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Songbird. He actually made his password Songbird.
Kind of a low-security password, to be honest. Although it isn’t a laptop he could lose, and I can’t imagine many people get access to this room to type in their guesses.
Besides me.
My heart hammers. I feel like at any moment someone, maybe even Elio himself, is going to bust down that door and punish me. Imagining Elio being the one to do it makes my clit twinge shamefully.
I ignore thoughts of him coming in here to discover me and take a quick look at the screen.
It looks like it’s an email that’s been left open. Based on the name in the sender’s address, it appears to be an email from Valentina. That alone isn’t anything weird or surprising.
But the body of the message certainly fucking is. My eyes get wider and wider as they fly over the letters on the screen.
Elio Titone of Toronto, son of Florencia Titone, is honoured to announce his engagement to Deirdre O’Malley of Toronto, daughter of Fiona O’Malley. Mr. Titone is a purveyor of multiple business interests, and Miss O’Malley is an accomplished violinist currently completing her Bachelor of Arts in Music at the University of Toronto, due to graduate with honours next spring. The wedding is set for February twenty-ninth of this year.
It's an engagement announcement. No fucking doubt about it.
But it’s just in an email. It must be a draft version, or something…
Unless…
I check the CC column and gasp when I see other emails listed there. All of them appearing to belong to local news stations and papers.
No longer worried or nervous about doing something wrong, my fingers fly to the mouse and keyboard. I click out of the email and open a search engine, hastily typing in “Elio Titone engagement.”
Oh. Oh no.
There it is. Dozens of times over in the search results, displayed digitally by publications from the tiny to the national. My face goes hot while my body goes cold, fury flashing through me.
I told him no. I told him I wouldn’t marry him.
And he just told the whole damn world I said yes.
There’s a real, virulent urge for me to type a new email and send it to all those news outlets Valentina CCed.
This is Deirdre O’Malley and I would like to make a correction to your recent publications. I am actually not engaged to Elio Titone. In fact, he never even asked me. Technically, I’m some kind of prisoner, or maybe a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, so if you want to write a story featuring my name maybe you should write about that.
I don’t type any of that, of course. It’s one of those mental exercises where you compile a letter even though you know you’d never send it. I can’t even imagine the chaos that would ensue if I went to the media and told them what Elio’s done. If they’re friends of the family, they probably wouldn’t even publish it anyway, but I know there would be hell to pay. For me, and maybe for Elio, too.
I actually play through the scenario in my head. Think about what would happen if even one good journalist got their teeth into this story and helped to push it out there. Even someone like Elio wouldn’t be able to wiggle his way out of that one.
He could actually be arrested.
He could go to jail.
Once, that thought might have given me a righteous sort of relief. I would have thought, Good. So he should. The kidnapping bastard.
But now…
Now it makes my stomach clench with dread. Which is frankly fucking infuriating. After everything he’s done to me, including this engagement announcement cherry on top, I should rejoice about him getting his due.
But I don’t. I can’t.
A part of me wants to protect him. Even if there’s no one left to protect me from him.
I let out a shaky breath, clicking open the first news link from The Toronto Trumpet. I re-read the engagement announcement, shaking my head numbly as I do so. That numbness evaporates when I read the final sentence of the announcement again.
The wedding is set for February twenty-ninth of this year.
