Page 137 of Mine Again
It lands with a satisfyingthwump, but he only laughs harder.
I kick off the blankets and bolt from the bed toward the bathroom.
“Take your time,” he calls after me, all sinful amusement. “But ifyou need help reaching the hard-to-get places…”
I slam the bathroom door behind me before he can finish that sentence, but I can still hear the smirk in his voice echoing through the timber. Worse, I feel it… everywhere.
Pressing my back against the wall, I try to breathe.
My body is on fire.
My brain is scrambled.
That man is the worst kind of temptation. The kind that makes me forget he’s still firmly on my shit list, and that talking to him wasnotpart of the plan.
Argh.
I need a cold shower. A long one.
Chapter Fifty-One
Isabella
I’m too much of a chicken to take a cold shower.
Let someone else suffer through that kind of torture. I’m Sicilian. Warmth runs in my blood. We scoff at anything cold unless it comes in a cone and melts down your fingers.
I stay under the hot water longer than I need to. Letting it scald. Letting it purge. Hoping it will melt away the confusion, the ache, the heat I wish I didn’t feel.
But it doesn’t.
Luca’s words from dinner slip into my mind on repeat.
“Your father… he made me swear not to tell you.”
“I’d have agreed to anything to stop your father from finding you another husband.”
Last night, I was too wrecked to hear him, too wrung out to let his meaning sink in. But now?
Now, it lands with the full weight of understanding.
That deal he made… it saved me.
If he hadn’t, I would have been married off by now.
Probably to someone like Conti, the cold, ruthless enforcer my father had picked for Mari. Thank God for my sister’s feeble stomachat the altar. If she hadn’t thrown up mid-ceremony, she and Mateo would never have had a chance.
The thought of being married to someone like Conti makes my skin crawl. I actually shudder, the kind that starts at the base of your spine and rattles through your bones. Even the hot water pounding down on me does nothing to stop the chill that creeps in as the images form in my mind. Cold hands. Colder eyes. A marriage built on fear and obedience.
No, I’d take the heartbreak Luca left me with a thousand times over.
It doesn’t make his silence, the distance, or the grief I experienced any easier, but for the first time, I see the price he paid too.
He wanted to be with me, to stay in touch; of that I’m sure.
He suffered just as much, perhaps even more.
While he had the reassurance that I was okay, watching me through the camera in my bedroom must have been its own kind of torture.
