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“In a manner of speaking.” She wanted to sound exasperated, but she knew all she pulled off was tired. “It doesn’t matter. I asked you a question years ago, when my life was in ruins at your feet. I asked you and you… Well, you had no answer. You shook your head. You had tears in your eyes and roses in your hands. We’ve come full circle here, Vi. Tears and roses.”

Vi flinched, and Chiara regretted the words almost instantly. When hadshedeveloped a cruel streak? When she’d put her heart in the hands of a twenty-five-year-old girl with a crush that Chiara should have avoided like the plague? Nobody was afraid of plagues these days anyway.

But Chiara still should have known better. Even if the betrayal was one of enormous proportions and the hurt all the more, because unbeknownst to Vi, Chiara’s heart had been on the line.

Frankie had destroyed her sense of self. Humiliated her as a woman. Insulted her as a spouse. And in the past five years, Chiara had painstakingly rebuilt most of those intangibles. Time. Distance. Friends. Work and success. All of those helped, and she felt whole again.

But Vi had broken her heart. And it was the one thing Chiara did not know how to repair. How to begin to trust the wretched piece of muscle pumping crimson into her chest with decisions, since it had taken her so long to wrap it in burlap and stitch it together with tattered yarn. Chiara felt that was one skill she did not possess.

“And so we’re back to square one. Aside from making me come and repaying a debt you really didn’t acquire, why are you here, Chiara?”

As always, the most random thought surfaced, and Chiara simply went with it, her shoulders suddenly heavy and fingers numb.

“To hear you say my name.”

Vi let out an exhalation and Chiara finally gave in and her smile bloomed fully. Years had polished this woman, added a veneer of sophistication. But someone like Chiara could still fluster her. Or maybe it was just Chiara. She chose to think it was the latter, and her chest felt lighter.

The sound of the clock somewhere in the apartment reminded Chiara of the time and of how exhausted she was. “I’m sorry. It’s late, and it’s been a long, somewhat eventful day.”

On Vi’s face, an answering grin bloomed, a corner of that sensuous mouth lifting with self-deprecation. Unsurprisingly, it made Chiara happy to have coaxed that smile out of this sad, tormented woman.

Thinking that she needed to have her head examined for being glad about such things, and about how Renate and Aoife would have a field day with what she had just done and said, Chiara picked up her purse where it had fallen by the front door.

“What now?” Vi watched her warily now, but there was something like hope lurking in those ashen depths.

She actually lifted her eyes to the heavens.Misericordia, the hope, anguish, desperation in that voice… All the things that had been there five years ago and had undone Chiara again and again every time she’d rescued Vi from her torment, still had the same effect on her.

So weak. So damn weak.

Some things really never did change. Maybe she should just get with the program.

“There’s a gala for New York’s fashion magazines tomorrow.”

Vi’s brows lifted comically.

“Yeah, I declined, what with us going full steam ahead with the special edition. I didn’t think we'd have time…”

“Reconsider, Ms. Courtenay. Pick me up after the shoot at 9.”

Gray eyes narrowed and reddened lips thinned.

“Why are you doing this?”

She could have lied. Could have plucked out any of the thousands of thoughts in her head. Really, any single one would do. But when the truth seemed so much more expedient, Chiara closed her eyes and surrendered to it.

“Because I was wrong earlier. Some debts aren’t so easily paid off, Vi. Yours or mine. And I think neither of us is done paying.”

20

IN A FARAWAY LAND OF OLD FAMILIAR FACES AND UNDERTOWS

Chiara Conti remembered that when you find yourself swept up in an undertow, they tell you to keep swimming parallel to the shore. Keep trying until you free yourself. Never stop. Standing in the middle of the Four Seasons Grand Plaza’s immense ballroom, surrounded by hundreds of guests, Chiara felt herself being pulled underwater.

The lights, the movement, and the crowd battered her senses to the point where she felt numb, submerged. The mix of expensive perfumes, alcohol, and fragrant finger foods was jarring. The cameras, the flashes of white teeth, just as bright and just as predatory.

Amidst the noise and the sensory assault, her only raft was Vi’s hand in hers. When had she even taken Chiara’s ice-cold fingers in her own, warm ones?

They walked the red carpet separately, more so for Chiara’s self-preservation than out of secrecy. She figured that, with Arabella and Benedict giving them rather suggestive thumbs up as they got out of the limo, the cat would be out of the bag in no time anyway.