Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 36268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 181(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 181(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
Myca shoots a furious look at my direction as she grabs her briefcase. “When you get bored playing devoted husband, don’t come crawling to me.”
The door slams behind her, and nobody moves for several seconds. The office air feels too thick. Then Shayla steps out from behind Adriano’s desk, her face several shades paler than normal.
“Where’s Sienah?”
“With the worst possible person she could be with.”
Her hands fly to her mouth. The gesture is so like something Sienah would do that it cuts fresh wounds. “What do you mean?”
Adriano is the one to answer, silver eyes grave. “He means his all-powerful father, who—if memory serves correctly—already has the ball rolling as we speak.”
THE NEXT DAYS ARE TORTURE.
Hours bleed into each other, formless and wrong. Time moves like it does in nightmares: racing when I need it to slow, crawling when I need it to fly.
I take leave from racing, the first time in twenty years I’ve voluntarily stepped away from a car. Gabriel Contini can keep his three hundred million euros. What good is being the world’s highest-paid driver when I can’t drive to the one place that matters?
My apartment becomes a mausoleum. Her coffee cup still sits by the sink, burgundy lipstick staining the rim. I can’t wash it. Can’t throw it away. Can’t do anything but stare at that perfect imprint of her mouth and remember all the mornings she kissed me goodbye with those same lips.
Five thousand mornings.
Gone.
Sicily rises from the Mediterranean like a warning. Mount Etna smokes in the distance as my chartered plane descends toward Catania, the same airport where I first saw Sienah as something more than the housekeeper’s daughter. She’d been picking up a package, nineteen and lovely and completely unaware that her fitted jeans and simple ponytail had made me forget how to breathe.
The irony tastes like ash.
I know exactly where she’ll be.
The rental car protests as I push it harder than its engine was meant to go. These winding mountain roads require respect, patience. I have neither. Just this burning need to see her, explain, beg if necessary.
I know champions don’t beg, but fuck being a champion.
My mother-in-law answers the door of the modest townhouse, and I catch the briefest glimpse of pain before her face turns completely blank, her expression closing off like storm windows.
“No.”
One word. Delivered with quiet finality.
“Lynette, please. If I could just—”
Her hand tightens on the door frame, knuckles white. For a second, I think I see her eyes glisten. Then the door closes with a soft, final click.
I stand there, stunned. The afternoon sun beats down, merciless. Somewhere a dog barks. Normal neighborhood sounds while my world falls apart.
I try again the next day. This time she doesn’t even open it all the way, just enough to show one dark eye and half a mouth pressed into a line that could’ve been carved from stone.
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
“I need to explain—”
SLAM.
The wood vibrates from the impact.
The third day, I make it as far as “I’m sorry” before the skies open up, as if Lynette has heaven itself on her side. The rain comes down in sheets, soaking me within seconds.
I stand there on the doorstep while she watches from the second-floor window. Not gloating. Just...sad. Like she’s looking at the ghost of another man who broke promises to another Posada woman.
By the time I give up and return to my car, I’m drenched. Tomorrow I’ll try again. And the next day. And the next.
As many days as it takes.
I try calling, but everything goes to voicemail, and texts are delivered but never read. Emails bounce back with [USER DOES NOT EXIST], and even expedited registered letters come back unopened, my name slashed through with vicious black ink.
Just silence from the wife who used to text me about everything from grocery lists to the shapes she saw in clouds. Who used to leave voicemails just to hear my voice on the outgoing message. Who said “I love you” every night for ten years while I gave her nothing back but physical pleasure and a credit card with no limit.
I miss her so damn much it feels like someone’s reached into my chest and is squeezing my heart with a fist made of broken glass.
Every breath cuts.
Every heartbeat is betrayal.
A WEEK PASSES, BUT there’s just silence from her end. My phone buzzes, but I let it go to voicemail even when it’s Olivio’s name that flashes on the screen. Can’t handle my younger brother’s questions right now.
Ever since abducting my wife, my own father’s only deigned to answer one—one, dammit!—of my calls.
“At least tell me how she is.”
But instead he changes the subject like my wife is no longer a topic I have any right to discuss.
“How’s negotiations going with the Prince of Contini?”
“I’m calling about Sienah, dammit.”