Page 89 of Savage Proposal

I didn’t know what to say, or how she wanted me to respond. I didn’t expect her to shove a picture into my face.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

I stared at the picture of Sienna that she’d forced on me. That was my wife; I hadn’t so much as looked at a picture of her since I saw her crumbled on our bed. It was the last image I ever had of her.

And now, I had this: Sienna and Amalia, both younger but definitely after I married Sienna, sitting at a kitchen table somewhere. It looked like they were playing poker or something. “Isabella, this is?—”

“You wanted me because I looked like her.” My eyes snapped to hers. She was lost somewhere between devastation and rage. “Are you going to deny it?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said, and Isabella snarled at me. “Even if I had come to that clinic for a legitimate reason, I would have taken you.” I tried to touch her, and she all but threw herself away from me. “Careful now, you are pregnant.”

She convulsed, disgusted. “Oh my God. You wanted a baby with me because I could give youherbaby now that she’s gone. You could start the family that you didn’t get to with her.”

Thick, bitter tears were running down her face now, but I knew better than to think that meant she was on the way to calming down. “I’m not going to deny anything,” I said. “You’re spot on about why I brought you here initially.”

Isabella stared at me, tension crackling between us, before she launched herself at me. She rained her fists down on my chest, demanding that I explain why I would ever do this to her. Ibarely felt the blows. I would let her do this until she tired out, and then we would talk.

“Dolc—”

She punched me square in the jaw, and even I had to admit that it was a good punch. I caught her wrist when she tried to do it again. “I let you smack me, Isabella,” I said, my voice a deep, angry rumble. “But you will not do that again, or?—”

“Or what?” She was hysterical. “What could youpossiblydo to me, you fucking psycho? How much more could you break me down?”

“There’s a lot.” My cell phone trilled. I didn’t pick it up, and it eventually stopped. “You’re just going to have to—” The cell began again, and I knew something was wrong. I let go of her and stepped back. “Hold that thought,” I told her.

Isabella

My ears were ringing. I could hardly focus on what Lorenzo was saying to whomever was on the other end of his phone. All of the anger that had filled him moments before seemed to melt away. “How many casualties were there?”

Casualties?

Despite myself, I had to ask: “What happened?”

Lorenzo waved me off with an impatient flinging of his hand and let out a sound like a growl. “Don’t talk to anyone,” he barked.“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He hung up and looked at me. “The Volkovs blew up the casino. I need to go handle it.”

The words barely registered with me; my own anger was too all-encompassing. “You’re going to leave?” I demanded, hoarse from screaming at him.

“People are dead, Isabella,” he said. “I have to deal with it.”

I couldn’t believe him…or myself, for that matter. I felt like there was a glass wall between me and the angry monster that had taken over. The ruins of Sienna’s study lay around us, and I should have felt incredible guilt for taking those things from him.

But that wall kept me from feeling it. I would do it all over again if I was given the chance.

“I’ll call Cristian to come be with you,” Lorenzo said. “You and he can talk until I get back.”

A secondary blow came with the idea that everyone that I had come to care for knew that Sienna and I could have been sisters. They had known her; they had seen her and Lorenzo as a couple. They hadalllied to me.

“Go to hell,” I told him. “Every single one of you can go to hell.”

He grabbed my chin between his fingers and forced me to look him in the eye. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “Behave for Cristian, get this all out, and then we can talk when I get home. Okay?”

I spat in his face.

CHAPTER 57

Lorenzo

The casino was a smoldering shell. Damian and I stood on the street, police and firefighters swirling around us, and stared at the remains of what my father had spent his life building. Smoke and ash coated the inside of my nose and mouth.

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