Page 50 of Magnus
Patrice gasped, her face pale beneath her expertly applied makeup. “Of course not. Why would you even think such a thing?”
Sapphie could feel a nerve pulsing in her tightly clenched jaw. “Possibly because that’s what the two of you told the police when you asked them to put out a warrant for my arrest.”
“We were upset,” Patrice choked. “We didn’t mean it. We only wanted…” She turned to her husband. “Roman, tell Sapphie we would never have gone through with having her arrested, or taken Angel away from her.”
“I will, honey,” Roman assured, an older version of his blond-haired, blue-eyed son, although his blond hair was more liberally sprinkled with gray than it had been two years ago. “But first, perhaps Sapphie would like to tell us who these gentlemen are that she’s brought with her? Is one of them the Mr. Wilder who made an appointment to see us, or was that a complete ruse?” He narrowed his gaze initially on the two Wynter brothers before moving to the men behind them.
Sapphie straightened to her full height, her gaze unwavering as she answered him. “No ruse. Mr. Wilder is waiting in the SUV. This is my fiancé, Magnus Wynter,” she introduced confidently. “His brother Fergus. Along with six of the men who work for their company, Wynter Security.”
Magnus had never feltprouder of Sapphie than he did at this moment. Not just because she had publicly claimed him as her fiancé, but because he could now clearly see how much she had needed to confront the Carluccis herself on behalf of her daughter and herself.
Which wasn’t to say he wasn’t going to make sure the older couple knew they were dealing with far more than the daughter-in-law they had once tried to break by taking her daughter away from her.
As far as he was concerned, Angel washisdaughter too now, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to take the little girl away from Sapphie and him.
The Carluccis’ home was everything Magnus had thought it would be, a huge sprawling mansion that was far too big for two people but spoke of their social standing rather than comfort.
Roman Carlucci was probably twenty years older than him and thick around the waist. His blond hair was also liberally sprinkled with gray, and there were deep grooves beside his eyes and mouth.
Patrice was about the same age as her husband and fashionably thin, with dyed blonde hair and expertly applied makeup that couldn’t quite disguise the unhappy lines fanning out from beside her eyes.
The couple took them into a sitting room, in which Magnus’s men immediately positioned themselves strategically against the four walls, their bodies and eyes on full alert for any danger.
It was an elegant room but somehow characterless. The latter, Magnus realized with a frown, was probably because there were no family photographs on display, either on the side dresser or above the fireplace.
Correction: there was one photograph sitting proudly on the ornate table beside the television set. It was of a happily grinning little girl and a more serious-faced young woman, both of them having golden hair and violet eyes.
Angel and Sapphie.
Magnus turned to look at Sapphie when he heard her gasp beside him, realizing from the shocked expression on her face as she stared at the photograph that it was the last thing she had expected to see. A photograph of Angel, perhaps, but not one that included her.
And where were the photographs of their son?
“This is the only photograph of the two of you we have.” Patrice spoke wistfully as she stepped forward to lightly touch the frame. “It was taken that last Christmas we were all together. Do you remember?”
“I remember,”Sapphie confirmed stiffly.
The last time she had been in this room, it had been full of photographs of Marco, from when he was a child right up to a few months before he died. It shocked her to see that there was now only that one photograph on display, and it wasn’t of Marco.
What did that mean…?
“We made so many mistakes, Sapphie.” Patrice turned to take her hands in hers. “We had no idea what you had to put up with— How you had suffered—” She drew in a shaky breath. “He was our son and, rightly or wrongly, we were so blinded by our love for him, we never saw any of the…less honorable things that he did.”
“We learned shortly after you left what a bastard of a husband he had been to you,” Roman acknowledged heavily.
Sapphie swallowed. “Learned how?”
Roman’s jaw tightened. “Do you remember Cami Birchell?”
Yes, Sapphie remembered the other woman very well, because she had been one of the young women Marco slept with during their marriage.
“She committed suicide a little under two years ago,” Patrice put in flatly.
“No!” Sapphie gasped. She hadn’t particularly liked the other woman, but she had only been a year or so older than her, with her whole life ahead of her.
“She left a note,” Patrice continued evenly. “In it, she explained exactly why she felt she had no other choice but to kill herself.” She reached out to grasp her husband’s hand for support before continuing. “She was in love with Marco, had been involved in an affair with him right up until he died. But she then learned from several of her friends after his death thattheyhad been sleeping with him too.”
None of which came as any surprise to Sapphie, but she could imagine how much of a shock it must have been for Cami and Marco’s parents.
