Page 46 of The Sicilian Billionaire's Neglected Wife
My hands curl into fists, the knuckles I bloodied on the elevator panel throbbing in time with my heartbeat. I want to throttle her for talking about my wife in such a wife, but I despise myself even more, knowing that the only reason she’s here in the first place is because of me.
Myca shoots a furious look at my direction as she grabs her briefcase. “When you get bored playing devoted husband, don’t come crawling to me.”
The door slams behind her, and nobody moves for several seconds. The office air feels too thick. Then Shayla steps out from behind Adriano’s desk, her face several shades paler than normal.
“Where’s Sienah?”
“With the worst possible person she could be with.”
Her hands fly to her mouth. The gesture is so like something Sienah would do that it cuts fresh wounds. “What do you mean?”
Adriano is the one to answer, silver eyes grave. “He means his all-powerful father, who—if memory serves correctly—already has the ball rolling as we speak.”
****
THE NEXT DAYS ARE TORTURE.
Hours bleed into each other, formless and wrong. Time moves like it does in nightmares: racing when I need it to slow, crawling when I need it to fly.
I take leave from racing, the first time in twenty years I’ve voluntarily stepped away from a car. Gabriel Contini can keep his three hundred million euros. What good is being the world’s highest-paid driver when I can’t drive to the one place that matters?
My apartment becomes a mausoleum. Her coffee cup still sits by the sink, burgundy lipstick staining the rim. I can’t wash it. Can’t throw it away. Can’t do anything but stare at that perfect imprint of her mouth and remember all the mornings she kissed me goodbye with those same lips.
Five thousand mornings.
Gone.
Sicily rises from the Mediterranean like a warning. Mount Etna smokes in the distance as my chartered plane descends toward Catania, the same airport where I first saw Sienah as something more than the housekeeper’s daughter. She’d been picking up a package, nineteen and lovely and completely unaware that her fitted jeans and simple ponytail had made me forget how to breathe.
The irony tastes like ash.
I know exactly where she’ll be.
The rental car protests as I push it harder than its engine was meant to go. These winding mountain roads require respect, patience. I have neither. Just this burning need to see her, explain, beg if necessary.
I know champions don’t beg, but fuck being a champion.
My mother-in-law answers the door of the modest townhouse, and I catch the briefest glimpse of pain before her face turns completely blank, her expression closing off like storm windows.
“No.”
One word. Delivered with quiet finality.
“Lynette, please. If I could just—”
Her hand tightens on the door frame, knuckles white. For a second, I think I see her eyes glisten. Then the door closes with a soft, final click.
I stand there, stunned. The afternoon sun beats down, merciless. Somewhere a dog barks. Normal neighborhood sounds while my world falls apart.
I try again the next day. This time she doesn’t even open it all the way, just enough to show one dark eye and half a mouth pressed into a line that could’ve been carved from stone.
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
“I need to explain—”
SLAM.
The wood vibrates from the impact.
