“If a few ties are on the shadow, the shadow can be used as a spy, if her lover is close. If more, he can be farther away. If there are many and they are irrevocably tied together, then he can travel with her wherever she takes him.”
There was once again silence in the room. Tension. Her stomach knotted, fingers tightening on the glass until she was afraid the thick crystal might actually shatter.
“Emmanuelle, when did you find this out?” Stefano asked.
“Just before Miceli’s crew showed up. I was questioning Val. I knew I couldn’t be free of him, but didn’t know why. I know I love him, and it’s the real thing. A Ferraro thing. I wasn’t certain how it could be.”
“How imprisoned is your shadow?” Stefano asked.
She pressed the glass to her temple again. “It’s so weighted down I feel like I can’t breathe without him. In terms of what it takes to make that last part of the Saldi story fit, I don’t know how close I am to it, or if we’re already there. I suspect we’re very close, Stefano.”
“He had to have known,” Stefano condemned Val.
Emmanuelle nodded slowly. “Valentino did his research once he realized what was happening. He knew. Just like all of you, he decided he wanted me and he was going to keep me. He deliberately tied me to him, and I was so silly I just let him do it.” She wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t have blame in the situation—she did. She’d gone to Valentino of her own accord.
“What a fucking bastard,” Giovanni snapped.
Vittorio swirled the liquid in his glass. “Isn’t it funny how we can totally look at Valentino Saldi and call him out for doing exactly the same thing each of us did with the women in our lives, binding them to us without their consent? Hell, we seduced them, we played every card we had to make sure they belonged to us. We were masters at it, and we didn’t care that they didn’t have a chance, yet he does it and we want to call him the lowest worm on the face of the earth. I think that makes every one of us a hypocrite or worse.”
Emmanuelle wanted to kiss him. Vittorio. Of course he would stick up for her. She could always count on him. He hadn’t even looked at her. He hadn’t acted in any way as if he was standing with her. He’d simply stated a truth.
“Damn it,” Taviano exploded. “Vittorio’s right. You can’t look at Val without seeing the way he looks at Emme and you just know …” He trailed off. “But there’s the cheating. We don’t cheat.”
Color crept up Emmanuelle’s face. “I might have gotten that wrong. I should have listened to his explanation. Elie told me to, but I just couldn’t bear to, and then there was the shadow thing that terrified me.”
“There was an explanation for a naked woman being in his bedroom?” Vittorio asked. He’d been the one to beat the crap out of Valentino, and Val hadn’t lifted much of a hand to defend himself.
She nodded. “Miceli had sent her to get information from Val. Val didn’t want them to know I was important to him. Dario was already on his way to interrupt them when I showed up. He’d been signaled when she took off her clothes. Apparently, she runs one of Miceli’s strip clubs and has something to do with the trafficking ring. Val can tell you about her and all of that when you talk to him about Miceli’s operations.”
“And you’re satisfied that he really didn’t cheat on you?” Taviano pushed.
“I can hear lies as well as any of you,” Emme said. “But question him all you want.” She had the feeling they would no matter what she said. She was their baby sister, and they were determined to protect her no matter what.
“Can you see the ties binding your shadow when he’s not with you?” Ricco asked.
She shook her head. She’d spent hours staring at her shadow, trying to figure out how to undo what had happened. “When he told me the story Giuseppi had told him over and over, I realized that was the real reason Grace had been targeted, not to pay a gambling debt. And I’m certain Dario looked at Nicoletta for the same reason. Suddenly, after centuries of this story being nothing but that, these men see three women with shadows that their shadows react to. If that gets out, all of our unclaimed riders could be in trouble. I had no idea. I had no way of protecting myself.”
She put the glass down on a coffee table and wrapped her arms around her middle to try to stop shivering. “Now I’m in love with a man I can’t have. I have to go into an arranged marriage so I can produce babies with someone I’ll never love. I’ll wreck his life. He’ll always know I don’t love him. It won’t matter that I won’t cheat on him. He’ll know. And what about the woman he should be with? Our marriage will wreck her life as well.”