Page 8 of The Sicilian Billionaire’s Neglected Wife (A Painful Kind of Love #14)

My knuckles hover over the painted wood door.

Six in the morning is an ungodly hour to show up anywhere, but I’ve been walking since three, and I can’t feel my feet anymore.

The hem of my anniversary dress, that beautiful, stupid, hopeful dress, is torn from catching on something in the dark.

Blood has dried on my knees from where I fell in the driveway.

I’m visiting the only couple who knows the truth about my marriage, but something holds me back at the last moment, and I suddenly wonder if this is right.

They’re his friends first before they were mine.

Is it really okay for me to be here?

I bite my lip in hesitation, but just when I’m on the verge of turning, the door opens, and Shayla Kontides is suddenly standing in front of me. “Sienah?” Her eyes are wide with shock, and it’s obvious by her gaze that she’s taken note of my tearstained checks.

As expected, from one half of New York’s legal powerhouse couple.

“I’m sorry, but can I—can I crash here? Just for tonight—”

She’s already pulling me in before I’m done speaking. “You can stay for as long as you want.” Her voice is warm but firm, her touch gentle but her movements brisk as she directs me up the stairs. “Showe’rs second door on the right. I’ll find you something clean.”

“Shayla?” Adriano’s voice carries from somewhere deeper in the house. “Who was—” He appears in the doorway and stops short, silver eyes taking in my state. His expression doesn’t change, but something shifts in the air. “Sienah.”

“She needs a shower and clothes,” Shayla says simply. “Coffee?”

“Already brewing.” He looks at me again. “Guest room’s ready whenever you need it.”

I’m halfway up the stairs before I realize they haven’t demanded explanations, and I wonder if it’s because they’ve been expecting this. That they’ve always known but were too nice to tell me the truth.

And that this...this was inevitable, and all these years, I’ve been waiting for a love that will never come.

Tears sting my eyes anew as the shower runs pink with blood from my knees. I stand under water hot enough to burn, trying to wash away the echo of Aivan’s voice.

I don’t love you.

Three words that shouldn’t have the power to destroy ten years, but here we are.

When I finally emerge, I find clothes laid out on the bed. Simple cotton pajama pants and a soft t-shirt that smells like lavender detergent. They’re slightly too long, Shayla has a few inches on me, but they’re clean and they’re not silk and they don’t smell like him.

Downstairs, I find them in the kitchen. Adriano reads something on his tablet while Shayla pulls a tray of croissants from the oven. The domesticity of it makes my chest ache.

“Come and take a seat,” Shayla invites me with a smile, and it feels slightly surreal to have a billionaire lawyer like Adriano to be the one to serve me coffee.

I’ve only ever spent time with them in charity functions, and in every occasion, they’ve always appeared poised and very, very composed.

It’s my first time to see them not wearing their legal hats, and they’re just two completely different people.

Adriano is gentler, Shayla is softer, and I just can’t help but think that this...

This was how I envisioned Aivan and I could one day be.

But I know now such dreams were never meant to come true.

“Sienah?”

Just hearing Shayla, who can make the most heinous of evildoers shake in their feet during cross examination, say my name so softly is my undoing, and already I can feel my face starting to crumple.

“I’m s-so sorry,” I choke out. “I just didn’t know where else to go—”

“You don’t have to explain anything.” Sienah reaches across the table to squeeze my hand. “I just want you to know you’re safe with us. Okay?”

“But Aivan—”

“Eusebio called us.”

My eyes widen. Why would Eusebio, the Cannizzaros’ chief of security, call him?

“He’s let us know it would be appreciated if we were to have you as our guest. But that’s already a given even if he hadn’t called.”

“But Aivan—”

“If you don’t want to speak with him just yet,” Adriano said quietly, “we’ll make sure he understands that you’ve asked for time.”

Shayla gives my hand another squeeze. “You’re our friend, too, Sienah. And we meant it when we said you’re safe with us.”

“T-Thank you.” The words are so painfully adequate, but it’s the only thing I can give them. I have nothing else.

Dinner passes mostly in silence, with the couple deliberately giving me time and space to just..

.be. I finish my croissant without ever recalling its taste.

Down my coffee like it’s my only hope for sleep.

We call it a night soon after, and I’m ridiculously proud when my voice doesn’t shake as I say good night back.

I even make it to the bedroom with my eyes still dry, but the moment I collapse onto the bed, I’m already crying.

