Despite my qualms, Sinclair handled the situation with the kind of aloof control that I had come to expect from him. He spoke bluntly, skirting the line between brutality and honesty. I could picture him reclined in a chair, a glass of whiskey dangling from two fingers as he regarded Elena, lazy but powerful like a crocodile waiting in the weeds.
It was harder to imagine Elena’s reaction. I didn’t know her as well as I should have and when she responded to Sin’s clear dismissals, it was with English words as smooth and emotionless as plastic.
I winced when he spoke about giving her the house, sunk further beneath the covers in cringing sympathy when he declared their love platonic, but my empathy felt displaced because Elena didn’t seemed perturbed by him. They conducted their breakup like the dissolution of a business agreement.
Like most things that seemed too good to be true at first glance, it all went to hell in a hand basket.
“You fucking cheating bastard,” I heard Elena seethe after a long moment of silence.
My mind immediately flashed to my discarded clothes. Before I could consciously assimilate what her words meant, I was hopping up and out of the bed. I hovered behind the partially closed door to the main room of the suite, my skin rippled with goose flesh. My body was aflame with the impulse to flee but there was no place to go.
“Elena,” Sinclair began.
“Shut up!” she hissed. “Don’t open your lying mouth, Daniel Sinclair. What the fuck have you done?”
I heard movement in the other room and darted towards the bathroom. There was no place to hide in the palatial room so I hurried back into the bedroom.
“Did you seriously cheat on me? Who the hell is she?” Elena was saying, her voice saturated with the sounds of Napoli.
There was no gap to wiggle under beneath the bed. My heart thumped in my ears, pumping so forcibly that my limbs shook with each beat. What would happen if she came into the bedroom and saw me?
“Is she still here?” Elena’s voice was just outside the bedroom, high and hard with infuriated disgust.
The door began to swing open just as I dove through the door to the closet. Happily, the walk-in was filled with rows of Sinclair’s clothes. I separated the lower level of button-up shirts so that I could nestle between the fabric and the wall. Pulling the hangers back together, I tried to slow my ragged breathing. I hugged my knees to my chest and tucked my chin into the space between my knees; reminded of the times I had hidden as a child back in Naples. I would have taken hiding from the Camorra over my sister any day.
The door to the closet cracked loudly against the wall as it was flung open and Elena stormed into the room.
“She isn’t here, Elena,” Sinclair said calmly as Elena stared to rifle through the clothes on the other side of the closet from where I sat.
“Fuck you,” she spat. “Like I would believe anything that comes out of your disgusting, deceitful mouth.”
Sinclair’s sigh echoed throughout the room. “She left just before you got here. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”
My sister snorted so hard, it sounded as if it hurt. “Because there is a good way to find out my fiancée is fucking a puttana.”
“She isn’t a whore, and I am not just fucking her.”
There was a long pause.
I shifted slightly to peer between a gap in the hanging fabric, unable to curb my curiosity. Elena was in profile, her muscles wound tightly around her nuclear core. I could practically hear the tick of her jaw clenching. It was only a matter of time before she exploded.
So, of course, Sinclair lit the fuse.
“And we were never engaged.”
My gasp was covered by the horrified, pained noise that those words forced from her. She whirled around to face Sinclair and shoved him so hard that he took a step back. I watched as she advanced on him, pressing him against the wall by the door with both fists clutching his shirt. When she spoke, her mouth was so close to his that for a moment, I thought they were kissing and my stomach clenched.
“We were going to adopt a baby. We were going to be a family, Daniel. Don’t stand there and tell me we weren’t engaged. We were partners in every way that matters.”
Sinclair stared calmly down into her face, his hands coming up to cup her elbows gently. “We were partners, you are right. We made plans together, supported each other and navigated our careers together. But we were never partners in the only way that matters.” He paused. “I don’t believe that we were ever in love with each other.”
Elena’s hands fell away from his rumpled shirt as she took a shocked step back. Even though it wasn’t my nightmare that I was watching unfold, I was acutely aware that our roles could have been reversed. The combination of empathy and relief ran salty, wet tracks down my cheeks.