Page 82 of Souls and Sorrows

“Well… maybe I’ll join you.”

She opens her mouth and twists her torso around, as if to protest, but I slink out the front door before she has a chance.

I wouldn’t mind if she attended a party with every single person she’d ever been remotely intimate with. So long as I could be at her side, reminding them of the reason she no longer was.

25

We don’t throwPapà a funeral, but for some reason, Ermes Barbieri insists on having a memorial anyway.

Seems to me like the kind of thing that should be left up to the family, but I suppose, in some ways, Papà was more like family to his men than he ever was to his blood.

They didn’t have to grow up, wondering if he cared about them when loyalty was written into their business ventures. If you couldn’t be trusted, you weren’t involved in Ricci Inc.

I don’t particularly want to go to the memorial, but Cash insists. I’m sure he thinks I need the closure or that it will warm me up to him again if he does this for me, but in truth, I simply don’t think it’s a good idea.

Everything Ermes does is rife with malicious intent, and I’m pretty confident that this will be no different.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I scowl deeply at the man I’m legally bound to as he casually reclines in his desk chair. I don’t know what I was expecting his office to look like, but the minimalist style and lack of personal effects feel very fitting.

“I’m just saying, I think it’s a mistake.”

He slides a pen behind his ear, shrugging. “He was your father, Ariana. Up until we married, you were visiting him weekly.”

I scrunch my nose up, annoyed by the fact that he knows what I was doing before I even knew he existed. “I wasn’t… they weren’t, like, social visits.”

His brows rise, and I smooth my fingers over the satin fabric of the short dress I have on, trying to decide how much I can tell him.

“You’re not very trusting, are you?”

“No.” I lift a shoulder. “People are selfish, and they take your trust and use it to torment you.”

“Love cannot exist without trust.”

My face contorts. “Who said anything about love?”

He shrugs, waiting patiently. As if it’s so easy to recover from an observation like that out of nowhere.

Still, I get the gist of what he’s saying, even as I remove the first part of the equation.Thisdoesn’t work without trust, and it’s not fair of me to ask him for his when I’m unwilling to give any in return.

And outside of the basic mechanics of our marriage in general, I suppose he really hasn’t done anything. Even if the illogical side of me wants to poke holes in this, I can’t deny that, as far as emotions and partnerships go, Cash has been committed to the bit from the beginning.

Even at the police station the other day, he let me handle things, as if believing me fully capable. I sat through that meeting with my hands clenched, waiting for him to bulldoze me and take over, doing whatever he wanted.

I didn’t realize until now how glad I had been when he didn’t.

Sucking in a slow, deep breath, I meet his gaze. “I mostly would just visit my father to keep him updated on Ricci Inc. He didn’t care about what was going on with me unless it was something that directly affected the business. I used to think he kept me closebecausehe trusted me, but really, it was the exact opposite, and he was just waiting for some massive screwup that would cost him everything.”

Like signing ownership over to someone outside the family.

Oops.

“Anyway, the last time I saw him was the day of our wedding. At the church.” I keep my eyes locked with his, wishing I could drown my insecurities in those rich irises. “The oleander was from him, not me.”

“I know.”

The intercom on his office phone cuts in, interrupting us. “Sir?” Zephyr’s voice comes, no hesitation. “County Attorney Smith is on line three for you.”

Cash doesn’t move to answer it.

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