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I passed out.
Chapter 21
BETH
I regained consciousness in Marco’s arms. He was cradling me beside the snooker table where Jonathan had tried to strangle me.
Jonathan was lying on the ground, out cold, his nose bleeding.
A couple of staff in servers’ uniforms had piled into the room, swiftly followed by security guards.
Everything happened in a rush after that, the police arriving surprisingly quickly and arresting Jonathan as he regained consciousness. Him hurling abuse at me, which luckily made him clearly my attacker, because the police had looked uncertain about whether they ought to arrest Marco too.
Marco carried me out of the room, through the crush of partygoers who were now crowding around outside the smoking room, trying to catch a glimpse of the excitement within.
The staff showed us to a private lounge at Marco’s insistence, where Marco inspected my tender throat, fury still in his eyes.
“I am fine,” I kept saying in a husky voice, but he did not believe me.
When a waiter came in with a glass of juice and some painkillers, Marco ordered him briskly to call an ambulance.
I shook my head. “I am not going to the hospital.”
“You need to be checked over.”
“I’m totally fine.”
But when I tried to stand up to show him this was true, I wobbled on my feet and he had to catch me.
He scooped me up. “Okay, no ambulance. I’ll drive you there myself.”
“Please, Marco,” I murmured against his ear, burying my head into his shoulder. “I don’t want to go to a hospital.”
It wasn’t the fuss I feared. If I went, they would give me a full check-up and find out I was pregnant. They would tell him.
“Please, just take me home,” I whispered.
And so he did just that, driving me to his house, refraining from asking questions in the car, even though he clearly wanted to.
In the smoking room, I had already choked out the truth to him briefly—that Jonathan had killed Dolly. That he had confessed it to me. I had needed to make sure the police would arrest Jonathan for murder. Not just for attacking me.
As we pulled up outside of Marco’s house, he parked up and took my hand gently in his.
“I’m sorry, carissima,” he said huskily. “I shouldn’t have let you out of my sight. I knew you might come to harm.”
I had been staring out of the window, and now turned to look at him. “You knew?”
His face was tense. As if he expected me to hate him.
I must have been in shock, my mind fuzzy, because I cupped his jaw in my hands and kissed his lips gently. “I am okay. I really am.”
He nodded stiffly, got out of the car and came around to my side to lift me out like an invalid. I didn’t care. I felt limp from my ordeal, not just the strangling but everything else too.
To know that a man I trusted had killed Dolly. Killed her because of something that my father had done so long ago. Killed her because ofme.
Dolly had died because of me. And to think for a moment in that smoking room, I had blamed Marco for it, thinking he might have killed her.
I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry.
