AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His gaze remained grim. He sighed heavily. “But it is my fault. I should have been there that night.”
“You didn’t know what was going to happen.”
He clenched his jaw. “I should have known. I should have caught on. There must have been signs, but I missed them somehow.”
“You are not superman.”
He ripped his hands through his hair. Got up and paced, frustration in every line of his body.
“You don’t understand. I was supposed to be home because we were light on security that night. Jacob had escorted my mother to a trip to Rome. Amara went with them. I had promised Mamma I would stay with Chiara, but I wasn’t there.”
“Did your work keep you away?” I asked.
“I don’t remember,” he said harshly.
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I remember nothing about that night. Not one thing. I was at The Bordello Club for a meeting, getting ready to go home. I ordered a drink for the road. And thennothing. Someone must have put something in my drink.”
My mouth went dry. “When was this?” I asked, shaken.
“Three months ago. I’ve tried my best, but I can’t fucking remember anything.”
Horror was slowly filling me. Was he talking about the night he and I had first slept together? Our passionate one-night stand that I thought he was too drunk to remember?
Except he was telling me something different had happened. Someone had spiked his drink to keep him out of the way while they burgled his house.
“I woke up the next day in my apartment above the club, a damned fire alarm blaring,” he said. “I went home and found the one security guy on duty tied up and Chiara locked in the cellar. She was hysterical. Had been screaming for hours, but they’d gagged her. She was so scared when I finally found her and freed her that she attacked me. Didn’t recognise me. Like a terrified animal. They locked my sister in the basement like an animal!”
I felt sick. I remembered the fire alarm he’d mentioned. It had started up just as I was exiting the building that morning. He really was talking about the night that he and I had spent together!
How could he have been drugged? He had been completely in control. Not blackout drunk. So charming. Flirty. Completely aware of what he was doing, and utterly commanding in bed.
I was finding it difficult to breathe. For some reason, I had never mentioned our first night together to Marco, and now I wondered if I had subconsciously known not to.
I had thought that night had ended badly for me, having to do a walk of shame and then face him ignoring me the next time we saw each other. But he was the one who had gone home to a nightmare.
I could see the memory of that nightmare in his eyes now.
I was stunned, a strange ringing in my ears.
“When I find the bastards who broke in, the bastards who spiked my drink,” he said, his voice cold as winter, “they’re going to wish they weren’t alive.”
I swallowed hard. I knew he meant it.
And I knew who had handed him that spiked drink. It had beenme.
Chapter 27
BETH
That night Marco made fierce and passionate love to me, which was the only reason I managed to get some sleep, my body pleasantly tired from it all.
But I awoke a few hours later and was unable to drop off again. His arm thrown over my waist, that had always felt so comforting and secure, now felt heavy.
A reminder of how I had woken in his bed in the apartment above Bordello three months ago.
A reminder that I was responsible for his not being home that night, and for his loss of memory.
