Vodka.
The burn in my throat drifted to my chest as I headed toward the exit. Just as I pushed the door open and cool October air enveloped me, I came face-to-face with a familiar set of eyes.
“Going somewhere?”
I tensed and tried to step around him, but my husband’s hand found my own and stopped me.
“Let me go,” I gritted.
Antonio pulled me closer, wrapping an arm around my waist like we were the most normal couple in the world. As if there wasn’t a twenty-five-year age gap between us, as if he’d wooed me instead of having signed a contract for me, and, most importantly, as if he hadn’t cheated on me and then tried to apologize with a box of fucking chocolates.
I struggled, but his hold only grew tighter.
“Make a scene, Gianna . . .” he warned.
Antonio was like his son, only wrapped in pain and delivered with a side of righteousness, even as the cross around his neck singed a hole through his skin. After two years of marriage, I didn’t believe he could even feel sympathy, and I knew it was how he’d climbed the ladder to be one of the most feared men in the United States.
As for why he was revered—well, when Antonio was warm, he was like the sun. Everyone wanted his attention because, when he gave it, it was absolute, as though you were the only one who had ever mattered. Regardless of the heartache he’d caused me, the walls I’d put up and some I still maintained, I wasn’t a match.
Now, I had to figure out how to give up the sun.
“I really don’t like waiting around for you.”
“I really don’t like you fucking my friends.”
“Watch your mouth,” he chastised, walking us back into the hotel.
Sometimes, it felt like a scream was trapped in my throat, one that had been struggling to get free for the past twenty-two years. It had a voice, a body, fiery red hair, and a heart of steel. I was terrified she would escape, that her echo would burn this world to the ground and leave me standing alone, in smoke and ash. I pushed the feeling down, down, until a light sheen of sweat cooled my skin.
We passed the ballroom doors and, as I glanced inside, my gaze collided with Allister’s.
The exchange was a blur of heat, the burn of liquor, a flicker of pitch-black as his eyes dropped to Antonio’s grip on my arm. And then it was gone, replaced with gold wallpaper as we walked down a hall toward the terrace.
We stepped outside, and I sucked in a breath. The night was cold and dark, but instead of rubbing my arms for warmth, I let the icy breeze bite into my skin. Maybe I was a masochist, or maybe pain was one of the only things that made me feel alive.
The terrace was empty, save for two guests from the benefit smoking a cigarette.
“Give us a moment, yeah?”
It wasn’t a question, no matter how my husband had voiced it.
The men shared a hesitant look but didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to drop their cigarettes and head back through the double doors that led into the ballroom. Light fanned across the terrace floor before the doors closed and darkness consumed us once again.
A distant memory swept into the present.
“How could you love such a terrifying man?” my ex-best-friend Sydney had asked me as we sat on my husband’s office couch together and he talked on the phone.
I’d only had to think about the question for a moment.
“He listens to me.”
I guessed he listened to her, too.
“Care to explain what this is?”
I turned to Antonio to see he held a small, round compact in his hand. My heart beat in the base of my throat. Here was one of those walls about to come tumbling down.
“What is it, Gianna?” he bit out.