“I’m not lying.”
My jaw ached from how hard it clenched. “I do not believe you.”
Sicily was headstrong and had fought me on every decision I had made in her presence, but all I saw now was somebody different. She was demonstrating all the attributes that I had seen in torture sessions.
She was truly terrified of me.
Matteo’s wet cough reminded me he was behind us, but it was as he stammered, “Not her… It’s not her I-I love” that I whipped around, frowning at him.
As far as I knew, Tommaso had not arranged a marriage for his son despite him having recently turned twenty-five.
“Not her,” he repeated, stumbling as he tried to find his feet.
Sicily made a small sound, a whimper of sorts. Clearly, she felt rather emotionally about whomever it was that Matteo loved, probably because it was indeed her.
“Who?” I demanded.
Matteo clenched his eyes closed before he found mine and said, “Elena.”
My mind began to race through all the Elenas that I knew, and there was only one noteworthy Elena in theFamiglia, and she was on the opposing side of his family’s war.
Sicily had known about this betrayal and had acted as a middle ground between them. Punishment was applicable for such an offense and for not informing me of this indiscretion, but I wished nothing less than to harm Sicily or to teach her a lesson. My wife may have acted as though she was tough, but she had tears on her cheeks, and she had been a loyal friend to them.
Sicily Bianchi was a lot more sensitive than she had allowed me to see, and this caused a rift in my understanding of her.I was beginning to realize that this understanding was limited to say the least.
She sniffled. “I can prove it.”
I believed her without this proof because lying about a relationship between him and his enemy would be incredibly foolish of everyone involved, but I felt a niggle of intrigue at the prospect of such proof.
Sicily reached for the door handle, but as the broken piece of wood creaked open, I slammed it shut before she could leave. “Remove Bonafede’s clothing first.”
She gestured to her torso. “But my shirt is?—”
I removed my jacket instantly, holding it out to her for the second time in our short marriage. I was vaguely aware that my five-thousand-dollar jacket was about to be sullied with the thick scents of her perfume, but that thought did not cause the expected malfunction.
I turned briefly back to Bonafede. He could not drive a vehicle with his face marred the way that it was. “I will call my driver for you. Inform him that I instructed him to drive you home.”
I followed Sicily from the room and then the building. It crossed my mind then that she could have been about to lure me to my own death, but then I recalled how frightened she had been of me, and I doubted she was brave enough to do so.
It made my chest hurt that her terror originated with me. I would have to fix it, but I was unaware of how to do this when she despised me as she did.It soothed me slightly within when her face re-lit into an obvious display of happiness when she spotted the pink car that we would have to take considering Adriano had taken my car to drive Fiorella home.
“You are not driving,” I said, moving to the driver’s seat.
“Why not? I just drove like an hour through New York,” she argued, regaining some of her fire as she threw herself into the passenger seat.
Why was she so short? And why was she so afraid of meexceptif it involved driving a hideously colored vehicle?
I clicked the fob, igniting the engine as I said, “Yes, and we will have to discuss that later. Now, where are we going?”
She shuffled in her seat, taking a moment of silence before saying, “To my studio.”
12
SICILY
I thoughtI might die when Milan pulled up to the address I gave him. In fact, I hoped I died.
He was about to see years of artwork.
