Chapter 21
FABIANA
Applause echoed against the walls of the cathedral. Camera shutters clicked from somewhere nearby. Children laughed as they threw handfuls of rice at the aisle.
But I barely heard them. All of my attention was glued to the man beside me.
My husband.
Cosimo’s hand was wrapped around mine, his grip tight and commanding as he pulled me down the aisle and out of the church.
Snow was still falling outside, dissolving the moment it touched the dark, wet stone path leading toward the reception hall. The air smelled almost like spring.
I was still fighting to find my breath after that kiss.
I should’ve kissed him the night of the bachelorette. When his hand was on my thigh, and his gaze kept drifting to my lips. Then I could’ve blamed this response on the alcohol in my system.
There was nothing to blame now. Nothing to justify the way that kiss had splintered me into a million tiny pieces that I was still trying to frantically collect.
I shot him a glance. His jaw was tight, his brows drawn. And yet, when he looked back at me, his eyes were as wild and wanting as I imagined mine to be.
A sinking feeling filled my gut. This chemistry between us wasn’t going to lead anywhere good.
The second we stepped inside the banquet hall, I stopped short. “We need to talk.”
He looked past me, toward the glass doors where the wedding planner and photographer were hurrying to catch up. I didn’t care. I was not about to sit through dinner pretending everything was normal while wondering what the hell he’d meant at the altar.
I pulled him around the corner and yanked open the first door we encountered. It was a walk-in storage closet. I shoved him inside and shut the door behind me.
Something rattled. I patted against the wall at my back. “Where’s the light?”
Click.
The light flicked on. Cosimo’s elbow hovered by my face, and his hand was wrapped around a cord suspended from the ceiling.
“Here.”
The room was barely a room at all. Just a narrow storage closet lined with shelves stacked with extra linens, candles, and boxes of serving ware. There was just enough space for the two of us.
He took up the majority of it.
So did the memory of that kiss.
“What the fuck, Cos? You didn’t need to kiss me like that.” Maybe if I pretended to be irritated, he’d miss the way my hands were still trembling.
His gaze skimmed over my mouth. “You think you’d get one of my most closely guarded secrets in exchange for a peck?” A dry, frustrated laugh left him. “It needed to look real, Nettle.”
It didn’t just look real. It had felt real.
I swallowed. “Why would you hire a fake girlfriend?”
He swiped his palm over his lapel. By now I knew he only did that when he was nervous. “Long story.”
“Then give me the short version.”
“Haven’t I told you enough?”
“No. Fake girlfriend, fake wife… I mean, Jesus. Are you completely incapable of having a real relationship?”
“Not even my brothers know about Rosa. What else do you want from me?”
“I want to know why.”
He clicked his tongue and reached for the door handle. I swatted his hand away. “I’m not letting you go out there until you tell me.”
A frustrated breath. “Pretending to be together meant I could bring Rosa into the right rooms. She’s good at getting information.”
“She spied for you?”
“Yeah.”
It hit me then. “It was her. The woman at the restaurant.”
He gave me a grim nod.
“How long has this been going on for?”
“Three years.”
“Three years? Didn’t it make it harder for you to actually date?”
“I had no desire to date anyone. That was the other perk of our arrangement. It kept the risk contained.”
I frowned. “What risk?”
A second passed. Another. If every word out of him so far had been like pulling teeth, we’d now hit the wisdom tooth.
His jaw clenched, and for the first time since we’d walked in here, his gaze left mine and dropped to his feet.
Whatever it was, he really didn’t want to tell me.
I bit on my bottom lip. Something here didn’t add up. Why wouldn’t he tell his brothers Rosa was a spy for him? That didn’t seem like information so sensitive he had to hide it from them.
But whatever his reason for that was, he obviously didn’t want to share it with me. Should I force him to tell me? I could. I’d never held more power over him than I did here. Now. All it would take was me threatening to cause a scene, and he’d fold. He’d have no choice.
But I didn’t want to cross a line like that. I knew that if the roles were reversed, I’d despise him for it.
I exhaled a pent-up breath. “Fine. Don’t want to tell me? Don’t.”
He looked up. Something raw and vulnerable flashed inside those dark-blue eyes. He shifted on his feet, and the small movement was enough to bring us chest to chest in this tiny space.
My gaze snagged on his bottom lip. The longer we stayed here, the more bad ideas I was starting to get.
I reached behind me and found the door handle.
He wrapped his hand around mine before I could turn it. I pressed my back against the door, fighting for slivers of space. He was so close that he filled my entire field of view. Everywhere. He was everywhere.
His lips lowered close to my ear. “Vita convinced my past girlfriends to snoop through my shit. Give her information. Spy on me.”
A beat. He let go of my hand and shifted back.
Shock wrapped a claw around my lungs. “What? Why would she do that? You and her are on the same side.”
His laugh was bitter. “My mother likes to be in control even more than I do, Fabiana. She wants to know everything happening inside this family. I made a decision to put a woman on my arm who couldn’t be bought by Vita because we already had an arrangement worked out.
One who knew that if she betrayed me, she’d die.
Vita hated that she couldn’t get through to Rosa the way she’d gotten through to all the rest.”
I swallowed. My mind raced as I tried to piece it together. “How did she do it?”
“Found what they wanted. Gave it to them. Money. Fame. Favors. Everyone had something.”
“Everyone?”
“Every. Single. One. Even the last blonde I picked up at a bar three years ago and fucked that same night. Caught her snooping through my phone when I went to take a piss. Vita had planted her there for me.”
