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“I’m halfway through a bottle of Scotch, and my grandfather just died. So, yeah, it’s best to say I’m confused.”
“Are you confused about how you feel about your wife?”
“I don’t know what to say, Dean. We don’t set the bed on fire or anything; it’s okay. She’s not particularly experienced, though after I learned she was from New York, I thought she’d be.”
“I thought she was from a village in Piedmont.”
“That’s what I thought. She is…well, she was born in Italy but raised in New York. She’s a child, ten years younger than me. I don’t think we can make it in the long run.”
“You sure about this?”
“I’m sure about nothing right now except that my grandfather, my only parent, my closest friend, has passed away, and everything fucking hurts.”
I’d taken my broken heart and run from there and wept. No one had asked why I was crying. Don Giordano had just died, so it made sense that I was grieving, which I was, but I was also mourning the end of my marriage.
Dante looked away from me. “That was not for you to hear.”
“But I did. You want to be with Lucia. You find our sex life lackluster and?—”
“I did not say that.” He threw the glass of whiskey he was drinking against a wall. It shattered. He turned to face me. “I did not say that, Elysa.”
“Your exact words were,” I paused to take a breath because it was humiliating to repeat his censure of me, “We don’t set the bed on fire or anything; it’s okay. You also mentioned how I’m not particularly experienced and that I’m a child.”
I hadn’t come to Dante a virgin, though he once told me Don Giordano thought so.
Before Dante, I’d had a boyfriend—we were both nineteen, and sex had been messy, awkward, and more about curiosity than passion. After that, there had been a couple more partners, but only because life had been full of other priorities—hospitality school, part-time jobs, pushing myself toward a future I was determined to build.
The truth was, I hadn’t met many men Iactuallywanted to get naked with.
But one look at Dante, and I thought,Oh, my lucky stars.
He was so damn handsome, so effortlessly magnetic, that resisting him had never been an option. And when we finally did make love…it had been amazing. Every time was. Because in those moments, he was mine—completely focused, completely present, completely with me.
How could I have known that didn’t mean the same for him?
It was proof, I supposed, of my own inexperience.
“You were not supposed to hear that, Elysa,” he thundered.
At no point was he saying he had not spoken the truth, just that I shouldn’t have heard it.
“But I did,” I repeated. “Are you saying that you didn’t mean what you said?”
It was a challenge, and Dante narrowed his eyes. “What game are you playing?”
“No game, Dante. I’m all out of games,” I told him sadly. I was hurting. I was in pain, and he was arguing semantics. “Look, Dante, I am younger than you by a decade, and I understand why you think it can’t work between us.” He was thirty-four while I’d just turned twenty-five. I didn’t have the wherewithal to operate in the same league as Dante Giordano. I wasn’t like Lucia, confident, sophisticated, and sexy. I was just me, more comfortable in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt than in designer wear. I had to force myself to learn how to dress appropriately so I wouldn’t embarrass Dante when we went out as a couple.
He looked furious, and I couldn’t understand why. Was it because he wanted to be the one who asked for a divorce and was annoyed that I’d done it first?
“I didn’t intend for you to hear any of that,” he said softly, regret lacing his words. “I can see that it hurt your feelings, but that doesn’t mean you have to do something this rash.” He pointed to the divorce papers.
The condescending son of a bitch!
“Dante, I’ve already moved out of the flat.” I didn’t add while you’ve been in the office, probably with Lucia going through all that pesky after-death stuff one has to go through with abrilliantlawyer.
“Ma che cazzo!Cosahai fatto?”
I rose and brushed my sweaty hands on my jean-clad thighs. I’d been nervous about this, but now all I felt was shattered relief. “I’m leaving. I ask you to go through the documents. I had Maura’s aunt prepare them.” Carmen DeLuca was a well-known divorce lawyer in Rome. “You’ll see I’m asking you fornothing.”