33. Dante
THIRTY-THREE
Dante
I t felt good to be in the flat with Elysa.
It felt damn good to sleep in the same bed with her.
And it was fucking perfect to make love with her before we fell asleep and then again when we woke up.
“When you first asked me to move back into the flat, I wondered if you were doing it as part of damage control…you know, for the sake of appearances,” I confessed at breakfast.
She rolled her eyes.
“I don’t give a shit about appearances, Dante. You know that.”
I stroked her cheek with a finger, delighting in how I could just touch her whenever I felt like it.
Hold her when I wanted.
Kiss her.
Make love to her.
It was the best feeling in the world.
That good feeling didn’t last long.
When I got to work, I could see that everyone was on high alert, thanks to the media circus surrounding the affair rumors.
Pippa barged into my office where I was in a meeting with our head of brand, discussing some new acquisitions we intended to make in South America.
I wondered if Elysa would like to visit Argentina's wine country with me.
“Dante.” Her tone was brisk but urgent. “You need to come with me. Now.”
“What is it?” I braced for the bad news.
“Elysa’s doing the press conference,” she stated, and for a moment, I thought I’d misheard her.
“What?” I stopped dead in my tracks, staring at her like she’d just sprouted another head. “What do you mean, Elysa’s doing the press conference? What is she doing?”
“She called the press conference herself.” Pippa gestured for me to follow her down the hallway. “She’s in the Palazzo ballroom. We should get down there.”
“How would she even know how to call a press conference?” I asked, walking briskly.
“She may have…don’t fire me, alright.”
I sighed. “She made you do it without telling me.”
“Yes,” Pippa admitted.
When I walked into the ballroom, I saw Elyssa standing at the podium at the front of the room. Her back was straight, her chin was high, and her hands rested lightly on the sides of the lectern.
Cameras flashed in bursts, and the low murmur of reporters filled the room, but Elysa didn’t falter. She was calm, composed, and, I realized with great pride, completely in control.
I stopped just inside the door.
She spoke in Italian as she addressed the crowd of journalists. Although her accent had a tinge of American, it didn’t detract; it only enhanced the image she portrayed of a committed wife who learned the language of her husband’s country.
“My husband is one of the most decent men I know,” she said in Italian. “He has never behaved unprofessionally with Lucia Falcone, though she certainly has when she told me lies that she was having an affair with Dante.”
There was a lot of murmuring from the journalists, and cameras flashed relentlessly.
“Our marriage is our business and no one else’s,” she continued.
A journalist shouted, “But you’re not living together.”
“Didn’t I just say that my marriage is our business and certainly not yours?” she snapped. “We’re here to discuss the accusations made by the Giordano Hotel Group’s former general counsel. The reason I’m here is because she accused my husband of adultery, which he isn’t capable of.”
“But what about the photographs?” someone demanded in English.
There was a moment of silence before she effortlessly switched to English and addressed the room with the same poise.
“The rumors and photographs are nothing more than an attempt to discredit him and, by extension, my marriage and me. Someone took innocuous business meetings and twisted them into something they’re not. I was on the train to Piedmont when one of those photos was taken, and I can assure you—there were at least twenty of us in that car, including me.” She shook her head. “Even if he were the most dishonest asshole in the world, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to grope his mistress in front of his entire work team… and his wife.”
Laughs rang out amongst the journalists.
I could barely breathe as I listened to her. She wasn’t just defending me—she was publicly declaring her loyalty and her love, even after everything I’d done to push her away.
Several reporters began shouting questions. Elysa held up her hand like she’d been giving press conferences for a lifetime. The crowd quieted almost immediately. She answered each of them calmly, alternating between Italian and English, depending on which language the question was asked in. She dismissed questions that were too invasive, calling them inappropriate without so much as blinking, but she answered others with a grace that made me feel like the luckiest man in the world.
And then she said something that floored me.
“My husband and I love each other very much. These past months have been taxing since we lost his grandfather—and yet, we’ve been working through our grief, and it’s vulgar of Lucia Falcone to weaponize her ambition in this manner. But the fact that she’s accusing Dante with no proof says more about her character than my husband’s. It shows that in addition to being a pathetic human being, she’s also a lousy lawyer. And, now we’re done with this. We will not be engaging with her further in the media, but rest assured we will be slapping her with a libel suit big enough to make her head spin.”
The room buzzed with murmurs, and I knew the reporters were eating it up. She’d just thrown Lucia under the bus in the most professional, tactful way possible.
I made my way through the crowd, ignoring the flashes of cameras and the murmurs that followed me until I was standing right beside her at the podium.
She turned to look at me, her expression unreadable, and for a moment, it felt like the whole world had stopped.
“Elysa.” I held out my hand, and she put hers in mine and smiled.
“You’re late,” she joked.
Chuckles ran through the room.
“I was so mesmerized by you on stage that I couldn’t move.” I slid an arm around her and kissed her temple .
Journalists now started asking me questions. I raised my hand, and it took a few moments, but finally, silence fell in the room.
“I don’t engage with the media, usually, when such baseless claims are made.”
I looked at Elysa and felt my heart expand a few sizes in my chest. How had I ever thought she didn’t belong in my world? I thought Lucia did, and she was a viper. Elysa and I fit together, which was all that mattered.
“Now I’m learning that if I don’t speak up when you disparage me without cause, my wife will do it for me. And since she does it so eloquently, I may let her handle it in the future as well.”
Laughter sounded in the room.
“Thank you for your time,” I said to the reporters.
She leaned so her voice carried through the microphone. “Let’s not do this again over thoughtless remarks and photos. It’s hurtful to us and insults your intelligence.”
She winked at me, and I set my mouth on hers.
The room erupted in chaos—cameras flashed, reporters shouted—but none of it mattered. All I could focus on was the feel of her lips against mine and the warmth of her hand as it came up to rest lightly on my chest.
I didn’t care that most of the European gossip media was in the room. They could see and write about it all they wanted, as long as they saw and wrote that Dante and Elysa Giordano were a couple in love.
“ Ti amo ,” I whispered after we broke apart.
“I love you, too,” she replied, her eyes bright and clear, her smile that of a siren’s.
When we stepped off the stage, Pippa looked at us with what I could only describe as relief .
“ Che perfetto .” She clapped her hands together. “Absolutely perfect. The story is going to flip by tomorrow morning. Mark my words—Lucia’s finished.”
I didn’t care about Lucia. All I cared about was the woman standing beside me, the woman who had just gone to war for me in front of the entire world.
As we left the ballroom, Elysa slipped her hand into mine, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I felt like I could breathe again. Because she wasn’t just standing beside me in that press conference. She was standing beside me in life. And I wasn’t going to take that for granted ever again.