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She was far more concerned that Pascal would harm her instead.
And the following morning she woke up to find him gone. It felt like a premonition come true—a notion she tried to shake off.
“I’m afraid you cannot go out today,” the housekeeper told her sorrowfully when she made to leave after her breakfast. “There are paparazzi camped out around the building, and Signor Furlani would prefer you not give them any more ammunition.”
“Ammunition?” she queried. Then blinked. “Paparazzi?”
The housekeeper delivered her the stack of morning papers. And there it was. A picture of the two of them together. Their wedding. Pascal leaning into her, his mouth hovering above hers.
And Cecilia hardly recognized herself. She looked…flushed and starry-eyed. Like the silly girl she’d been when she’d first met him.
She hated that the picture existed. Much less that it was now…out there, for the entire world to dissect. It felt like a kind of death. Something far worse than a shaming.
But far worse than being exposed like that herself was the fact that Dante was splashed across all those papers, too.
His sweet face was there in bright color.
Furlani claims his son!one headline screamed.
And then, just beneath it,thumbs his nose at father once again.
Just like that, it all became clear.
Cecilia felt as if a truck hit her. She sat in the breakfast room, her ears ringing, feeling sick to her stomach. She read every single article she could find, then pulled out her mobile to look for even more.
And every word she read was like a nail into her heart.
“How did Signor Furlani leave the building this morning?” she asked the housekeeper when she could speak. When the betrayal was an agony inside her instead of wholly incapacitating her.
“Well,signora, he took a car. But—”
“Then get me a car,” Cecilia demanded.
And that was how she found herself sitting in the backseat of a luxury vehicle she couldn’t have named if her life depended on it, hiding behind tinted windows while men with twisted faces pounded their fists and open palms against the sides. This was the pit her husband had thrown their son into. All to score points with his own father.
None of this had been about Dante.
Or about you.
Pascal’s offices were done up in low-slung furniture and steel accents. It made her think of the man she’d married. So beautiful and austere on the outside, and nothing but steel and lies within. There was no comfort to be found here. Or in him.
His secretary met her after a short, undignified squabble with his front desk, and led her back through the gleaming maze of offices separated by nothing but panes of glass. He took her directly to the center, where a group of men stood around a long table in yet another glass enclosure.
Cecilia was starting to rethink her urge to come here and tell her husband exactly what she thought of his little games, but it was too late. Because Pascal’s secretary knocked twice on the great glass door, then swept it open. And every stuffy, officious man in that room turned to stare at her.
But it was only Pascal’s gaze that she felt.
And her husband did not leap from the leather chair where he lounged as if he was at a café, whiling away the day. He did not look the least bit surprised to see her, and in fact, when his gaze met hers and held he looked even more lazy than he had a moment before.
She had the strangest notion that he was the one who felt out of place, always. Even here.
“May I present the woman in question, gentlemen,” he drawled as if he’d invited her here. “Cecilia Furlani, in the flesh. Not a publicity stunt as you have accused me. But my wife.”
