Chapter 2
LUCIA / LUCY
Iknew even before I curled myself into an armchair at the farthest corner of the small library—after stacking two desks and several chairs behind the door—that sleep would be near impossible.
I was right. I don’t sleep for more than a handful of minutes at a time, startling at every sound.
The scrape of a chair…the rustle of palm leaves against glass. The hoot of an owl.
A drunk laugh drifting up from the street.
Every noise has Giovanni’s silhouette behind it now, and that alone makes me furious.
Because I refuse to spend the rest of my life flinching like prey just because my husband has decided to resurface like some Sicilian ghost with a yacht-sized ego and a private army.
Who does he think he is?
Actually—don’t answer that.
The anger builds, eating away at the corners of sleep until I’m wide awake, glaring into the dark. It’s a hot, reckless thing that simmers beneath my skin until just before sunrise, when I finally snap upright, heart hammering, decision made.
I am not hiding.
If Giovanni Dragoni thinks I’m going to scuttle around like a thief in my own life, he can choke on that assumption.
I drag my fingers through hair that’s less braids and more knots at this point, shove my feet into nothing—because my damned flip-flops are still on the beach—and slip out before the sun has fully breached the horizon.
The first few streets, I keep my fists clenched, ready to defend myself from my husband or his thugs if needs be.
Nothing and no one jumps out at me, but I’m not foolish enough to lower my guard or entertain the na?ve notion that he’s gone.
I’ve found you, my little runaway wife. At last.
He wouldn’t have just upped and left.
But… I got away from him once. Who says I can’t succeed a second time?
I ignore the mocking voice at the back of my head and creep to the end of the alley that overlooks the beach and Marcel’s Place.
The shack is as deserted as I expect it to be at this time of day. Still, I watch for a full ten minutes before I hurry to the back of the structure.
I let myself in, then force myself to stop and listen.
Quiet. Still. Exactly the way I need it.
On tiptoes, I cross the sandy floor to the back of the kitchen and the locker where I left my things, and I retrieve my phone, my purse, my apartment keys from the staff locker.
My breath remains locked all the way across the street to the alley, then down between houses and gardens, listening out for the stupid drone.
Once again, I force myself to wait when I reach the row of houses and the pink one I’ve called home for almost a year and a half. A wave of sadness washes over me at the thought of leaving, but it can’t be helped.
Maybe—just maybe—I can grab a few things and vanish again before he realises I moved.
It’s a foolish hope.
I realise that even before I’m ten steps from my front door.
For starters, the door is unlocked and thrown wide open. As are the two shutters on either side of the pink door.
My stomach drops and for a moment I almost wish I’d been burgled, but even that is too much to hope for.
Because inside is… nothing. And it’s not the kind of nothing I can slot under “untidy.” Or “ransacked.”
It’s completely empty.
Every trace of me is gone.
No clothes or shoes or toothbrush or make-up.
The stupid little picture of my engagement day I took out of the frame and kept hidden behind the cereal box is gone. As is the damned cereal box.
Even my damned dental floss.
The only thing left?
My fucking flip-flops.
Placed neatly in the middle of the room.
Like a warning. Or a joke.
Or both.
A laugh punches out of me, wild and furious and a little hysterical.
Oh, he wants to play?
Fine.
I stop long enough to throw water on my face and glare at my reflection in the vanity mirror before I storm back towards the bar barefoot, feet slapping the pavement, pulse roaring in my ears.
I hate that stress and anger drive up my appetite, but it’s been a thing I’ve never been able to help. So yes, I’ll wait him out at the bar on a full fucking stomach, thank you very much. Then I’ll introduce the new me to my soon-to-be-ex-husband.
One street from the bar I left less than an hour ago, my feet freeze. Again.
Because the shack that’s not supposed to open for another four hours isn’t closed.
It’s open.
I can’t see any customers, but I hear music drifting out and a few voices rising and falling like a perfectly normal, infuriating morning.
What the actual…
I enter through the back once again, peek in, and my eyebrows rise when I spot Marcel behind the bar wearing his best shirt.
Flirty Guy from yesterday is back, drinking a green hippy smoothie type healthy drink we’ve never made before.
The beaded curtain separating the customer area from the back tinkles when I shove it aside and step inside, fury barely contained.
Marcel startles when he sees me. “Lucy—” He cuts himself off, eyes flicking nervously around. “Uh. You okay?”
I drop my purse in the office and return, grabbing for a dishcloth like nothing in the world has changed. “I’m peachy. Didn’t realise working hours have changed. I’ll get started. Hope you plan to pay me for the extra hours.”
