Chapter 4 - The Denial
Dante set the roses and the velvet box down on the rolling tray table as if they were suddenly burning his hands. He looked back at me, his eyes pleading.
“Can I hold my son?” he asked.
My son.
For seven years, I had forgiven Dante for everything his dark, violent world demanded from our marriage. I had scrubbed blood off the bathroom floor. I had endured the sudden midnight disappearances. I had swallowed the broken promises, the cancelled anniversaries, and the closed-door conversations. I had ignored the women at syndicate galas who looked at me with smug, venomous smiles suggesting they knew things about my husband that I didn’t.
I had convinced myself that loving a powerful, dangerous man required infinite patience.
But Dante hadn’t missed a business dinner. He had missed the birth of his firstborn child because he had chosen to drink champagne on a candlelit terrace beside another woman.
I tightened my arms securely around Leo, pulling him closer to my heart.
“No,” I said.
Dante went completely, terrifyingly still. The air in the room seemed to freeze. “What?”
“You heard me, Dante.”
“He’s my son,” he argued, a flicker of his usual dominant authority trying to spark to life.
“And yesterday, when he entered this world screaming and I was bleeding, where were you?” I asked, my voice dropping to a lethal whisper.
A sharp, physical pain crossed his face. He knew he was caught.
“Valentina isn’t what you think,” he rushed to say, stepping closer. “It was a setup, Bella. A necessary optical play for the families in Palermo. I can explain—”
I almost laughed. A dry, humorless sound that made him flinch. “The photograph was very clear, Dante. You were wearing the signet ring I gave you.”
“I can explain everything.”
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“I don’t want the explanation anymore.”
That sentence hurt him far more than screaming or throwing the roses ever would have. He saw the cold, dead finality in my eyes. The woman who had blindly worshipped him was gone.
