Chapter Seven
THE CAR WAS TOO QUIET. Just the hum of the engine and the driver's eyes fixed on the road and Bonnie in the passenger seat, not turning around, and Kendra in the back with her hands knotted in her lap and her heart in pieces.
"Please tell me the truth, Bonnie."
It was so, so hard to speak, the words coming out choked and halting, but she knew she had to say them while there was still time. In a few minutes, they would be back home, and she needed to know the truth before then.
"Was Porter lying? Or was there really another girl..."
For the first time ever, Bonnie couldn't meet her eyes, and cracks started appearing all over her heart.
No. No. No.
"It's true then," she whispered.
Bonnie was having a hard time remembering her orders, with how Kendra looked as if she was mere seconds away from breaking apart, and it was taking the last ounces of her strength just to stay upright.
Kendra was finding it harder and harder to breathe. The silence from Bonnie was making things worse. It was making her think all sorts of bad things. Things that made the cracks in her heart widen—
“P-Please, Bonnie.”
Bonnie hadn't planned on speaking. She was trained for extraction and surveillance and six forms of hand-to-hand combat, but none of those had prepared her for the way Kendra La Rocca looked right now, and so she heard herself slowly and reluctantly say...
"He was nineteen when he met Marjorie.”
So that's her name then, Kendra thought dully.
Marjorie.
"His father, Il Leopardo, had died. He was alone.
Vulnerable. And Marjorie...she was a nice girl.
" Bonnie's voice was careful, like she was walking through a room with breakable things on every surface.
"And yes, he became obsessed with her. He didn't know how to deal with his grief, so he tried to distract himself with Marjorie. "
Kendra bit her lip so hard she started to draw blood. But she didn’t care. She just didn’t want to let herself cry, lest that would stop Bonnie from speaking.
"By the time he realized what he was doing was wrong, it was already too late. Marjorie had gone to the courts. A restraining order was issued, and for a while, Mr. La Rocca had become the laughingstock of the whole of Sicily."
Kendra didn’t have to close her eyes to imagine how it all transpired. The world Dario had grown up in was all about darkness and violence. It was no excuse, but she could truly see why Dario hadn’t known of any healthy way to cope with his grief.
All he had known was how to love, but it wasn’t enough, and so he had ended up loving someone too much.
"He was able to bear with it for a year," Bonnie went on.
“The taunts. The jeers. It was his way of doing penance.
Of atoning for hurting the girl he only wanted to love.
But one day, he finally lost his temper.
Beat up the man who had taunted him to his face.
Called him pathetic. Said he was forcing himself on a girl who didn't want him, who was so scared of him she had to go to the courts.
" Bonnie paused. "The man survived. But it took months of healing.
And that was the last time anyone ever talked about it.
In fact, people had ceased talking about it altogether. "
The silence that followed was something Bonnie wasn’t equipped to comprehend. “Mrs. La Rocca? I hope you don't think that what your ex-husband implied was true—"
"I don't."
Kendra said it so simply, her gaze earnest, and Bonnie started breathing a lot more easily again.
Phew.
Give her a gunfight or a sparring match anytime. Those were so much easier than having to figure out matters of the heart.
SHE KNOWS.
The words lashed his mind. His heart. His soul.
Again and again, it was all Dario could think about.
She knows.
And perhaps he should have expected this. For her to know the truth, because it was what she deserved. And for her to leave him, because it was what he deserved.
A part of him was desperate enough to consider begging her to stay. To hear him explain. But he pushed this thought away. He had already thrown away his pride once. He would not do so again.
Not when Kendra clearly didn't love him either.
Dario waited for her in the living room until she arrived, and the moment he saw his wife's tear-streaked cheeks—
"Dario?"
The way her voice trembled had his fists clenching against his sides. Was she scared of him now? The way Marjorie had been scared of him?
Kendra missed the way her husband's jaw had clenched as she came forward. Her thoughts were all focused on finding the right words to say, but it was just so hard to think straight when her heart was still hurting for him.
Dario as someone powerful took her breath away.
And he had always been that. He was like this knight who was devoted completely to protecting her.
Cherishing her. Even humoring her in the times when she could tell he absolutely believed what she was saying was hogwash, like that time she asked if it was too early to write Thelma a letter.
That was the kind of man she had married.
The kind of man she had fallen in love with.
And she was so, so grateful for everything he had done.
Everything.
But before she could even say a word—
"I received a report from my security team."
Kendra forgot about everything as soon as she heard that.
"Are you in danger?" He had told her that his days of being his father's son were long behind him.
But he had also warned her that it was a world he would never be able to completely leave because it was La Rocca blood running through his veins.
"It seems I've vastly underestimated your sister's desire and ability to inflict harm."
Kendra paled. This had to do with Thelma?
"The cameras your twin attempted to plant all over the penthouse had transmitted real-time footage of the place, and she had uploaded it to the dark web in hopes that any of my enemies would find use of it."
Kendra didn't even know what to say. The cameras. The ones she'd noticed on the screen and couldn't think about because the nightgown had been louder. Thelma hadn't been recreating the bedroom scene. She'd been building a weapon.
"I'm so sorry—"
"I was informed earlier that your ex-husband had reached out to you?"
"Y-Yes." Kendra wasn't used to Dario cutting her off so abruptly, and why was he looking at her like she had suddenly become a stranger to him?
"And that he spoke to you about my past."
