Page 3 of Stained Honor

He stops directly in front of me and says in a low, controlled voice, “Look at me, Emily.”

Not baby. Emily.

Without lifting my gaze from the red carpet beneath my feet, I force out another confession.

“I sent Rafael a message from Lucia’s phone. I told him where the tunnel leads.”

The words barely leave my mouth before I catch the movement from the corner of my eye. His fist slams down onto the bar counter with enough force to make the entire room shake.

The crack of the impact jolts through my whole body so violently I stumble backward.

“Look at me.” This time his voice comes out louder, sharper, full of fury barely hanging by a thread.

My entire body burns while my heart pounds somewhere up in my throat. I wipe away the tears finally spilling down my cheeks and shake my head weakly from side to side. I can’t look at him. If I see the hurt I put in his eyes, the damage I did to his pride, it’ll destroy me.

But this is Carlo.

And Carlo doesn’t back down from what he wants.

He grips my chin between his thumb and forefinger, not gentle this time, and jerks my head up. The second I see those furious cold eyes, another tear slips free and his name leaves my lips in a broken whisper.

His chest rises and falls beneath heavy breaths like a wall of stone barely holding together. He steps closer until our bodies press together, forcing me to tilt my head back as far as I can just to keep looking at him. His breath fans across my face while he grits out through clenched teeth, “Now look me in the eyes and tell me what you did.”

“Carlo, I swear—”

He cuts me off immediately. His voice isn’t loud, but the force behind it hits like a slap.

“Emily. Look your husband in the eyes and tell him how you betrayed him.”

Betrayed.

The word’s been clawing through my head for hours, but hearing it from the man I handed my soul to turns my blood to ice. A second ago my entire body was burning alive. Now I’m freezing in the middle of hell itself, drained of every drop of color.

Betrayal.

The one sin I know Carlo never forgives.

I grab onto his forearm desperately, trying to explain myself before he completely shuts me out.

“I thought I could handle it. I thought I could get my revenge and not care what happened after. But then I saw Antonia. I saw the way she screamed for her mother, and I realized no matter what Lucia did to me, I couldn’t let her die and leave her little girl alone in this world. I couldn’t live with that guilt. So I let go of my revenge.”

I can see the wildness in his eyes now, something feral enough to send a violent tremor through every cell in my body. His pupils move over my face restlessly, almost crazed, while the fire in his gaze burns hotter with every passing second.

“And what about my revenge?”

The lump in my throat grows heavier and heavier until it feels like it’s cutting off my air completely. I go silent because I don’t have an answer for him. I just stare back while he throws the next words straight into my face through clenched teeth.

“You didn’t think about that part, did you?”

Veins stand out along his neck as rage darkens his face. Carlo is already the biggest man I’ve ever seen in my life, but right now he feels twice his size, like his anger alone turned him into something monstrous while I stand in front of him like nothing more than a pebble at the foot of a mountain.

My tongue feels useless inside my mouth, locked down by too many emotions at once, and the second he realizes I have no answer, something inside him finally snaps.

He grabs the square crystal glass from the counter and hurls it toward the liquor shelves. The glass flies across the room and explodes against the center of the display. Colorful bottles shatter one after another, glass raining everywhere, and Carlo storms behind the bar in two long strides. He starts grabbing the remaining bottles and smashing them against the floor while shouting,

“What about my honor? What about my fucking pride? Did you think about that?”

The destruction seems to bleed some of the rage out of him because after another bottle crashes against the tiles, his breathing turns rough instead of explosive.