Page 162 of Modern Romance June 2025 5-8

‘Take that back,’ Antonio demanded, wholly aware that he was sounding like a petulant teenager and absolutely unable to stop himself.

‘You don’t see it?’ she questioned instead, the smile on delicately pink lips playful.

And in that moment he did see it. Not the similarity between him and the man who had been, at one point, almost as close to him as Maria. What Antonio saw was Ivy’s beauty. Somewhere along the way it had wrapped around his chest and taken hold.

There, in the dusk, as the sun played off the golden shards in her eyes and the caramel embers in her chestnut locks, he realised just how beautiful she was. Heat spread through him, pushing at the anger and burning into darkness, bringing light to long-forgotten places.

‘He is disloyal,’ Antonio said, thinking of their childhood friendship and desperately holding onto the thread of their conversation rather than his body’s reaction to her proximity.

‘I…’ she narrowed her eyes in consideration ‘… I don’t think that’s true. It’s just that perhaps his loyalty is not to thoseyouare loyal to.’

Internally, Antonio flinched. Ivy’s keen observation of the dynamics of his family surprised him. Micha owed a debt to Gio Gallo, and had done even when they were younger. But that wasn’t what Antonio was really interested in.

‘Why didn’t you say yes? Why didn’t you take the money?’ he asked. She’d been offered twice what he’d given her six years ago. She hadn’t taken that for herself, but she’d taken ninety thousand for her library? The woman had no sense at all.

Discomfort clouded her gaze and in a quiet voice she said, ‘I don’t want the money. And I made my vows to you, not to Micha or your grandfather.’

She might as well have knocked him to the floor.

‘The only person who had the right to ask me for a divorce was you,’ she continued.

‘And what if I’d never asked you for one?’ he demanded, lips numb.

For the first time, there was nothing in her gaze. Everything stilled, Ivy apparently having learned to be wary just when he wanted to see her most. Her silence was her answer.

‘Would you never have wanted a divorce for yourself? What if you met someone?’ he asked, his curiosity suddenly inflamed. This woman was self-sacrificing to her own detriment. She could have bought herself a home outright with half a million. Security. She could have met someone and… He found himself growling at the thought before he could stop himself.

‘Okay, I no longer understand what you’re mad about,’ Ivy announced. ‘That I didn’t want to divorce you? Or that I didn’t tell you they’d tried to pay me to?’

‘Both.’

‘Why?’ she demanded just as hotly as he’d replied.

‘Because you refuse to do even the most basic things to protect yourself, and this world is not kind to people like that,’ he said, unable to help himself.

‘How dare you say that?’ she hurled back, as if outraged. ‘Everything I have done for the past three years was about clawing my way back from the darkest of days. Every day, every hour, every minute fought for, battled, and won. Even if it was just an inch. Even if it was just getting out of bed in the early days. So don’t you dare tell me that I can’t protect myself, just because I chose to do it in ways you don’t recognise.’

Her finger prodded at his sternum accusatorily, but it was the truth she spoke that struck the real blow.

Because she was right. The knife sticking in his gut and twisting was the fact that, for all his words about having to protect his loved ones, Maria and his mother, for being a better man than his father, and his grandfather…the truth was that all this time it wasIvywho had been protectinghim.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ivy’s cheeks burnedwith shock and shame. The finger that had been poking into Antonio’s firm chest shook as she withdrew it to press it against her lips.

‘I’m… I’m so sorry,’ she said, and would have turned and fled had it not been for the arm that shot out and snared her by the waist, anchoring her, turning her.

Head bent, ‘I should never have said that,’ she confessed. The vulnerability arcing between them was painful. Because hadn’t he been right? Wasn’t she afraid of wanting things for herself, only to lose them all over again? Her home, her security, her sight. But it was more than that. It was the future. It was the future she’d thought she had.

‘Look at me?’

It was a question, not a demand or a statement in the way he usually offered them. His voice was harsh, rasping, as if the words had been caught on gravel. But it was his gaze that undid her. Raw, unfiltered, powerful and…oh, so expressive. She saw it all. The want, the desire, the contest, and the recognition of truth.

The breath whooshed out of her lungs.

All the energy seemed to pour away from their argument, their fight, and he caught the dip of her head with his own, pressing his forehead against hers in near surrender. They were perilously close to the line drawn in the sand by their situation. But there was still time to walk this back. There was still time to leave.

Antonio’s hands flexed around her waist, as if divining her thoughts, preventing her from running away.

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