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“What is it you think Adriano will make me do, Nigella? I’m not his pet dog for him to give me orders.”
The silence that followed was deafening because she’d never retorted before. But things had to change.
It wasn’t just her anymore. She wouldn’t tolerate anyone speaking to her children like that. Neither could she hide in that apartment.
“Dogs are loyal creatures,” Adriano said, raising his glass to his lips.
“I agree,” Nyra said, everything inside her quaking.
Did he think her stealing a few trinkets from his mansion made her disloyal?
Okay, for a man with such exacting standards that his stellar reputation in the finance world had reached even her ears, maybe stealing and lying made her disloyal.
But wasn’t he going to give her a chance to explain? And why was he doing this in front of everyone?
In the ten months she’d known him, Adriano had never,ever, flexed his power to show off or to punch down. It was the very thing about him that had turned her head.
She licked her trembling lips, refusing to show her internal panic. “I guess I should have picked something better as an insult for myself.”
Then she turned to Nigella, whose glare should have ground her into dust. “I have no idea why you all are so—” she included the twins in her gaze too “—threatened by me but I’m not playing this game anymore.”
A soft gasp fell from Fabi’s mouth as if Nyra had given voice to something unmentionable in open company.
“I never wanted your power and position in the family. And your constant venom is…exhausting. But, yes, if you want to arrange some damned party and show me off to the society, I’m willing to try.” Then she looked at the man who was watching her with that intense focus. “If that’s what you want from me,” she said to him.
She didn’t know if he could hear her desperation.
A flash of dark humor flashed across those penetrating eyes. “I have already made the mistake of having expectations of you,cara. And you dashed them. Quite spectacularly, I might say.”
Nyra’s belly swooped, as if she were standing in an elevator car whose cords had been cut off abruptly.
Shocked gazes turned to her, then him, like greedy spectators at some bloodthirsty sport.
“What are you talking about?” Nigella asked, curiosity dripping from her tone. “Was I right that she’s the thief?”
Every drop of blood fled from Nyra’s face, leaving a strange tingling sensation behind.
Adriano folded his napkin and dropped it onto his plate, having barely touched his food. “There will be no celebrations. At least the world hasn’t witnessed my temporary insanity, as Federico put it so aptly.”
Glee filled Nigella’s and her hell-spawn twins’ eyes, a glee that they barely hid. “What do you mean, Adriano?” Nigella said, crying fake disappointment, and doing Nyra a favor.
Her own throat refused to work and Nyra suddenly became aware of two things at once. Her stubborn, naive decision to compartmentalize and keep herself limited to a mere sliver of Adriano’s vast everyday life had been foolish. Resulting in his family and the world at large assuming that he had hidden her away because he was ashamed of her and what they shared. And the second, more devastating thing, the moment she’d been dreading even as they’d stood in that tacky chapel, had arrived.
Midnight had struck and her carriage, and her pretty dress and her glass slippers…were all about to disappear. And with it, her dark, brooding prince.
Adriano pushed up from his seat and stared down that blade of a nose at her, as if she were an insect that had been helplessly caught under his handmade Italian loafers. In a white Armani shirt that was open at his throat and undone at his cuffs, he looked like the hero of some gothic novel Nyra had read ages ago, before giving them up. She’d had enough angst and grief in her life without reaching for it in fiction too.
“We will not be celebrating because this marriage is over. Nyra—” she thought his lovely mouth had flinched a little when he said her name, but then she was already beginning to feel as if she was floating outside of her body, so what the hell did she know “—will be leaving today.”
There was no anger, no heat, no reproach to his words. He said it as plainly and free of emotion and with just as much ruthless finality as he ran his company. Like it was a decision made by his will alone and not a partnership they’d both invested in.
Had it been ever a partnership though?a small voice asked.
“No,” she said, the word automatically falling from her lips before she’d given it permission. Her chest rose and fell. Under the table her hands crawled to her flat belly, as if to reassure the tiny life inside. “Don’t do this, Adriano, please.”
“Bruno will make arrangements for you, physical and financial.”
“No, Adriano. This isn’t you talking—”