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)
“I was afraid of that.”
“What do you—”
Fuck.
There’s no point saying anything else, with my own father hanging up on me.
And I think that’s when something in me finally snaps.
“WELCOME HOME, DARLING.”
The voice is Sienah’s, but wrong. Too bright. Too confident. Missing that soft uncertainty that made me want to gather her close and keep her safe from everything, including myself.
She’s standing in a kitchen I don’t recognize, wearing that blue sundress I bought her in Positano but she never wore because she said it was too revealing. Except now she looks comfortable in it, radiant in it, glowing with a happiness I’ve never put on her face.
A man walks through the door. Tall, dark-haired, face blurred like a dream but his presence solid and real. He drops his briefcase and crosses to her in three strides, pulling her into the kind of kiss I’m only now realizing I never gave her. Not really. Not the coming-home-to-you-is-everything kind of kiss.*
“I love you,” she whispers against his mouth.
The words I trained her not to need.
“I love you too.” The words flow from him easily, naturally, like breathing. Like they cost nothing. Like they’re not the hardest fucking words in human language.
Her face blossoms. There’s no other word for it. She transforms into something incandescent, and I realize with crushing clarity that this is what she could have looked like every day if I hadn’t been such a coward.
“Come here,” she whispers, taking his hand.
I try to move, try to stop this, but I’m frozen. Trapped. Pounding on barriers that don’t exist while she leads another man toward their bedroom.
She turns back once, and for a moment I think she sees me. Think she’ll stop this nightmare. But she looks right through me like I’m already a ghost, already erased from her life as thoroughly as she’s trying to erase herself from mine.
Then she starts unbuttoning her dress, and I’m screaming but no sound comes out, thrashing against nothing while she offers another man everything that used to be mine—
I wake with her name tearing from my throat, sheets soaked with sweat, heart hammering like I’ve just run five flights of stairs again.
No. Fuck. No.
My phone screen glows 3:47 AM. No messages. No missed calls. Just that digital silence that’s been eating me alive for days.
I check anyway, desperate for any sign of her. A read receipt. A typing indicator that appears and disappears. Anything that proves she still exists in the same universe as me.
Nothing.
Always nothing.
The ring on my pinky catches the phone’s light, throwing fractured rainbows on the ceiling.
Just like her eyes used to catch the light when she smiled.
Used to.
Past tense.
Everything about her is past tense now.
I stumble to the bathroom, splash water on my face. The mirror shows a stranger with hollow cheeks, three-day stubble, eyes like burnt-out headlights. This is what Aivan Cannizzaro looks like without his wife.
Pathetic.
Lost.
Exactly what I deserve.
MY PARENTS ARRIVE FOR lunch at some tourist trap near the harbor. I haven’t slept since the nightmare, haven’t showered, probably look like death walking.
“You look terrible,” Miguel observes calmly. “What have you been up to?”
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that,” I bite out, “considering you’re the one who had my wife abducted?”
Selena looks at me with a pained expression. “I know you don’t truly think that, Aivan.”
“What else am I supposed to think when I can’t even talk—”
“It’s not that you can’t, mijo,” Miguel interrupts. “But it’s that you don’t deserve to after what you’ve done.”
Anger gets the best of me, with my fist slamming hard against the table, but it’s only my stepmother who flinches. “Basta! You have no right—”
My father’s face hardens. “If I can arrange your wedding, what makes you think I can’t just as easily arrange your divorce...and another wedding for Sienah to another man?”
Did my own father just threaten—
Did I just fucking hear—
I stare at the older man in enraged disbelief. “She’s my wife.”
“She is also my daughter-in-law and the only child of someone we consider famiglia. What I care about is what’s best for Sienah—”
“And you think I’m not?” I explode.
“We know you can be the best for her—” It’s Selena speaking again, and just like how it always with my stepmother, her few choice words are more than enough to knock me off my high horse. “But did you ever care to try? Were you ever the best for her, Aivan? Because all I remember from the past ten years was your wife doing everything she can to please you while receiving nothing in return.”
Every word she says cuts me to the core, and I just have no fucking way to defend myself because it’s true.
All of it is so fucking true, but...does that really have to mean I’ve lost her for good?
“She might never have said the words, but you knew, Aivan. We all knew that she loved you, but you never...” Selena’s voice falters as she struggles not to cry. “The whole world noticed every time you broke her heart! She might not have ever said a word, but it is so easy to see how you’ve been taking her for granted.” Selena’s face finally crumples, and my father covers her hand with his in a protective gesture that makes me swallow hard.