Marcel gently—but firmly—takes the dishcloth from my hand. “You can’t do that no more, sugar,” he says quietly.
I look up at him, incredulous, as Flirty Guy stands and slowly saunters out.
“Why the hell not?”
His mouth tightens, regret flashing across his face. “You know why.”
And I do.
And God help me, that makes it worse.
After eighteen months of disappearing into a life so small and quiet I could almost forget who I was, this is how it ends?
Not with dignity.
With sides taken and with intimidation.
“I thought we were friends,” I snap.
Marcel exhales slowly. “We are. That’s why I respected your privacy. Until that privacy showed up on my beach wearing Italian tailoring and murder in his eyes.”
My anger deflates, just for a heartbeat.
Then it re-inflates, redirected, sharper, cleaner.
My fucking husband. “Where is he?” My voice is a husky croak of fury and humiliation.
Marcel jerks his chin towards the ocean.
I follow his gaze.
And there he is.
Giovanni Dragoni.
Reclined in a chair on the same spot of beach where he found me, like he owns the damned horizon. Linen shirt rolled at the sleeves. Designer sunglasses in place. Not a hair out of alignment. As pristine as if he’s stepped out of a magazine rather than into my life like a wrecking ball.
From here, I can’t see his eyes.
But I feel them burning into me. Taunting me.
I straighten. Fold my arms across my chest. And walk towards him like a woman approaching a firing squad by choice.
When I reach him, he looks at me slowly. Deliberately.
Top to bottom, his mouth thinning for a beat when he sees my dirty, gashed feet. Feet in sore need of one of those weekly pedicures he hired a beauty to bestow on me as his fiancée.
I’m pushing that unwanted reminder of the jaw-dropping luxury Giovanni Dragoni takes as his due when his gaze returns to my face.
“Hello dragunnida. You look beautiful,” he says. Calmly. “Island life suits you.”
I falter. Just for a second.
Then I recover. “Let’s get a few things straight. I’m not coming back with you.”
He shrugs and returns his gaze to the horizon. Like I’ve told him the bar ran out of limes.
And the more laid-back he gets, the angrier I become, and I absolutely refuse to fidget as he leaves me standing there like a forgotten dishrag.
“Where are my things?”
He turns his head again, fixes eyes I know are as brown as the richest chocolate on me. “I had them moved. Naturally.”
I scoff. “Naturally. Where?”
“The Emerald House. You know it?”
“Of course I do. It’s the most expensive estate on the island.” So of course that’s where he’s staying. “Return them.”
“No.” His tone sharpens slightly now. Subtle. Controlled. The lazy arrogance replaced with something colder. “My patience is finite, Lucia. And I won’t have you sleeping rough another night. I’ll grant you a few hours to get your head around the fact that your little holiday is over.”
“Holiday?” I bark. “I left you!”
“Yes.” He leans forward slightly. “In the middle of the night. Without a word. Without a warning. Without a note. I call that theft.”
The air crackles between us. “You don’t get to decide when this ends,” I snap.
His mouth curves faintly. “Actually, I do.”
“I guess we’ll see about that.” I spin away before I slap him. Probably because I’m not sure he’ll let me get away with it.
Not sure because the reason I left? I discovered I don’t know the man I married.
At all.
As I storm back to the shack, I see Marcel is staring at Giovanni with something like awe and fear in his eyes.
I turn back just in time to see Giovanni nudge his chin towards him.
Marcel steps directly into my path when I try to go behind the bar. “No,” he murmurs.
Blind rage surges. I pivot sharply and march into the walk-in freezer, slamming the door behind me and locking it.
Cold hits me instantly and I wrap my arms around myself, breath fogging, chest heaving.
Let him pound on the door. Let him shout. Let him—
“Lucia.”
“Fuck you, Giovanni. And fuck off all the way back to New York. I. Don’t. Want. You. Here.”
Silence greets my shrill words. Then I hear a firm sigh.
“Do you truly believe,” Giovanni’s voice cuts in calmly through the steel, “that a simple freezer door is going to stand between me and my wife?”
I close my eyes.
“Freezing yourself to death as a final, dramatic protest is out of the question,” he continues. “I will not allow it. Especially not when we have several decades of giddy marital bliss ahead of us.”
My jaw clenches.
“Come out, my angel. These arms have stayed empty for too long.”
I laugh sharply. “You really expect me to believe that?”
Somehow the silence grows more edgy. Definitely more lethal. “What’s that supposed to mean?”