Present Day
“I JUST—WELL, WHAT I’M trying to say is, will you marry me?”
I blinked at the man on one knee beside me. Board shorts, no shirt. Holding a massive diamond ring in a black velvet box. If I put it on and fell overboard, I would sink straight to the ocean floor.
Lying on a lounge chair, the yacht gently rocking in the waves, I shielded my eyes from the sun. “Vincent, I thought it was illegal to be married to two men at once? Are you telling me I’ve been living a lie all this time?”
Vincent sighed. “Everyone knows your marriage is a sham. There’s no relationship between you and Richard. You don’t even wear a ring.”
The diamond he held sparkled in the sun, blinding me. I sat up and wondered why things like this always happened to me. “Even if I could marry you, Vincent . . . I wouldn’t because I’d drive you crazy within a week.”
“Crazy,” Valentina agreed from the chaise beside me, and sipped her mojito through a straw.
“I’m terribly messy,” I continued. “Even my housekeeper is messy. That’s how messy my life is.”
“Gianna, I don’t care about any of that. It’s just . . . I’m in love with you.”
Valentina choked. Then coughed and smacked her chest.
Ironic, how, in our life, a man proposing marriage was less bizarre than an admission of love.
I fingered the gold body chain crisscrossing my bare midsection as my gaze swept the yacht. Everyone’s eyes were glued to us. Sympathy filled my chest. Love sucked. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Well, except Hitler. And definitely Lord Voldemort.
I stood. “Come get a drink with me, will you, Vincent?”
He sighed, lifted his head to the sky. He knew I was going to turn him down gently, but eventually, he closed the ring box with a sad little click and got to his sandaled feet. I padded below deck and headed toward the small bar with every intention of making a really strong drink.
“Why do you love me?” I asked, pouring Patrón into a glass.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re . . . so . . . gorgeous, Gianna. Whenever I see another woman, I can’t stop myself from comparing her to you.”
Was that all it took to love someone?
I reached for the orange juice, but at the last minute, changed course and instead added more tequila to the glass.
“I want to take care of you, Gianna . . . to get to know you better than anyone else.”
Now, that was kind of sweet.
Nevertheless, this man would run for the hills the moment he became aware of my daddy issues. Vincent loved the me he saw: the bubbly, fresh, and social me. He wouldn’t know what to do with the mess underneath, the one I tried to hide one panic attack at a time.
“Vincent, you know I can’t marry you.” I turned around, and that’s when he kissed me. My full glass of tequila sloshed over the rim and onto my hand. He grabbed my face between his warm, soft hands and pressed his lips against mine. Gently. Passively. Like if he wasn’t careful, I’d break.
Bite me. Pull my hair. Push my back against the wall.
Still, the press of his lips was soft and sweet and uninspiring. A sigh of disappointment played in my mind. He pulled back, breaths heavy, like he’d had an entirely different experience than me.
That was the first kiss I’d had since an unmentionable dirty fed. And while a part of me was dying for more, from anyone who could sate the need inside me, the other couldn’t be more impassioned.
“That was . . . wow,” he breathed.
I tossed back the rest of the liquor. It burned away the taste of his cherry ChapStick.
“Wow, right?” he questioned.
“What?” I mumbled. “Oh, yes . . . wow.”
He grabbed my sticky, tequila-doused hand. “Give us a chance, Gianna. I’ll take you places—show you the world. There is nothing I wouldn’t give you.”
I could imagine most women would be over the moon to be in my position right now. But me? It only made me angry. Heat pricked beneath my skin.
“You don’t get it, Vincent, do you? I can’t just divorce my husband and run away with you.” I ripped my hand away and realized I had said that in rapid-fire Italian. Heaviness settled on my shoulders. I took a deep breath and tried again in English. “A divorce isn’t possible for me, Vincent.”
He swallowed, rubbed his brow in thought. “Okay. We don’t need the title then. Just . . . be with me.”
God, I wished I was less of a Tin Man. I wished all the possible love I could give hadn’t been stolen from me the first twenty-odd years of my life. I wished I was normal. Because here stood this perfect man professing his love for me, and my heart didn’t even twitch.
“My life isn’t as liberating as you must imagine, Vincent. I can’t cuckold my husband. I couldn’t promise your safety if it was found out.” I sighed sadly. “Mine either, honestly.” I was pretty sure Ace was on his final straw with me.
Vincent looked disgusted. “Your own family would hurt you?”
A light laugh escaped me, and I was surprised it wasn’t bitter. I guessed I had a better grasp on my demons than I thought. “Maybe not physically, but they could make things very unpleasant for me.” Like sending me home to Chicago . . .
