Page 45 of His Forgotten Wife
“Ares…” she tried but he cut her off again.
“Turns out Dahlia and I are already married.”
Arabella jumped up, clapped and hugged Dolly with genuine happiness while the rest of them stared at her and Ares. His grandparents wished her a happy married life and Dolly, for the life of her, couldn’t even respond to that.
“I…” Dolly said, not knowing what she wanted to say. “Please, Ares. Let me explain.”
“But you said you were engaged and we thought…” his mother began, but Ares cut her off with a raised hand.
“Dahlia was clearly trying to protect me and my feeble mind, Mama.”
“That’s ridiculous. I never thought of you as feeble,” Dolly snapped, feeling defensive.
Ares didn’t even look at her. “The point is I’ve had enough of trying to do the right thing. Of trying to feel like I could be a part of this family.” Standing up, he pushed one folder toward the sofa where his father sat with his brothers standing behind him. “That folder has all the accounting documentation about how Stefano and Sergio stole thousands of euros from the family company, leading it nearly to bankruptcy. And how much money I’ve injected to save the company and the employees from their crimes.”
A collective shudder seemed to go through the room. His mother and sister looked devastated, and Ares…there was only a blankness in his expression that tugged at Dolly.
“I’ve gone through it with my lawyers and grandfather,” he said, motioning to the older man. “I also have a document from him attesting to the fact that the money he gave me as a birthday present for my nineteenth birthday came from his own pocket and not the family business. It clearly stated that you two,” he said, pointing a finger toward Stefano and Sergio, “have no right to even a cent from my company, much less the millions you’re suing me for.”
This time, Juliana’s “Did you know about this?” addressed toward her husband was loud and full of outrage. Arabella looked like she might simply crumple while Ares’s father stared at him in shock.
But Ares didn’t wait for his father to reply to his mother. His answer was written on his face.
It was as if Ares had lost all hope of fixing the fissure in his family. Of receiving the amends he deserved from that man and his brothers. “Then there’s the little fact that my darling Dahlia and I are married. Legally. If you don’t desist with the lawsuit, I have papers here that I can sign which will transfer all of my personal wealth to her name in a second. All of it.”
When Sergio and Stefano and their father burst out at once—the former two shouting threats at him, Ares raised his hand, palm out. “I’m not done,” Ares said, his nostrils flaring. “Not that I don’t trust my wonderful wife, but that is only an extreme measure I had to have in place because I wasn’t sure if I could trust anyone in this family, including my own parents.”
Juliana’s soft gasp made Dolly’s throat ache. The men stared at Ares, red-faced.
“I have Grandpa’s permission to turn you in to the authorities for embezzling funds from the family company. I’ve already turned in another set of these documents to the police. They should be coming for you any moment. Please don’t ask me for funds for the lawyers. You’re on your own now.” Finally, Ares met his father’s gaze. “If they find you an accomplice to the embezzlement, you will be taken in too.” His throat moved in a hard swallow, his jaw so tight that a vein pulsed there. “It’s what you deserve for enabling these two all these years and for not protecting me when I needed your protection. But since it will break Mama and Arabella’s heart, I have instructed my personal lawyer to look into it, as a favor to me, that you don’t end up in jail.”
Pandemonium erupted in the wake of this declaration. His grandfather patted Ares’s shoulder, standing tall and dignified among the rubble of his son and grandsons’ tempers.
Juliana and Arabella were openly crying, and Stefano and Sergio were screaming at their father now, blue in the face, while their father stared at Ares, as if he couldn’t believe what he had unleashed.
Standing amidst all of them, Ares looked alone and unbending and unshaken.
And all Dolly wanted to do was go to him and hold him in her arms. For even as he looked like none of this cost him, she knew that he was devastated. That he was angry and hurting. But she also knew that he was angry with her too, that whatever they had built in the last month was hanging by a thread.
And that she had brought that on herself through her own fears.
Dolly was sitting in the veranda attached to Ares’s suite, watching the sun begin its descent in the sky when the door finally opened. The chitter of the cicadas and the scent of jasmine kept her company as if they were old friends. God, even the villa, so overwhelming and grand at first, felt like a dear friend now. For she had spent the happiest moments of her life here.
But she also was beginning to see that wherever Ares was would be home to her. Somehow, the realization felt like it was late, or rather inopportune, after the worst had occurred.
She had been sitting like that, for hours, desperate for him to come back.Come back to me, her heart said, but she was afraid to admit it, even to herself.
Her legs felt leaden as she pushed up to stand and face him. She’d pretzeled herself inside out to never let her aunt find faultwith her. She’d studied hard, worked harder, sacrificed so many of her own personal desires to pay back what her uncle and aunt had done for her by giving her a home. She’d not given them a single chance to find fault with her in any way.
And yet, now she was facing Ares with a truckload of lies and half-truths nearly bowing her back, making her actions with him wrong in so many ways. God, she was such a fool to have waited this long.
Who hadn’t she trusted—him or her own feelings? What was scarier to believe—that he wouldn’t love her or that she didn’t deserve to be loved?
Her arms and legs trembled with the need to go to him but she resisted. “Ares, I’m so sorry. I…know how much you wanted it not to go this way.”
He came to the veranda and leaned against the arch, without looking at her. His other hand was wrapped around the nape of his neck. Moonlight created deeper grooves of the lines pain had etched into his face—both physical and emotional. “It was foolish to hope for a better, a different resolution.”
“No,” she said, turning toward him, her throat filled with tears. “It’s not foolish or shameful or weak to want to be seen and loved and understood, Ares. Never that. In fact, I think it takes uncommon bravery to want to mend relationships, to come to the table, willing to forgive and wanting to build something new.”