I don’t love you.

I cover my ears, but it’s pointless, with my heart sobbing the words over and over and over.

I don’t love you.

I don’t love you.

I don’t love you.

I wake to afternoon light and the sound of voices downstairs the next day, and for one disorienting moment, I reach for Aivan before reality crashes back.

Oh God.

I remember everything in a flash, and of course, oh of course those words come back with a vengeance, too.

I don’t love you.

My phone sits silent on the nightstand where I abandoned it. No missed calls. No texts. Seven hours since I walked out, and he hasn’t even noticed.

Or worse, he has and doesn’t care.

Downstairs, I find Shayla in what appears to be a home office, sorting through legal documents. She glances up as I hover in the doorway.

“Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.” I shift awkwardly. “I should probably—”

“What? Leave?” She sets down her pen. “Do you have money of your own? Credit cards that aren’t linked to his accounts?”

Each question lands like a stone dropped in still water. “I...no.”

“Then sit. We need to be practical.” She gestures to a chair. “The legal aid office needs help tomorrow. Paperwork, making coffee for clients. Interested?”

“I...yes. Yes, I’d like that.”

“Good. Eight AM.” She returns to her documents. “Adriano’s making some calls. Quietly. The kind that ensure certain people know you’re under his protection.”

“But didn’t Adriano already speak to Eusebio—”

“It’s not that simple with famiglia ,” Shayla explained.

“It’s possible that Eusebio only speaks to Miguel Cannizzaro.

We need to make sure that Aivan knows whose permission he’s obtained to have you as a guest, and so do other.

.. famiglie. Those without power may get it in their head to “rescue” you in hopes of earning favor with the Cannizzaros.

To prevent unnecessary complications, everyone must know that your current situation is an internal matter, and not one for other famiglie to be involved in. ”

My stomach has tied itself in a thousand knots by the time she’s finished speaking. “I’m so sorry.” How could have I forgotten that the Cannizzaros were no ordinary family? How could have I not foreseen I’d be causing trouble of this magnitude to the one couple—

“Hey.”

Shayla’s voice hauls me back to the present.

“It’s going to be okay. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“But me being here—”

“You’re here because you were meant to be here,” Shayla says with soft firmness.

“H-How do you know that?”

The other woman doesn’t answer right away, but this only makes my worries worsen.

“Shayla?”

“Do you really want to know the truth?”

Instead of simply saying yes, I find myself actually trying to answer my own question by putting myself in her shoes.

Why would Shayla act like it was practically destiny for me to come crashing in their rental?

Is it because her husband and Adriano are friends?

Or is it because they’re the only ones that know the truth about our marriage?

What would make Shayla and Adriano different from everyone else?

“Is it because you’re the best lawyers in New York,” I ask unevenly, “and you believe I’ll be in need of your services soon?”

A part of me expects Shayla to confirm this as truth in a matter-of-fact way, but the other woman smiles rather wryly instead.

Huh?

“Let’s just say you’re partially correct.”

I can only shake my head, even more bewildered now. “How—”

“Because all other lawyers you can talk to might tell you to either accept a settlement or lawyer up for a higher payout.”

I swallow hard. “Does that mean our separation is...inevitable?”

“Not at all.”

Her confidence terrifies and reassures me at the same time. “Then w-what would you advise that most others won’t?”

“Wait.”

“For what?”

“For God to move in your marriage.”

Oh.

“What God has joined together, no man can put asunder.”

God.

Shayla says the words so simply, and yet with so much conviction, that I...I just can’t help it.

God, oh God.

I’m bawling my eyes out, and I end up wrapping my arms around my body because it’s shaking so, so hard that I feel like my sobs are about to make me explode with pain at any moment.

“H-He doesn’t love me, Shayla,” I say brokenly. “He s-said so himself.”

Shayla’s own tears start coursing down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

“He doesn’t love me. D-Doesn’t love me. So w-what am I s-supposed to wait for?”

“I wish I knew what to say, but I don’t. All I know is what my heart tells me, and it’s for us to just...wait.”

****

A NOTHER DAY PASSES . And it’s another day where I don’t hear from him. At all.

But because I believe with all my heart when Shayla said God wanted me to wait...

I accept the other woman’s invitation to volunteer at her office, which occupies a converted storefront near the port. It’s a small space, crowded with filing cabinets and mismatched furniture, but it’s also reassuringly far from the glittering towers where billionaires play.