He ran a hand into my hair, lightly grasping the back of my head. The physical contact had become so foreign over the years goosebumps rose on my skin.
“We can keep us a secret.”
“This isn’t Romeo and Juliet,” I said quietly, pulling his hand from my hair. “But if you push this, Vincent, we might end up like them.”
I stepped around him and headed back to the deck.
My mamma’s words filled my head with a sense of melancholy and the smell of her floral perfume.
One day, you’re going to be a little heartbreaker.
What a terrible fate.
I wrestled my apartment door open, dropping my purse in the process, and then flicked on the light. The bulb in the living room popped and then faded, bathing the room in darkness.
“Oh, no, no, no,” I muttered, as my eyes drifted to the light switch in the kitchen. It sat only ten feet away, yet the distance began to stretch until it felt like a mile. My heart tripped over every beat, and I wiped my clammy hands on my swimsuit cover. You can do it, I assured myself. The dark is only an absence of light. It can’t hurt you.
I stepped forward and then froze in cold fear as the darkness morphed into a house of mirrors, reflecting every nightmare I’d ever lived through. My lungs tightened, and I took a step back.
I slid down the wall beside the door in the hall and tried to stop the shake in my hands. Pulling my phone from my purse, I called Lorenzo. It went straight to voicemail. I cursed, choosing the next contact on the list.
“What?” Luca answered.
I swallowed. “My light bulb burnt out.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I thought you were over that shit.”
“No, I was just high.”
“So save me the trouble and do a line.”
“My therapist says drugs don’t fix problems, they only prolong them.” Now, I only used blow when the loneliness seemed darker than the guilt of a high.
“He did, did he? Just how much are you sharing with him, Gianna?”
“Just all the sordid details of your life.”
He grunted. “Must keep him entertained.”
“Or nauseous,” I retorted.
He made a noise of amusement and then hung up.
I pulled my legs to my chest, rested my head against the wall, and once again waited for a man to save me from a problem another created.
Luca stepped off the elevator twenty minutes later, large form, crisp gray suit, and all. I didn’t look at him as I stated matter-of-factly, “There are two-thousand-twenty-two bricks in that wall.”
He was amused. “If I wasn’t wondering that exact thing myself, I’d say you live a sad life, Gianna.”
“Ha ha.”
While he changed the bulb, I flipped on every light in the apartment for simple peace of mind. “You want a beer?” I asked.
“No.”
I got one for myself and plopped onto the couch. As I went to take the first drink, the beer was ripped from my hands. I sighed.
“Really?”
Luca took a pull on the bottle and sat beside me. He was a large man and didn’t care how much space he took up. Rather than feeling like a sardine in a can, I stretched out my legs, resting them across his.
“We need to have a chat.” He rested an arm across my thighs, his eyes coasting around the living room.
“About?”
“Well, first off, your marriage—or lack thereof—with Richard, and your ever-growing relationship with Vincent Monroe.”
I sighed, knowing I was in trouble. “I would love to discuss that with you, but, gosh, I’m hungry. Are you hungry?” I tried to jump to my feet, but he grabbed one of my thighs, making me choose to fall back to the couch rather than awkwardly to the floor.
“People are talking, Gianna.”
I stole my beer back. “Why do you care if people talk?”
“Ace is getting married, and we need to keep up appearances with the Abellis.”
“Oh yeah. Poor Adriana.” I pouted my lips and took a sip.
“You will attend the luncheon this Sunday with Richard.”
“Yes, sir.” I rolled my eyes.
“And this thing with Vincent needs to cool down. Fast.” His gaze went hard. “Or I will cool it down for you.”
“I promise you, there’s no fire where Vincent is concerned.” A part of me wished there was—to be swept up in an intense affair, one in which we’d both rather die than be without each other. A part of me ached for it, while the other didn’t believe in fairy tales.
“Where there’s Gianna, there’s fire,” Luca muttered, pushing my legs off him and getting to his feet.
“Thank you, Luca.”
He made a noise of acknowledgment and shut the door behind him.
Like most nights, I headed to the kitchen. The recipe was my mamma’s. All of them were. Some of them I’d forgotten or hadn’t gotten a chance to ever ask about, and I often fantasized of going to Chicago in a blaze of glory just to retrieve her old cookbooks. My imagination was a sad place.
The smell of carbonara filled the apartment as I sat at the table with my plate.
The quiet ticking of the clock dulled my mind. A siren blared somewhere below on a busy street. The air conditioner kicked on.
I spun some pasta onto my fork and took a bite.
Unfortunately, loneliness still thrived in the light.
