor house they’d dined at, all at his mother’s insistence.
All group shots. The bride and groom and the groom’s family.
None of the bride’s family because she didn’t have a family, and the groom had been too fucking selfish to care.
And then he reached the photo he’d barely let his eyes glance at before, but which he must have soaked in and retained in some part of him because the beats of his heart had become even weightier the closer he’d got to it.
The photo was of Domenico’s mother and sister sitting at a bench table in the garden, smoking.
Despite being a non-smoker, Marnie had gone out with them, probably at his mother’s insistence.
His mother and sister were talking animatedly, Marnie seemingly listening and smiling along with them.
It was only when you zoomed in that the sense of something being wrong crystallised into something concrete.
Marnie’s gaze was far away, not just off into the distance but somewhere else completely.
The deep grey of her eyes the lens had captured was filled with abject misery.
He’d been the cause of that misery. Him.
His monstrous selfishness had trapped the purest heart into a loveless marriage.
He’d never allowed himself to see her as fully human, never allowed himself to care about her needs or wishes or even ask what they were.
And he was still doing it, he realised, utterly sickened with himself.
Marnie had told him she had no wish to trace her father, and he’d disregarded that wish.
It didn’t matter that his intentions had been good; he’d still ignored her wishes.
She deserved so much more. Deserved so much better.
Marnie deserved so much better than him.
Domenico had no idea how long he gazed at that heartbreaking photo, but by the time he finally blinked his stare away, he knew what he had to do.
To Marnie’s disappointment, she woke to an empty bed. And then she noticed the time and smiled. No wonder Domenico was already up—it was gone lunch!
Stretching, she climbed out of bed and padded over to the tray of food that had been placed on the coffee table for her.
Though she really did seem to be over the sickness, Domenico’s staff still liked to ensure fresh food of all varieties was available to her at all times so she could eat little and often as she’d done when she’d been in full-blown recovery mode.
She guessed this would be the second tray of food brought in to her that day.
Lifting the silver lid, she found paninis still warm in their foil wrapping, bowls of nuts and an abundance of fruit.
After eating a banana slowly, followed by a handful of almonds and a glass of water, she took a shower and then put on one of her favourite summer dresses and a thin cardigan. The skies outside were blue, but she’d noticed the chill of autumn starting to penetrate the heat these last few days.
Let the seasons change, she thought dreamily. Her season had changed, so why not the world around her?
It felt like her heart had changed from winter to spring overnight. The most beautiful night of her life.
She felt somehow purged. The fresh perspectives talking over her past with Domenico had given her had freed something inside her.
She’d felt a brand-new lightness in the bath with him, and now she felt it from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair, like she’d shed something dark and frightening she hadn’t even known lived inside her, and now she could embrace the world with brightness and hope and love.
She wanted to embrace this brand-new world with Domenico.
Downstairs, Marnie searched the plentiful ancient rooms for Domenico, eventually finding him in his office.
It was a room she’d not entered since their marriage.
Nothing had changed since then. It was still all dark wood panelling and dark furniture countered by the light pouring in through the abundance of sash windows.
Stacks of Italian legal tomes lined the walls.
It was the most homely of his home offices and the one she’d been happiest working alongside him in. She still missed those days.
‘Your week off from work is going well, I see,’ she teased lightly as she crossed the threshold. ‘If you can drag yourself away from your desktop, do you fancy exploring the secret garden with me?’
He looked up from his desktop and gave a wan smile that didn’t meet his eyes.
‘Is something wrong?’ He looked exhausted, and, remembering why he must be so tired, she smiled.
Oh, but she felt all giddy and light inside, and she leaned down to kiss him and infuse some of her lightness into him.
Their lips made only minimal contact before he gripped her hips to stop her getting any closer.
Light brown eyes locked onto hers. There was none of the sensuous gleam in them that she’d anticipated after a night like they’d just shared, and suddenly she felt a pang of alarm.
‘Marnie…’ His throat moved. ‘We need to talk.’
The alarm growing, she reached her hands into his hair and threaded her fingers through the soft strands. Oh, it felt incredible to be able to do this. To just be able to touch him and know her touch was wanted. ‘What’s happened?’
He closed his eyes briefly. ‘Please, sit down.’
Thinking it an invitation to sit on his lap, she did just that, only to find him stiffening, and not in a sexual way. She twisted a little so she could see his face more clearly and palmed his cheek. ‘Dom?’
The strong throat moved again before he captured the hand on his cheek and gazed into her eyes. ‘Marnie, it’s time for me to let you go.’
Confounded, she looked even deeper into his eyes. ‘Go where?’
‘Wherever you want.’ He shook his head and gently moved her hand from his face. ‘I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago and setting you free.’
A piercing sound began ringing in her ears. ‘What are you talking about?’
Lips tightening, his chest rose sharply. ‘I should have let you go when you served the divorce papers on me.’
At her blank stare…blank because she just could not comprehend what he was talking about, he said, ‘When you served the divorce papers on me, I should have taken your decision with good grace—the kind of grace you would have shown if the positions had been reversed. Instead, I fought you every inch of the way. I fought dirty, and when you got pregnant, I fought even dirtier. I used your illness to my advantage. I moved you back under my roof with the false promise that I would accept you were not coming back to me. I never intended to keep that promise.’