Her eyes widened. Was that why he was acting like this? Her heart started aching all over again. For him.
"Dario, it's not—"
"I believe that's my line."
Kendra was starting to feel like she was losing her mind, and her heart felt the same. It didn't know whether to feel hurt for him or for herself. What was happening?
"Because it's not what you think. I've never been obsessed with you in that sense."
"I know—"
"Do you, really?"
Kendra couldn’t help flinching at the sharpness of his voice. "I don't understand why you're talking to me like this," she whispered.
Dario's jaw tightened. "I'm talking to you like this because your sister's criminal acts had put people's lives on the line.
Have you ever thought about that?" He took a step toward her, and she saw his fists clench at his sides, the knuckles going white.
"The whole staff working at the penthouse.
They're in danger because of what she did. "
No. No. No.
She hadn't thought of that. How could she not have realized—
"Because you're stupid." Dario forced himself to say the words even if it killed him to do so, and the way he saw his wife jerk and pale...
That killed him, too, but he forced himself not to care about this either.
This was how it was supposed to be from now on.
"I chose you because you fit my requirements. And I never told you what those requirements are, have I?"
Kendra tried to take a step back, but his hand shot out, his fingers locking around her wrist like a chain that held her in place.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"I d-don't think we should—"
“You don’t think we should what?” he bit out. “Talk about the truth?”
Kendra focused on struggling to free herself. The pain of his grip was easier to bear than the words her husband was throwing her way—
"I chose you because of two things, Kendra."
“S-Stop—”
But this only made his grip tighten, and when she looked up at him, thinking she could plead for him to just let go—
No.
She could no longer speak because the man in front of her wasn’t just a stranger.
“You turned me on. And you amused me. Just that."
Instead, he was a man who was just like Porter, when her ex-husband no longer wanted her.
"You were never an obsession." Dario’s voice was hollow now. Dead. Like he was reading from a page he'd already decided to burn. "And right now, you're nothing but a liability, and I want you out of my life for good."
His fingers started to uncurl from her wrist, one at a time. He was giving her the freedom she had wanted earlier, but now she had the most pathetic desire to beg him—
"The driver's waiting for you outside. He'll drive you to wherever you want."
Please, please, please hold on to me.
Kendra’s wrist was completely free now, but to her, it felt as if he had just thrown her out of his heart.
And when he turned his back on her like she had already ceased to exist—
Tears blurred her eyes.
No. No. No.
She turned away clumsily. Blindly. Her hand found the wall, and then the doorframe, and then the cold air outside, and she couldn't see where she was going because everything was blurring together, the house and the trees and the life she had thought was hers—
How could she have gotten everything wrong again?
DARIO FORCED HIMSELF to stay still as he listened to his wife leave.
It was better this way.
She was not for him, considering how she had believed someone like Selleck so easily.
Aside from Bonnie, he had someone else tailing his wife for added security incognito. And it was that man, Juanito, who had managed to capture the entire confrontation on camera. And after what Dario had watched—
It was better this way, he told himself doggedly.
The way she had cried over Selleck? That said it all. Selleck had cheated on her with her own sister, but she had still believed the other man. Had still cried for him. Had still said ‘I'm sorry about what happened to you’ to the man who had destroyed her life.
He knew then that when she came back, it would be to tell him she was leaving—
The door opened again, and when his heart slammed against his chest, it was then Dario knew.
I love her.
It was pathetic, yes, but it was also the truth.
He loved his wife.
He loved her to the point that if she had indeed come back—
The reason why no longer mattered.
And if she came back with demands—
He didn’t have to know what they were.
Whatever she wanted, he would give it.
All he needed was her, and if he had to pretend, the way she told him she had used to pretend in her first marriage, then he would do it, too. Because life with her in whatever form was better than any kind of life without—
“Is it true, Mr. La Rocca?”
He spun around even though he already knew from the voice alone it wasn’t her.
Kendra hadn’t come back.
Instead, it was Bonnie, and in all the years she had worked for his family, Dario had never heard her sound in this much distress.
"Juanito called me. He said you sent Mrs. La Rocca away?"
"Why are you even surprised at this?" he asked hollowly. "You were there yourself when Selleck—"
Bonnie stalked past him.
What the—
It was the first time for the older woman to display such rudeness, and yet he still found himself stalking after her, knowing instinctively that she wasn’t doing this on a whim. But when she ended up leading him to the dining room—
"Do you see this, Mr. La Rocca?" Bonnie asked heavily.
Dario’s steps crashed to a halt by the arched doorway as he saw how the table had been set for a candlelit dinner for two. There were also multiple dishes...of eggs?
"She was planning to tell you she was in love with you.”
“That was then,” he said tonelessly, “when she didn’t yet know about my past—”
“Then what about this?” Bonnie shoved the brown paper bag into his hands—the one Kendra had asked her to pick up at the last minute, and the reason Bonnie had only arrived back now. "Look."
Dario bent down as a book fell out of the bag.
A Marriage Centered on Him: The Best Gift A Wife Can Give
"Do you see it now, signore?” Bonnie asked painfully. “Would she want to give you this still if she was thinking of leaving you?"
Dario stared at the book in his hands. And then at the eggs on the table.
And then at the empty doorway his wife had walked through, crying, because he had called her stupid and told her she was nothing but a liability and uncurled his fingers from her wrist like she was something he was letting go of on purpose.
His chest was so tight he could no longer breathe.
What had he done?