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“Three years ago. Clearly it ended well because he hired her, but Mingmei—”
“—still desires Nate.”
“Perhaps.” Susana handed her a cream-colored suit. “How did you and Nate meet?”
Mina’s brain worked furiously. “We met at the hotel in Sicily where I worked. In the bar. It was...love at first sight.”
Susana smiled. “That I would have liked to have seen. It would have been entertaining to watch the Ice Man fall.”
Mina diverted the conversation to clothes after that before she stumbled over another answer. Three hours of endless fittings later, she walked out of the boutique the owner of a stylish, power-based wardrobe with some pretty things for the evening. “You’ll need it,” Susana had advised. “Nate’s social calendar is daunting.”
Her phone rang as she walked back across the courtyard. She glanced at the screen, her stomach doing a slow churn. Her mother. Maybe it was better to get it out of the way.
She sat on a bench and took the call. “Ciao, Mamma.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then, “Che pensi che stai facendo, Mina?” What do you think you’re doing?
Her cheeks fired, her fingers trembling around the phone. “I couldn’t marry Silvio, Mamma. I told you that but you wouldn’t listen.”
“So you disgraced your fiancé, this family, in front of the entire city?”
She bit her lip. “He hit me. I can’t live with a man like that.”
“And you expect your American tycoon to be any different? Men are all the same. They want a beautiful wife on their arm who obeys them, Mina. Who uncomplicates their life. Start disagreeing with your American after the rosy glow is over and see how he acts.”
“Nate would never hit me.”
A pause. “Where are you now?”
She chewed hard on her lip.
Her mother made a strangled sound. “What will you do? Go live with him in America? You will surely have to now, because your reputation is in tatters. This family’s reputation is in tatters.”
A lump formed in her throat. She didn’t even know where Nate lived. Only that it was in New York.
“Mi dispiace,” she murmured huskily. “You left me no choice, Mamma.?
??
“You disappoint me, Mina.”
What was new about that? She had always disappointed her mother. Had never understood why when she’d done everything asked of her. Had attained top grades at school, had dated her endless contingent of bachelors, and still been found lacking.
“What about our plan? To sell the ring?”
Her heart sank. There it was. What her mother truly cared about. “It hasn’t changed. I will sell the ring and pay off our debts. But as I’m sure Pasquale told you, I can’t do that for a year.”
“Perhaps,” her mother said deliberately, “your husband could help.”
She closed her eyes. “I won’t ask that of him, Mamma.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. There would be no inquiry as to how she was. Whether she was happy. None of that mattered to her mother. Had never. “I have to go,” she said thickly.
“Mina—”
She ended the call. A deep, all-encompassing throb moved through her. Made it hard to breathe. She’d gotten past her naïveté about her mother a long time ago. It was the depth to which she didn’t care that shocked her now.
She was alone in this world. Utterly alone. Her life would have to be shaped by her and her alone.
