AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Em, we’ve talked about this. Your marriage is much bigger than just you and Anthony. Listen to me.” Her father’s emphasis on the word “listen” had a slight bend to it and sounded like pleading, but she knew her dad well enough to know that Vittorio Bonacci never pleaded. “He can’t work for us ever again, I know that. His access to the family fund will be cut off, but he’ll never pull a stunt like this again. We’ll make him play nice. We’ll give him no choice. You won’t be the first couple to figure something like this out. Don’t you understand? Emilia, this time you will hold all the power. In time, everyone else will forget that you left and anything ever happened.”
Her body drew tight, and she squeezed her eyes against the pain radiating through her head. Her dad didn’t get it. She didn’t want power. She didn’t want to figure things out. She just wanted freedom. A chance to live without a bunch of men dictating her every move. No husband. No riches. No gossipy community.
“Dad.” She sucked in a gulp of air, her breath shaking as she tried hard to keep her tone even. “What about my honor? You know everything now. You know what he did. The money. The cheating. What honor is there for me in going back?”
“Em, you’re being melodramatic.” Her dad’s words were short and stabbing. “Not every marriage has to be perfect.”
Yes, because in her culture, only physical death was an acceptable excuse to exit a marriage. But she’d been emotionally dead in her marriage for years. Didn’t that count? Or would she have found more “honor” in waiting until that emotional death led to her actual death?
She pulled her hand away from her face and gazed at the half-healed bruises on her knuckles, a distinct sickness overrunning her tummy at how those bruises had occurred.
There’d been one thing to push her from her gilded cage. Anthony’s broken promise. His final mistake in a lifetime of misdeeds. She couldn’t tell her dad what had happened. They simply didn’t have that sort of relationship. Chances were, he wouldn’t understand, anyway. That fact alone made her want to strike out at him just as she had her husband.
“You’re right, Dad. Not every marriage has to be perfect.” Her voice came out much smaller than she intended. “But yours and Mamma’s came pretty close.”
And as jaded as I should be, a piece of me wants that too.
Yet another thing she couldn’t say to her father.
“Emilia.” Her father’s voice matched hers in volume, like any mention of her mother winded him. “Don’t talk about her. Please.”
“You loved her. She loved you too.” A mass of tension took up space inside her chest and made breathing harder.
“Real love…” Her dad paused, almost as if he didn’t want to finish speaking. “It’s… Sometimes it’s easier not to have.”
Silence grew between them, providing room for the reminder that her father hadn’t always been so heartless, nor had he cared so much about appearances. Only since her mother’s death. Perhaps her dad figured a marriage of convenience would spare her a different kind of heartbreak. The kind he’d already experienced.
How wrong he’d been.
“I guess you succeeded, then.” Her shoulders rounded, and her posture sagged with the admission. “Anthony never once told me he loved me. In fact, I’m certain he never did.”
And now she mourned the years trapped in her loveless marriage, while other young women had the freedom to go out and date or attempt relationships that might turn into genuine love… like the relationship she’d had and lost.
A deep pain swelled within her heart, and she shook her head, trying to move the conversation forward without having to stop to think about what that pain meant. “Anyway, the money Anthony stole, do you think we’ll get any of it back?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Her father let out another heavy sigh. “It was good that you informed me before Anthony. The police were able to freeze his accounts, and he won’t be touching any of what’s left.”
She cringed, imagining Anthony’s reaction, glad she was miles away while all this played out.
What made Anthony’s theft so hard to believe, was that the Stuccos weren’t exactly poor. Sure, the Stuccos had money, and maybe the Bonaccis had accumulated more, but Anthony was still the oldest male child set to inherit the bulk of his family’s fortune. Then again, Anthony was one of those people where too much was never enough.
She lifted her chin and tried not to release a maniacal laugh. So much of this story was downright outlandish. “I take it since I sent those documents to you in the morning, Anthony was arrested at the office?”
“About that—” Her father’s tone drew out slow and strained. “We stopped the remaining money from being moved, but Anthony was gone by the time police went looking for him. No one knows where he is.”
Her body went numb, and her chest stung from her lack of breathing. “I… I don’t understand. Did he get away? How did he get away?”
She began to shake, and she struggled to hold on to her phone.
“The police have footage of him entering and leaving your apartment building before they got to him. Maybe he went in to check on you and decided to run when he figured out you’d left. The detectives say he’s likely too busy saving his skin to cause anyone any problems.”
She let out a sudden and loud laugh, her mind on the edge of cracking. Her father might have described Anthony as a “hothead”, but he hadn’t seen firsthand how true that description could be.
Anthony hated losing. Even with small things, like if she distracted attention away from him at a party, or if she didn’t measure up to his standards in behavior or looks. There was no telling what he would do now that she’d monumentally unraveled his life. Though one thing was certain. He wouldn’t just let this go. And he would be looking for her.
“Em, I have to go.” Her father’s voice cut through her silent despair. “Think about what I proposed. Anthony will eventually calm down and show up. When he does, I will talk to him. We will fix this. Just try to understand what you’re letting go of here.”
She buried her face in the palm of her hand, fighting an urge to growl, or scream, or even just argue back. Arguing had never gotten her anywhere, but maybe rebellion would.
