Page 57 of Doll Face

With his finger, he circled the air in front of her face. “I don’t care what the outside looks like. I know your heart.”

“I was planning your downfall,” she reminded him. “I was going to marry you, set up bugs all over your father’s house and his office. I was going to find out all your secrets and ruin the house of Romanelli.”

“Was?”

“I’ve learned some things, but I’m not sure if I can trust you. Yet.”

“I understand,” he told her. “I’d be just as angry as you if it had been me. But I didn’t betray you, baby. I would never betray you.”

“What if I said I’m going to kill your father?”

“I’d help you. I still want to marry you, and I understand you don’t love me. It’s okay because I have enough love for both of us. And my place is right next to you.”

Her heart melted right then and there.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Are you sure you still want to marry him?” Caelian asked.

No, she wasn’t sure. Not completely. All she kept remembering was the devastation on his face.

“I don’t know,” she admitted truthfully.

“Can we trust him?”

“I don’t know,” she said again.

“What if he warns his father?”

“How many times do you want me to say I don’t know?” she snapped. Then she immediately felt bad and sighed. “I’m sorry. I want so much to believe him. You didn’t see how devastated he was after he found out what happened.”

He laid his hands on her shoulders. “I know you still love him, and I know you want him to be innocent. But he’s not, Gianna. Even if he didn’t know about what happened to you, he’s hurt others.”

She nodded. “I know. But I’m also thinking he was in the dark about a lot of things. I’m thinking he might be just as much a victim of Pietro Romanelli as we are. And I’m remembering our time before the basement. That everything he did and said was real. He didn’t want to replace me. He wanted to marry me.”

Caelian’s lips thinned as he cast his gaze upward, as if seeking a higher power.

“You can speak,” she said quietly. “Be honest.”

He looked back down at her. “I believe you’re thinking with your vagina.”

“Oh,” she said, eyes widening. “Ouch.”

“This isn’t what Orianna would have wanted.”

“Well, she’s no longer here, and we’re continuing with different information. I think she’d want me to be happy.”

He shook his head, muttered something under his breath, and then turned and stalked away.

“He’s right.”

Gianna turned and saw Seth in the archway. “You, too?”

“Doesn’t matter if we have different information. Matteo Romanelli isn’t a good guy.”

“Are any of us good guys?”

“We don’t kill innocent people.”

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