She lied to me for almost twenty years. And I don’t think I’m ready to deal with that yet.
Her expression shifts to defensiveness at my tone. “I sent you like a million messages.”
“I know.”
Mia’s eyes shift over to Rocco menacingly. “What have you done to her?”
To his credit, he doesn’t wilt under her gaze. “I told her the truth, Chiavari. Now, I must ask you to leave us alone.”
The slight waver in her eyes at his order tells me everything I need to know.
“You work for him, don’t you?”
She looks back at me in alarm. “It’s not what you think, Cas. Please.”
“You hid this from me.”
“I was trying to protect you!”
Around us, people begin applauding as Danny finishes her set.
“And what an excellent job you did of that,” I reply bitterly.
Mia seems frozen in place, torn between obeying the orders of her don and trying to reason with me.
I save myself the heartache of watching her choose.
“Excuse me, I need the bathroom.” I stand abruptly and march away before she can reply.
I can almost feel Rocco’s eyes on me as I walk straight up to the backstage door instead and slip through.
In my heart, I know how I acted toward Mia was cruel. But her deceit just raises more and more troubling questions. Do her parents know? Are they somehow involved in all this, too?
My father and hers had been friends fromwork.
Mia may have lied, but my own mother might have known all this too. And that is more heartbreaking than I know how to deal with right now.
Instead, I take a deep breath and force myself to focus on the task at hand. Find Claudio. Get him to talk.
Everything else I can figure out later.
But it turns out I don’t have to look very hard.
I hear him as I round the corner to my old dressing room.
Moaning. Loudly.
A shiver of disgust runs across my body. I already hate what I’m about to see before I even open the door.
There, leaning againstmyfucking dressing table, is Claudio. His pants are wrapped around his ankles as fucking Teresa, in her fucking midnight blue body suit, has his fucking cock in her fucking mouth.
Fuck.
My anger doesn’t rage within. It burns everything around me to a crisp.
They both seem to feel it at the same time. Claudio’s eyes shoot open just as Teresa lets out a pathetic scream and scampers away.
“Cas!” Claudio chokes on the word as he fully registers who he’s staring at and what I’m wearing.
