He hoped Marnie choked on hers.
Marnie got out of the cab and stared through the electric gates at the magnificent three-storey mansion she’d walked out of six months ago. An abundance of cars was parked on the sprawling driveway. It seemed like every light was on.
To her surprise, her fingerprint still worked to open the gate, which was just as well as Domenico was ignoring her calls. Which wasn’t a surprise, not after the way things had ended the last time they’d seen each other. That had been exactly six weeks ago, the day their decree nisi had come through.
She didn’t like to remember that night. Especially didn’t like to remember the morning after. She’d practically thrown Dom out of the flat she’d moved back into after she’d left him. His parting shot had been a cruel, ‘One day you’ll wake up and look around this shithole, and it will hit you; everything you threw away.’ His light brown eyes had been dark with anger. ‘Youthrew it away, Marnie. Remember that. You did it.’
She’d shut the door in his face without responding.
She would never regret her decision to end their marriage, and while the flat she’d moved back into seemed impossibly dingy and tiny compared to the luxury she’d lived in as Domenico’s wife, there was comfort in the familiar. In any case, the settlement she’d accepted had meant that moving into something bigger was impossible.
He’d expected her to fight over the paltry settlement. A man worth billions could expect to hand over a decent chunk of his fortune in the event of divorce, even after only a year of marriage, but Marnie had taken the derisory lump sum offered in his opening gambit. Her solicitor had been horrified, the sum being equivalent to two years of the salary she’d been on before quitting—not through choice—her role as his PA for the much more exclusive role of his wife.
She hadn’t wanted his money. She hadn’t wanted to fight him—shehatedfights, always retreated inside herself at the first sign of confrontation. All she’d ever wanted from Domenico was the one thing he would never give her. The one thing she’d spent her life craving.
The closer she walked to the house, the more attuned her ears became to the music vibrating through the walls. He was throwing a party. Celebrating the end of them. Why he should celebrate being rid of a wife he’d cared nothing for was a mystery she no longer cared to solve. None of the fights he’d tried to engineer after she’d left him or his general crappy behaviour over the divorce had been because he felt anything for her. Domenico just hated losing.
Marnie’s love for him had died a death of a thousand cuts of his indifference.
She pressed her finger to the doorbell and willed the nausea to stay away for a little longer while she had the conversation she couldn’t delay. As much as she hated Domenico, he deserved to know now, not later, and this was the first time that day she’d felt well enough to leave her flat and make the trek across London.
When no answer came, she placed her hand flat on the security lock and was again surprised to find the door opened for her. She’d assumed all her security clearance had been voided the day she walked out.
The noise blaring out explained why none of the staff had heard the bell. It was deafening, not just the music but the screams of laughter floating up from the basement.
Uncaring that she was wearing a floaty, pale green everyday summer dress and flat Roman sandals while the female guests milling around on the ground floor were dressed in all their high-heeled party finery, Marnie didn’t allow any eye contact as she passed curious stares at her appearance and slipped down the stairs to the basement.
Domenico’s basement was a party room. He loved entertaining. All his many homes had a dedicated entertaining room, and this, his London one, was his gaudiest, the one most designed for partying rather than corporate entertaining. When she’d still been his PA, she’d been expected to attend all his parties and functions to ensure everything went smoothly, and she prayed her replacement, Janie, wasn’t one of the many bodies glittering under the strobes of the disco balls on the dance floor. Janie had once been Marnie’s junior, a beautiful, vivacious creature who’d made her feel even more insignificant than she usually did. In Janie’s presence, she felt as invisible as she had as a child.
As well as the people boogying on the dance floor, other bodies were taking a breather on the plentiful plump sofas. There were many faces she recognised. Most of them. Make that all of them. Domenico’s friends and acquaintances. Marnie had always felt invisible amongst them, had been too shy to make any of them friends of her own. Invisibility could have been her superpower.
She didn’t feel invisible now. Over the pulsing music, eyes began to clock her and widen with the same surprise she’d felt when finding herself able to enter the grounds and then the house.
One of the last people to notice her presence was the tall man in the centre of the dance floor, letting loose to the disco beat with a group of beautiful, scantily clad women. Almost a head taller than everyone else, his back was to Marnie, and she saw him bend his neck and cup his ear to hear what one of the women was saying to him.
He turned, bemusement on his face…bemusement that faded when he met Marnie’s stare across the vast room.
As much as she wished it didn’t, her heart twisted painfully, and for a moment, the tiniest moment, everyone vanished, leaving only her and Domenico.
She would never forget the first time she’d set eyes on him. She’d only been working on the reception desk of Cannavaro Law International for three days when he’d strolled through the revolving door with his entourage. She’d guessed from the way all the female staff had been acting in the hour before his arrival, constantly checking their compacts and touching up their lipstick and fluffing their hair, that he was good-looking, but she’d been wholly unprepared for justhowgood-looking he was. Still only eighteen and living in her childhood bedroom with walls covered in posters of the pop stars and film stars she wanted to marry, Marnie would have gladly ripped them all down and plastered the walls with posters of him.
All the lawyers at the firm wore business suits, and all wore them like armour. Domenico wore his in an almost ironical way, his clothing and the artful messiness of his dark brown hair giving the air of a man happy to conform to the niceties of the business world, but only under his own terms. He’d been clean-shaven then, the goatee he’d adopted coming a few years later.
He’d strolled past the reception desk with generic greetings to the staff, clocked Marnie, and backed up.
‘You’re new,’ he’d stated. His English contained barely a trace of accent.
Tongue-tied at his power and utter gorgeousness, she’d nodded.
Light brown eyes glittering with friendliness, he’d held out a hand. ‘I’m Domenico.’
Cheeks flaming with embarrassment at being singled out, she’d reached over to take it and found her hand engulfed in his huge paw. ‘Marnie,’ she’d practically stuttered.
‘Great to meet you, Marnie. How are you enjoying the job?’
She’d fought her shyness to say, ‘Better now I’ve mastered the switchboard.’ The switchboard didn’t just link all the staff in the London offices; it connected with all the staff worldwide, and as Cannavaro International was one of the world’s largest corporate law firms, that meant staff of thousands.
He’d pulled an impressed face. ‘Already? Good for you.’
