Chapter 28
KARINA
I barely know Frankie, and I have no siblings of my own, but I’m devastated for her.
She called Dante to tell him the news, then went back to the main house and sat slumped at the kitchen table with me and Candi at her side until he showed up.
Within minutes, the dining room became a flurry of activity.
Unsure who all the men gathered around Frankie were, I quietly slipped away and retraced my steps back to Marco’s room—our room.
There’s still a queasy feeling in my gut.
I can’t shake the fear that my family is responsible in some way for this situation with Frankie’s sister.
I just found out that they probably arranged the Bellanti patriarch’s death and put out hits on Marco and the rest of his family.
Kidnapping a teenage girl? Absolutely in the Bruno wheelhouse.
Shame fills me as I sink onto the corner of the bed.
I’ve been married less than two days and already the pieces are starting to crumble. How is Marco going to feel about me if he finds out my family has plotted even more devastation against his? Will he try to get our marriage annulled? Or just kick me out? Where will I go?
With no way to reach my husband, there’s nothing I can do but sit here and fret and panic and anxiously await his return.
I’m cursing the fact that I still don’t have a cellphone.
The Apple store is going to be our very first stop when we take our shopping trip for my new wardrobe and other essentials.
I can’t live like this. I need to be able to communicate with the outside world.
Especially in times of emergency, like right now.
Popping to my feet, I pace the room. My body is jittery and on edge. I can’t sit still; my brain won’t stop going around and around.
I’m a Rossi. A Bruno by blood, thanks to my mother.
And I went behind all their backs and married a Bellanti.
We have created an explosive device with our union.
Is it even possible that my family doesn’t know what I’ve done yet?
Maybe they think I’ve simply run away. If so, they’re probably looking for me right now.
Or else…maybe I’m dead to them forevermore, thanks to the shame I brought upon them by disappearing on my wedding day. As if I could be so lucky.
But if they do know who I married…then Livvie’s disappearance has to be the work of Uncle Sergio. I pray to God it isn’t, but this has his stink all over it.
Mercutio is the only one who knew the identity of my secret lover.
God, my poor cousin. He’s already been punished because of my actions—and my uncle isn’t above more aggressive tactics if he wants to bleed more information out of him, either.
In which case, he’s been forced to tell my uncle everything by now. Hence this revenge kidnapping.
Heat creeps up my neck. Guilt, shame. I need to know, and I need to know now.
But first, I need to find a phone.
Leaving the bedroom, I make my way downstairs, hoping to find one of the offices I saw earlier when Frankie was giving me the tour.
I make a few wrong turns and then finally veer into the correct wing, where I see one of the offices with its door left open.
It doesn’t seem to be anyone’s personal office, more like a common area workspace, so I cautiously enter.
It’s furnished in a mix of English leather and contemporary furniture, and a cordless telephone perches on the corner of the desk. Picking up the receiver, I dial my father’s phone number by heart. It connects on the third ring, and my heart instantly starts to pound.
“Who is this?” my dad answers gruffly, not recognizing the number.
“It’s me. I just wanted to tell you not to come after me.” I can’t mention Livvie—if my family doesn’t know where I am and who I’m with, it will only tip them off. I have to play this like I simply ran away, at least until I know more.
There’s a pause, and then he hisses, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Something inside me snaps. My fear turns to anger. “Were you even worried when you realized I was gone, or were you only pissed that your most valuable pawn was off the table?”
“Oh, Karina. You stupid girl.” He sighs heavily into the phone, his disappointment evident. “Did you not think there would be consequences for your actions? Or were you too selfish to consider that before you ran off with a Bellanti?”
Shit. He knows. Which means they all know.
And no, foolishly, I didn’t consider the consequences.
I thought Pietro would be pissed and my uncle would be pissed and everyone in the family would disown me and that would be that.
I never thought anyone else would suffer because of me.
My heart was too full of hope and love and sweet relief and excitement.
But my dad’s comment only serves to confirm my suspicion that something has already been done that can’t be undone. Nausea burns the base of my throat.
