The Scandal Behind The Italian's Wedding. Millie Adams

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      Which was ridiculous, because she had seen him only a month earlier.

      She could still remember the awkward, horrible dance at one of her father’s parties. Her biggest crush ever had only agreed to be her date for a dare. To see the inside of the infamous King mansion and to report back to friends at school.

      Dante had taken hold of her after Bradley had embarrassed her, and held her close, shielding her from curious eyes. He’d been so strong and solid, and all the anguish and shame inside her had caught fire and burned hot. It had been so embarrassing but she’d also been unable to pull away from him.

      But he’d been pity dancing with her. He’d added to the confusion of...everything.

      And compared to Bradley’s bony shoulders, Dante’s had felt so broad and solid.

      It had all been weird.

      Even with that she could forget.

      But she didn’t think that the impact of a man like Dante Fiori could live in its genuine state inside a woman, or anyone. You would die of it.

      It became clear only in person.

      He had always made her feel small. Rattled.

      She had the tendency to run at the mouth whenever he was around. He made her stomach feel like it was quivering.

      She disliked it intensely. And yet, she had always felt drawn to him like he was a magnet. She had always felt compelled to get a response out of him. To go to him. And she could no more understand any of those tendencies then she could understand quantum physics.

      Which was to say: not at all.

      “He is unhappy,” Violet said softly.

      “Well... He’ll just have to deal with it.”

      Minerva lifted her chin, affecting a posture of determination she did not feel. Her brother appeared behind Dante, and behind him was her father.

      Everybody did look remarkably unhappy.

      Min was not accustomed to being the source of people’s unhappiness. She was used to being ignored, and when she’d shown up with her parents’ first grandchild, they’d been happy.

      No one looked happy now.

      The car stopped, and Dante didn’t wait. He marched over to the car and jerked the door open.

      And she found herself face-to-face with his stormy black gaze.

      It was fathomless. As if she could look all the way down into the depths of his soul. Into the depths of hell itself.

      She knew the things they said about him. That when her father had encountered him in Rome when he was a boy, Dante had been attempting to rob Robert King at gunpoint. That something about the boy had made Robert pause. That he had given him his watch, but also his card, and told him that if he wanted to change his life, rather than just live to commit another robbery, he should contact him.

      And that shockingly, Dante had.

      But that he had been a man who had committed a great many atrocities prior to his salvation and education that had been financed by Robert King.

      She had never believed the stories.

      Mostly because her father loved a story, and it was one he did not tell. Which forced her to believe that the truth of it must be less dramatic, and far less interesting.

      Now she wondered, though.

      Because she felt like she was staring down the very devil.

      “We have a lot to discuss, don’t you think?”

      Dante took hold of her hand, and lifted her from the limo, depositing her gently onto her feet. She looked past his shoulder, at Maximus and her father.

      “And when you’re done speaking to her,” Maximus said, “I think you and I need to have a talk.”

      “I’m sure this will give you time to rally the firing squad,” Dante said, his tone dry.

      He was still holding her hand.

      She could recall, with perfect ease, another time Dante had touched her hand. Not the dance, but earlier.

      She had been a girl. All of twelve, and she had fallen out of a tree in the backyard.

      Dante had found her lying pitifully on the ground, pondering her fate, and he had been afraid that she had broken her neck. He had yelled as much at her as he had lifted her up. His touch, hot and strong, had started to quiver low in her body.

      She hadn’t liked it. She had pulled away from him, then bent down to wipe the blood from her knee. “I’m fine.”

      “You are a menace,” he’d said back.

      She could imagine the exchange happening just that way now.

      “I have to get Isabella,” she protested.

      “Go,” he said.

      She did, stumbling as she went. With shaking fingers, she undid the seat belt and lifted her baby girl up from the seat.

      The thing was, it didn’t matter who’d given birth to Isabella.

      Minerva was her mother.

      She’d cared for her from the time she was born while Katie shrank away in increasing fear, self-medicating away the terror of the possibility of Carlo finding them.

      Min was not brave by nature. But she’d known someone had to be brave for Isabella. And since Katie couldn’t, it had to be her.

      They walked past her brother, who was looking at Dante as though he wanted to flay him alive, and her father, who looked stoic. Into the house. Up the stairs.

      Totally silent.

      Minerva clung to Isabella, thinking of her in some ways as a shield. Surely not even Dante would yell at her while she was holding a baby.

      He opened up the door to her father’s study, and ushered her inside, slamming it behind them. “Explain this, Minerva, because you and I both know that I am not the father of your baby.”

      Well, she was disappointed on that score. Dante was clearly fine yelling around an infant.

      She cupped the back of Isabella’s downy little head. “Did you tell them?”

      “No, I didn’t tell them. You’re going to have to tell them, because if I tell them they’re not going to believe me. In the hour it took you to get home from the press conference, I had to tell your brother about ten reasons he shouldn’t kill me where I sat. And the leading one was that I might be the father of your child, and that you might need me in some capacity.”

      “I do need you,” she said.

      Silence СКАЧАТЬ