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The fact it’s a bare faced lie has me reacting in a second, but Abigail is faster, and she says imperiously, “Then I win darling, so run along and lick your wounds. He’s off the market, so maybe you should focus your attention on someone who’s willing for a change.”
She tugs on my hand, and ordinarily I would be angry at her show of dominance, but for some reason it makes me smile. As we walk away, she whispers, “If you don’t like the monster you created, you only have yourself to blame, Mr. Ortega.”
She smirks and my hand itches to connect with her shapely ass as she makes a mockery of my instructions, but then all other thoughts are banished immediately when a familiar face stops in front of us.
“Matty.”
My heart takes a huge tumble as I stare into the beguiling eyes of the one woman who ever chipped away a piece of my black heart.
“Diana.” I nod coolly, trying desperately to get my turbulent thoughts under control as she glances up at me from under her long dark lashes that hide the most astonishing blue eyes. Diana Corlietti has always been a fragile beauty that made me to want to protect. She stands before me like a vision in a white dress, her hair long and flowing down her back like a goddess.
Abigail’s breath catches as she gasps, and I must have let my feelings show because I can sense her pain. Diana has always affected me and made me into a man I despise and seeing her now has brought it all flooding back as she stares at me with a mixture of hurt and desire mingling into an intoxicating cocktail. There was a time I would have craved hearing my name spill from her tempting lips. Ached to see those eyes fastened on me with that loving expression. Killed for one more night with her, one more luxurious decadent experience of forbidden love and broken promises.
However, the tide has turned because after my initial shock, the pain hits me like a tidal wave and washes away the rose-colored mist that latches onto my eyes when she’s around.
Now I see her for what she always was, demented, twisted and cruel, forming a once beautiful girl into a woman who is ugly on the inside disguising what’s on the outside.
“Stepmother.” I cut her down with that one word, telling her I haven’t forgiven or forgotten her betrayal and the tears well in her eyes as she whispers, “Please, can we talk?” She glances dismissively at Abigail and says with a tremble to her lips, “Alone.”
“No.” I dismiss her request with a cruelty that she deserves and tug Abigail along with me, creating distance between us.
Abigail is silent and I can tell she is shocked by my reaction, but I can’t deal with that right now because it’s as if our enemies are forming a line as the one person I hate more than my stepmother crosses our path, causing Abigail to squeeze my hand so hard I think she will break it.
“Mr. Ortega.” Mario’s slimy voice seeps into my blood and makes it boil on impact and I look eagerly at his reaction as he turns to my wife.
“Miss. Kensington.” The expression on his face tells me everything I needed to know, because he can’t disguise the yearning he has for the woman by my side. It’s raw hunger, perverted even, as he stares at her, almost salivating at the mouth. His cruel, beady eyes slide across her body, and he licks his wet lips as he reaches for her hand.
“Back off, Mario.” I growl as I pull her behind me and then say with the utmost satisfaction. “And it’s no longer, Miss. Kensington. Abigail is now Mrs. Ortega, my wife.”
It’s as if I’ve detonated a grenade, and it explodes in his face as he steps back and regards me through incensed, narrowed eyes. “Your wife!”
He almost can’t form the words and I say smugly, “Yes, aren’t you going to congratulate us?”
I am enjoying myself way too much, especially when he glances at Abigail and hisses, “Did he force you?”
The look of anger he is directing her way is interesting. Then she says in a tight voice, “Of course not. I love my husband and couldn’t marry him fast enough.”
I almost believe Mario is going to kill me now as he steps forward and hisses, “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Abigail retreats a little at the fury on his face and I get between them, my soldiers moving to surround us. Abigail is shaking but nowhere near as much as Mario as he hisses, “You’ve just declared war, Matteo. Gather your troops because you don’t know what you are facing.”
The air darkens, the atmosphere oppressive and woven with sinister intent. I have never seen Mario lose his cool before. He usually walks around with a smug superiority and now that all falls away, revealing the demon inside.
Abi is afraid. I can almost touch her fear, and that causes the beast inside me to roar as I get in his face and snarl, “Then bring it on because you are a dead man walking.”
I shove him away and my soldiers effectively position him out of our tight circle and clear a path through the astonished faces of the guests, who are suddenly aware of a storm about to break.
CHAPTER20
ABIGAIL
Nothing prepared me for what happened. It was a vicious onslaught that appeared to go on for hours. First that woman who tried to stake a claim on my husband, then another who I fear more than anything from his reaction to her. It was obvious there’s a history there that runs deep, and for the first time since I met him, I saw a little of his walls crumble. It leaves me with a hollowness inside. As if I’m second best somehow and if she had her way, she would take my place in a heartbeat and neither of them would look back.
Then there was Mario. That disgusting waste of skin and bone who chills me to the soul. I hated him on sight the first time I met him, and that opinion hasn’t changed. He made my skin crawl and my eyes bleed because there was something sinister and deadly about the man who appears to have an agenda where I’m concerned.
Thank God Matteo is who he is and surrounds himself with menace because I doubt I could have got away from him if I was alone.
There is so much to process and yet I must maintain my dignity because we are in public. To do a job and I must disguise my emotions.