“Stay away from this family,” I warn, trying to sound more self-assured than I feel. Hoping against hope that they’re not responsible for Livvie’s disappearance. That she’ll show up any second, that the team downstairs has already located her and that she’s on her way here, safe and sound.
“It’s too late for that,” my dad says.
Dread unspools in my belly at the tone of his voice. Because it’s not threatening. It’s almost…regretful. What’s done is done.
“What do you mean?” I ask, desperately clinging to denial, my knees gone weak.
“We have the girl, Karina. We have Olivia. But you already knew that, didn’t you? It’s why you called. You’re not so clever as you think.”
Covering the phone with my hand, I gasp for air, my throat closing up, the floor seeming to go out from under my feet.
“How could you?” I can barely get the words out.
“You should ask yourself the same. Maybe she’ll have to take your place in the wedding you skipped out on. We can’t leave Pietro with an empty bed, can we?”
“Dad—”
“Do you think your uncle will make this easy on any of you?” he cuts me off. “He is humiliated, furious. And you must pay, Karina. You know how he is.”
With that, the line goes dead.
Sinking to the floor, I hold the phone loosely in one hand until it slips to the floor.
Oh God, oh God. Livvie. No. This is all my fault. I’m in way over my head here.
What have I done? What the hell did I think I was doing, running off with Marco like that? I was so na?ve, just a silly, bookish girl being traded away, and now I’ve turned into some kind of key player?
I need to find Marco. I have to tell him what’s happened.
Rising slowly, I take a deep breath and go back into the hall.
Marco said his meetings were in the Bellanti offices, and although I didn’t visit them today on my tour, Frankie did point them out to me on our walk to the tasting room. I rush down the hall, hoping I can get to Marco right away, that he isn’t still in one of his important meetings.
But as I approach the first floor library, I hear a tense, muffled conversation coming from inside the room. One of the voices has the timbre and cadence of Marco’s, I’m certain of it. The door is slightly ajar. I approach hesitantly, intending to knock but anxious at interrupting.
“Armani, Jesus, wait a minute—”
It’s Marco. His voice makes my heart jump.
“What the FUCK were you thinking?” a male voice shouts back, an accompanying thump making me think he must have just slammed his fist on a desk or into a wall. Armani, it must be.
The anger in this new voice freezes me in place, making my stomach clench, my senses suddenly on high alert.
“I was thinking about this family, that’s what!” Marco yells. “Are you going to listen to me, or would you rather keep yelling?”
Despite my eagerness to talk to Marco, alarm bells are sounding in my brain.
I’ve been well trained by my uncle regarding the conversations of men—which I am never to interrupt, God forbid actually participate in.
Bursting in on Marco and his brother might cause even more problems. So, I stay where I am. Holding my breath.
Shuffling like papers on a desk. A chair sliding back. “Fine. Speak. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't have this marriage annulled.”
My heart plummets. Armani is talking about the wedding.
One of them huffs out a long sigh, and then Marco says, “Look, I had a plan. I knew who she was from the get-go, and I knew how valuable she could be.”
W-what? Marco had a plan all along? I was nothing but a fucking pawn, yet again? My stomach churns, and a wave of sickening vertigo hits me.
“Go on,” Armani grunts.
“I’ve been trying to get info out of her about her family, their business, anything that might help us in tracking down our suspect,” Marco says. “But she’s clueless. A dead end.”
No…no, no, no. Marco wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do this to me.
“And the wedding, was necessary why?” Armani asks sourly.
Marco laughs. He fucking laughs. “I fucking hate her fiancé. I didn’t want him to win.”
My legs buckle as the world crashes around me. Everything Marco’s ever said to me—everything he’s ever done to me, everything he’s ever made me feel—all of it was lies.
A slice of pain spears the center of my chest. Pressing a hand there, I scan the hallway for the nearest door to the outside world and hurry to it, shoving it open and gasping for air as the chest pain comes again. I fall to my knees in the grass, dazed, tears spilling down my face.
So this is what it feels like when a heart breaks.
My fairy tale was nothing but an act of deception.
Dear Jane Austen never prepared me for this. She didn’t even begin to touch the depths of this pain.
Shakespeare got it right, though. Juliet understood.
But it turns out, Marco is no Romeo.