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She hated the bitterness in her voice, but he had lanced the wound and now all the poison seemed to be flowing out of it regardless of what she wanted.
‘you tell me you are pregnant when we have been together four short weeks and what do you expect me to believe? Porca biserial Do you believe I wanted to think of your body welcoming the seed of another man?”
‘lf you found it so painful, why think it, then?” She’d done nothing to make him believe such a thing about her.
‘Admit it, Salvatore, I meant nothing to you and you didn’t want to believe the baby was yours.”
‘you do not know what I wanted” She stepped back at the volume of his voice. He was a passionate man but he’d never yelled at her, even that awful night when he rejected her and the baby.
‘l’m sorry but I do. Your actions speak for themselves. You had no reason to believe I slept around and yet you made that assumption because you wanted to ” she repeated.
‘your own father told me you were like your mother ” he said his voice so accusing she cringed.
‘That is right.” He nodded as if her reaction was his due.
‘Francesco Guiliano, a Sicilian man that would never make up tales about his own daughter. He said you were like Shawna Tyler famous actress even more legendary for her numerous love affairs than her beautiful face or acting ability.”
There had been nothing of love in her mother’s frequent liaisons, but Elisa didn’t speak that truth aloud. She was reeling like a drunk on a Saturday night from Salvatore’s claim her father had said those things about her.
‘Papa told you I’m like Shawna?” That hurt. It hurt so much, she almost doubled over with the pain of it.
They weren’t close, but she thought her father knew her better than that. She thought he understood how much she had hated her mother’s lifestyle. She’d never actually told her father so.
Somehow saying it out loud had always felt like a disloyalty to her mother, but when had she ever done anything to justify his belief that she indulged in casual affairs? He would never think such a thing about Annemarie. His perfect, traditional Sicilian daughter.
Salvatore was watching her with an expression almost like compassion. On top of everything, it was just too much.
‘Don’t pity me! Papa is as wrong as you were, but I don’t care do you hear me? I don’t care ” she said uttering the lie with more desperation than conviction.
She was a grown woman. She did not need her father’s good opinion any more than she needed Salvatore’s. If the only two men in her life she had ever loved wanted to think she was some kind of slut, let them.
Salvatore opened his mouth to speak, but then shut it again with a snap. His head swiveled and he focused on something in the street outside the shop.
She started to say something, but he shook his head and put his forefinger to his lips.
Cocking his head slightly, he took a gliding step toward di Adamo’s apartment.
Her gaze skittered to the door. It was slightly open and she couldn’t remember if it had been left ajar when her boss took his leave. Shivers of apprehension shook her as all of Salvatore’s warnings replayed through her mind.
She should have moved the inventory to the vault over twenty minutes ago, but her argument with Salvatore had kept them in the store past closing time and she’d done none of her usual closing routines.
The door to her boss’s apartment slammed open. Salvatore leapt toward it. In that same moment two men wearing grotesque carnival-style masks came bursting through the front door.
The deadly-looking gun in the hands of the man coming in through the back entrance was more terrifying than the hideous images on the masks of the other men.
In a blur of movement Salvatore landed a kick against the one with the gun, sending him back through the doorway.
The other men rushed him and he shouted at her,
‘Get in the vault, and shut it.”
She ran for the vault, but she wasn’t shutting that big steel door with Salvatore on the outside.
He managed to send both men to the floor stunning them. She could see through the crack of the door to di Adamo’s apartment though and the gunman was already getting up. Another black shape moved and she realized the gunman was not alone.
‘Salvatorel” He heard her scream and spun around.
She waved frantically at him. there are more! Come on.”