The piercing sound in her ears was becoming louder by the second. She swallowed moisture into a throat that had gone suddenly dry, and whispered, ‘I know that.’
She’d always known, and he’d always known that she knew that particular promise had been a lie.
What she didn’t know was why it sounded like he was saying he wanted her to leave.
The ringing in her ears must be preventing her from listening to him properly because he couldn’t be saying what her increasingly clammy hands and painfully beating heart were telling her he was saying.
It wasn’t possible. You didn’t have the kind of loving intimacy they’d finally found together and then push it away.
‘You know it because you know the kind of man I am,’ he said steadily, not breaking the lock of their eyes.
‘You know me, Marnie, better than anyone. And now I know you, too. You know I am selfish and arrogant and will stop at nothing to get what I want, and I know you deserve a hell of a lot better than me. You deserve better than a man who took advantage of the fragile heart he knew had been freely given to him and treated it with contempt. You deserve better than the man who stole your dreams and destroyed them for his own selfish needs. I treated you like you were put on this earth to fulfil my needs, and now I need to let you go so you can fulfil your needs. You have never lived your life for yourself, cuoricina. You deserve the freedom to make the choices that are right for you and live your life on your own terms, and this is the only way I can give it to you.’
Holding on to his stare for dear life because now the room was starting to spin, Marnie had to fight to open her closed throat and say, ‘What if I want my freedom to be with you?’
‘How could you want that after everything I’ve done to you?
’ he asked with a pained groan before shaking his head.
‘This is the only way I can take my penance for all that I have done to you. I have to let you go, Marnie. You deserve happiness and freedom, and I deserve the hell of purgatory without you in my life. I’ve transferred a sum of money into your bank account that is the amount I should have given you when we divorced, and I’ve set about transferring the London house into your name. ’
Throat now fully closed, she shook her head, pleading mutely with her eyes for him to just stop talking.
His smile sad, he rubbed a finger the length of her cheek.
‘I know you’ve never wanted my money, but you will need it, and you will need a decent place to live and raise our child.
I understand you will probably want to keep your flat for sentimentality’s sake, but you know our child deserves to be brought up in wealth and safety.
I will arrange for my jet to take you home this afternoon and arrange for my personal possessions to be moved out before you arrive.
Consider it yours as of now. I will get my team to draw up a contract for maintenance for you and the baby.
We can deal with visitation rights in it.
Primary custody will be yours if that’s what you want, or we can share custody.
Whatever you want, however you want to do it, I will be guided by you and abide by your wishes. ’
‘Can you hear yourself?’ she whispered, the words she had to fight to get out almost strangled.
‘Yes. I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Clambering off his lap, her legs were shaking so hard that she had to lean against his desk to remain upright. Drawing all the strength she could muster into her voice, she looked him dead in the eye. ‘You’re doing what you’ve always done—what’s best for you.’
His flinch almost made her laugh. Maybe she would have laughed if she wasn’t trembling from her fight to control the tears pleading for release.
She couldn’t believe this was happening. After the closeness they’d found, the love they’d found—and it had been love, she knew it, and would never let herself believe she’d imagined what they’d shared and what she’d felt in his kisses and seen in his eyes—he was slamming the door on them.
‘Everything has always been about you and what you need, and it still is,’ she choked out.
‘Your conscience over your treatment of me has finally caught up with you, and so you’ve unilaterally decided to gift me my freedom and give me primary custody of our child as a form of penance to salve it.
How very magnanimous of you, and how very Domenico to make me fall in love with you again and then drop me from a great height, and then pretend it’s for my benefit.
Do you even believe that? After last night? ’
Now she did laugh, even as the tears finally spilled over, as the truth of his actions slapped her across the face.
‘But of course it’s about last night,’ she despaired.
‘This is you all over. You want to control everything, even what lies in our hearts.’ She wiped the tears away with the sleeve of her cardigan, but it did nothing to stem the flow.
At least she couldn’t see his face clearly through the tears.
At least she wasn’t forced to suffer the expression on his face and read the truth she knew would be resonating on it.
‘You’ll never let yourself love me, will you?
Not properly. Not with the whole of your heart.
It’s so much easier to push me away than get tied up in all those messy hot and passionate emotions that only Carmela was allowed before she broke you. ’
‘Goddamnit, Marnie, this has nothing to do with her. I’m doing this for you, don’t you see that, and I’m doing it for you because—’
‘No, you’re doing it for you,’ she interrupted, her voice cracking even as it rose in pain-filled anger.
‘Did you consider for a minute what I want? Did it cross your mind for a second to ask if I even wanted my freedom from you? No, because it was never about me. If it had been, you’d have known that I’d already forgiven you for the past. I’d forgiven you because of my own part in it, for failing to find my voice and keeping everything bottled up—you made me see that.
It was never just you, Dom. It was both of us, but you don’t want an us, not in the way I do, because if you’d asked me, I would have told you the only future I want is with you, and now it’s too late.
I forgave you the past, but I will never forgive you for this.
You want me out of your life—consider your wish granted. ’