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The nausea wasn’t going to abate.
“Can I get you something? Food? A drink?”
She bit down on her lower lip. “Some water,” she answered gratefully, moving back to the lounge and sitting down, running her hand over her stomach anxiously.
Lorenzo disappeared from the room and then the front door of the house opened and everything seemed to stand perfectly still; time ceased to move.
Bella was aware of everything – the ticking of the clock above the mantle, the humming of the lights overhead, the coolness of the room and the futility of her Christmas decorations. She felt it all and she saw two men enter the room at once, from opposite sides, and she was powerless to do anything but watch. It was like a solar eclipse, but so much more dramatic.
Vitalo was wearing a suit, dark blue, the same one he’d had on that morning when she’d knelt before him and taken him in her mouth. Her stomach twisted. It couldn’t be true.
He looked at her, and his eyes appraised her, trying to read her, but she kept her face expressionless, her haunted eyes averted from him.
“Lorenzo,” Vitalo moved deeper into the room, placing himself between Bella and the other man, as though she was in some kind of danger from the Italian. “What are you doing here?”
Lorenzo was, however, in no mood for even the veneer of civility. “How dare you?” He spat. “It is bad enough that you jerk Kat around for all these years, but to bring her daughter into it? What kind of a sick bastard are you?”
Bella sat there, strangely devoid of response, almost like an outsider looking in. She realized, later, that it was her body’s natural coping mechanism – her body’s way of holding her together for as long as possible.
“That’s enough,” Vitalo spoke quietly, with a firmly controlled voice.
“Oh, it is not enough,” Lorenzo was the opposite, all passion and flame. “How can you sleep with Kat and then get her daughter pregnant? How can you do that to either of them? She loves you,” Lorenzo shouted, and he was mad, in that moment, mad and hurt and suffering badly. He stormed across the room and lifted his fist, pummeling it against Vitalo’s cheek.
Bella gasped.
Vitalo didn’t defend himself, at first. He took the punch, his head ricocheting at the violence of it, and Bella gasped, roused to the present, to the room, no longer able to hide herself away.
“She loves you!” Lorenzo shouted again. “My wife is in love with you and this is what you do to her!”
Vitalo lifted a hand then, catching Lorenzo’s palm before he could issue another punch, and Bella felt a sob bubbling hysterically in her chest.
“She loves you, too,” Vitalo said, thickly, the words dragged from deep inside of him, and each one was like a bullet inside Bella’s gut.
“I hate you!” Lorenzo swore, lifting his other hand and aiming it at Vitalo’s cheek. It connected, but it wasn’t a good punch, landing softly on his jaw.
“Yes,” he said, nodding curtly. “Of course you do.”
Vitalo’s calmness enraged Lorenzo all the more, so he launched at Vitalo and pushed him backwards, towards the sofa. Bella
stood up, moving out of the way just in time, before both men fell onto it, a tangle of arms and legs and tanned flesh. She stared at them, and the world tilted completely to the wrong side.
“Stop.” She said, quietly at first, and then over again, with increasing urgency. “Stop. Stop. Stop. Both of you, stop it.” And she stomped her foot and finally they did, they listened to her, parting, their breath torn from their bodies, and she stared at them with rage and disgust.
These two men, fighting over her mother.
There was hurt inside of her, but mostly, there was just immediate, urgent acceptance.
She’d fallen in love with Vitalo, but it had all been too good to be true. She’d fallen in love with him, but hadn’t it been another lie? Just like with Xavier?
For the second time in her life, she’d married a man based on a lie, and she’d let herself hope… she’d let herself believe…
“I’m going to go away for a while,” she spoke to Vitalo, but didn’t look at him. “I think I need to … think. And … be alone.”
He swore, and shoved at Lorenzo once more, and the Italian didn’t offer a fight. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, and Vitalo pushed up, crossing to Bella, grabbing her arms in his strong powerful hands. But she jerked free, and when she looked at him and saw the shining black mark on his cheek that would surely develop into a nasty bruise, she refused to feel sympathy.
“Don’t touch me,” she warned, the words quietly spoken but ringing with cold anger.
“Don’t go away,” he said thickly. “Please. Let me explain. I can explain.”