My horror felt like a living, breathing thing. No wonder Cosimo was distrustful. His own mother had engineered the conditions for it. “Three years ago. You haven’t been with anyone else for three years?”
A muscle in his jaw fluttered. “No one.”
I couldn’t hold back my gasp. That was impossible. Or it should have been. Men like Cosimo did not go three years without touching anyone. “Rosa—”
“She doesn’t like men. It was one of the many reasons I chose her—she wouldn’t get any ideas.”
He wasn’t lying. I could see it in the wariness behind his eyes, in the way his mouth tightened slightly after he said it, as if he already regretted telling me.
Inside me, my heart pounded. Hard. “Did you think Vita would use me too?”
The answer was written all over his face before he said a word.
And suddenly, a dozen things clicked into place. The way he’d warned me she’d charm me. The way he’d seemed certain I would run to her for help. Maybe even the reason he’d insisted I handle the wedding planning myself.
He’d thought I’d fall for it. Become a player in her twisted game.
I couldn’t even fault him for it. How could I when I’d just learned that every woman who got close to him had once been another pair of eyes reporting back to his mother? If Vita had gotten through to all of them, she probably would have gotten through to me eventually.
“I would never have been okay with anyone she chose for me, Fabiana.”
Of course he wouldn’t have been. Not because he was stubborn like she’d made it seem, but because anyone she touched turned into a weapon against him.
I’d made Cosimo the villain of my story. But he had his own villain to overcome.
His gaze moved over my face and then dropped to my lips again, slower this time. Deliberate.
Heat curled low in my stomach.
Was he thinking about the kiss?
Was he wondering if it would feel the same here without an audience, in this cramped little room that smelled faintly of starch and dust and candles?
I was.
“You done with the interrogation?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. It felt like I’d swallowed my tongue. Through the door, I could hear people chattering. The guests had arrived.
Cosimo planted a palm against the door beside my head. “They’ll think we’re having a fight if they see us coming out looking like this.” His voice lowered. “We can make them think otherwise.”
“What do you suggest?” I whispered, though I already knew what he meant.
He shifted closer, crowded me back against the door, and tipped my chin up with a crooked finger. “Yeah?”
I felt the heat of him, the powerful lines of his body pressing against my curves.
My heart raced. We had to. No choice. “Yeah.”
There was a part of me that hoped the kiss at the altar had been a fluke. Something that happened once by accident. Something that couldn’t be repeated.
But that hope exhaled its final breath as Cosimo’s mouth pressed down on mine.
If the room had felt too small before, now it vanished entirely. There was only him. The scrape of his teeth against my lower lip. The slick stroke of his tongue. The low sound he made when I kissed him back, like he’d wanted to stay in control, and I’d just ruined that for him.
I dragged my fingers into his hair and tugged. A moan worked its way out of me at the feel of his hands tightening on my waist. He caught my hip, pulling me into him until I felt the hard length of him against my thigh.
A flare of panic lit somewhere in the back of my mind.
This was supposed to be for show.
There was nothing fake about that.
He pressed me harder against the door, swallowing the next sound that broke from me. I was so hot, so dizzy, so completely lost in him, that I barely noticed his hand sliding down the door beside my head.
Not until his fingers found the handle.
Click.
The door gave way.
I would’ve fallen backward if Cosimo hadn’t caught me tightly against his body.
A few shocked gasps rang out, followed by laughter and cheers.
Cosimo cupped my cheek, his forehead touching mine, his breath still uneven against my lips.
“Good,” he murmured. “Now pull yourself together. We’ve got a convincing act to put on.”
The act that followed turned out to be easier than I’d expected.
Dinner was filled with toasts from various family members while servers delivered and cleared seven courses with perfect timing. There was no dancing. No chants of bacio. No need for Cosimo and me to make a further show of our affection.
Six hours after Cosimo slid a ring onto my finger, we drove through dark streets toward his house, having taken his plane back to New York.
I glanced down at the wedding band. It felt surreal. I supposed I was a married woman now. Fabiana Ferraro. By the time I got used to using my new name, our marriage would probably be near its predetermined end.
We pulled up to Cosimo’s house.
From the outside, it looked modern and imposing: gray walls, tinted windows, a clean rectangular structure that seemed designed to give nothing away. Very much like its owner.
I glanced over at Cosimo. He was typing something out on his phone, as if this were any other evening. But it wasn’t. And not just because of the kisses we’d shared.
He’d trusted me with a secret no one else knew.
Before I could second-guess myself, I reached across the seat and squeezed his hand. “I’m not going to betray your trust, Cosimo. You didn’t want me thinking you were a cheat. I don’t want you thinking I don’t know how to keep a secret. You can trust me. What you told me today stays between us.”
His dark gaze stayed on me for an extended moment before dropping lower. To my hand resting on top of his.
He didn’t say anything. But he didn’t pull away either.
When the car stopped, a maid was already waiting at the front entrance. Cosimo greeted her and then looked at me. “The staff here are people I trust. Nancy will show you to your room.” A brief pause. “I’ve got work to do.”
I frowned. Work to do. Of course. Despite what had happened in the church, despite what he’d told me in the closet, I could already feel him retreating behind his usual walls.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
He nodded and walked off.
Nancy offered me a soft smile. “Are you ready, miss?”
I smiled back, though something inside me sank. He trusted his staff enough to drop the performance the moment we’d walked in the door. There was no need to play the happy couple on our wedding night.
I followed Nancy up the stairs, feeling the full weight of the day settle over me.
Everything had changed for me.
For him, though… Perhaps he didn’t want anything to change between us at all.