Page 208 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

Each day, he’d proved to be someone she wanted to lean on. Each day she’d allowed herself to hand over control to him just a bit more. But what had he done with that trust? He’d destroyed it. He’d done it with his brother and he’d done it with her.

Jasmine placed a hand on her belly. It wasn’t just herself she had to think about. It wasn’t just her he’d betrayed. Now her child would not have the home they had wanted to provide. And would Emilio break their child’s trust along the way too? Would Jasmine have to protect them from their father, from the expectations he would allow them to have, only to fumble on his promises every time?

She closed her eyes, trying to will the tears away, begging her body to sleep so she could have some reprieve from the clenching in her stomach. From her constricted lungs. From the ache in her heart so severe, she was certain it would never be whole again.

She’d thought Richard’s betrayal had hurt, but it had never felt quite like this.

Maybe because you were falling in love with him.

No! Absolutely not; it was a far jump from trust to love.

By her own admission, Jasmine wasn’t sure what love really felt like any more. Itwasn’tlove.

Jasmine, honey, please stop hiding.

Another text message from her mother. Jasmine wasn’t hiding. She was trying to live with a gaping hole in her chest. Who would she be hiding from?

The world? Anyone you could possibly connect with.

Especially after she’d thought she’d seen Emilio outside her brownstone. But that had to have been her mind playing tricks on her because he would never have driven there, so she had turned her back on the sight and climbed into her own car.

Jasmine pushed away from her desk. She’d spent most of the past week and a half behind it, only going home to sleep, then returning to do it all over again.

When have I ever hidden?

When her father had left, she’d been there for her mother in the ways a child could. When Richard had betrayed her, she’d gone to the most exclusive club in New York. Yet, when Emilio had betrayed her, she immediately locked herself away in the office and stayed in there all day, every day.

‘Enough!’ she told herself, and grabbed her coat. She wasn’t sure where she was going. All she knew was that she had to get out, to feel the sun on her face. To be somewhere, anywhere, else.

Not knowing where she was going or what she would do once she got there, Jasmine kept walking until she came upon a green space with benches and a small pond reflecting the blue skies overhead. It was a patch of tranquillity in the middle of the chaos of Manhattan. It called to her. Just as she approached a bench beside the path, she spotted two people walking towards her—two people she’d never wanted to encounter again.

It was too late to turn round. Richard and Zara had already seen her.

‘Jasmine,’ Zara tentatively greeted her.

Jasmine’s left hand curled tightly. Her wedding and engagement rings—Emilio’s rings—pressed into her skin. She’d tried to take them off several times, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She didn’t want to analyse why not.

Now they made her wish he was by her side, as he had been the last time she’d run into Richard and Zara. The memory made her miss him, the stifling hurt that had been present since she’d left Italy shifting.

Richard was sneering, of course. ‘Where’s your lover?’

Jasmine saw Zara wince and felt a small amount of pity for her. She would have to get used to that behaviour; that was who Richard became when he wanted control of a situation. Eventually Jasmine had found it easier just to allow him to feel as if he were in charge to avoid conflict. She hated that she had done that.

You never did that with Emilio.

‘Did he see sense and leave?’ he added.

It was amazing that she’d had put up with Richard’s ugly side for so long. ‘Why? Because I’m too controlling? Too tightly wound? Because it was stifling being around me and I sucked the life out of everything? I believe that’s what you said.’ The words didn’t hurt. They didn’t feel like anything at all now. ‘Who’d want that?’

‘I can’t imagine anyone would,’ Richard replied.

Visions of Emilio making love to her came to mind. The things he’d said to her in Italy.

‘I would take all the time you gave to me and still want more.’

Emilio had run into the woman responsible for destroying his family and shattering his heart, but even in anger he hadn’t been cruel. Antagonistic, yes; but cruel? No.

‘Just becauseyouneed to control your partner to feel like a man, doesn’t mean others do too, Richard.’

---