Page 170 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

She’d overheard him. His conversation with Marcus. He shook his head and let out the breath that had been locked in his lungs for what felt like an eternity.

Erin watched as he pulled his tie loose from his neck in three quick yanks and huffed out a bitter laugh. She wanted to be surprised that he hadn’t taken her up on her ‘offer’. The thought of it turned her stomach. But she’d known. In the back of her mind and the quiet of her heart, she’d known that he wouldn’t.

And in that moment, all the anger and all the fight went out of her. The fury that had fuelled her to get her to this point burned out with a desperate last indignant flame before sinking back into thick smoke and charcoal in surrender.

‘You heard the conversation with Marcus,’ he stated.

‘Yes,’ Erin confirmed, ready to surrender everything to him.

‘How fitting. It was after all how I found out about your intended deceit. And Sam? He is your lover, perhaps?’

‘No,’ Erin said, bruised by the bitterness in his tone and unable to bring herself to correct him.

He nodded to himself as if her answer hadn’t really mattered to him. Standing there, the moon picking out the white in his shirt like a beacon, he looked impossibly even more handsome than ever, which was just cruel.

‘What was this,’ he asked, gesturing to what had just happened between them. ‘Some kind of test?’

‘Maybe,’ she admitted, unsure herself now. ‘Perhaps it was a bit like a helicopter ride, or a shopping trip. Or an awful dress,’ she said, forcing the words out of her mouth.

He plunged his fists into the pockets of his dark trousers and turned away from her as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.

‘What was it? That you were going to get out of marrying me?’ he asked, his gaze firmly on the night sea. The past tense he’d used made her flinch, distracting her from the thread of hurt she imagined in his tone.

Shame overwhelmed her. He’d wanted her broken, and that was how she felt.

‘I could never quite work it out,’ he confessed as if half impressed. ‘You signed the prenup, so it wasn’t money.’

‘No. I... I was promised that if I married you then Charterhouse would be mine.’

‘Charterhouse?’

‘A publishing company.’

He frowned, finally turning back to her. ‘The project you told me about? You did all this for abusiness?’

She hurt from the harshness of his tone, but knew she deserved it. ‘It belonged to my family, before my father sold it.’

‘What the hell does that have to do with me?’ he demanded angrily.

She swallowed. ‘I... Gio Gallo,’ she whispered.

That seemed to stop Enzo in his tracks. He blinked as he processed the information, his face a reflection of his confusion.

‘Gio Gallo? My grandfather?’

‘Yes,’ Erin said, nodding once. ‘He owns it, and offered to sell it back to me if...’

She didn’t need to finish her sentence. The rest was painfully clear by now.

‘That man is nothing to me,’ Enzo exclaimed. ‘He wasn’t when I was a child and isn’t now. Why would he have any interest in who or when I married?’

‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.’

‘So, let me get this straight. You agreed to marry a complete stranger, in exchange for a company?’

She nodded. ‘There were conditions,’ she said, trying to explain. ‘I wasn’t allowed to tell you, otherwise I would have. And the business was...it was in my family for generations before it was sold. I made a promise to my mother that I would get it back. I wanted so desperately to make it happen.’

‘That was supremely naïve,’ he bit out, utterly unmoved by her motives.