Page 25 of Dominic

“Was marrying me part of your family’s plan?”

She rolled her eyes. “Nothing about you was part of my family’s plan. It was all my brilliant twenty-year-old brain’s idea. Like you said, I was an idiot.”

She wanted to reach out, go to him, touch him. Smooth her hands over his hair, his chiseled jaw line, his strong lips. That was all she ever wanted to do from the very beginning.

“No, marrying you was not part of my brilliant plan. I… I got caught up.”

She’d fallen in love, gotten pregnant, and foolishly thought she could just tell Gordon and he would let her go, let her out of the family to stay with Dominic.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s say for a second that I believe this. Why did you leave? Why have I not heard from you in seven years?”

She couldn’t tell him the truth. If he thought he hated her now, how much more would he hate her when he found out she’d lost his baby?

She pulled her legs up to her chest, breath hissing out as it moved her chastity belt, sending the dildos deeper inside her.But in a way it was good; it focused her, reminded her why she was here. Because Dominic wanted revenge. She’d been stupid at twenty years old, but she had seven years on herself now. She needed to protect herself.

No one else was going to.

She shrugged, looking away. “I met with Gordon, and was going to try to tell him that I wanted to stay with you, but he… convinced me I should stay with the family.”

Had convinced her by beating her so severely she’d ended up in a coma for four days and when she finally woken up she realized she’d miscarried.

Even then she might’ve tried to go back to Dominic, if Gordon hadn’t pointed out that the Rinaldi family was mafia and that Dominic would kill her. And then Gordon had watched her like a hawk, never letting her out of his sight. By the time he eased up it had been way too late to go back to Dominic.

“I had real feelings for you.” His words now were stiff as if they were difficult to get out. Her heart broke hearing them, because the same have been so true for her. “I married you, gave you the ring my father had given my mother, because I thought our relationship was real. That it would be a tribute to the love they had.”

She couldn’t bear to look at him. “I’m sorry.” She barely got the words out around the lump in her throat.

“My mother cried when she found out that ring was gone. It broke her heart. I know you don’t have it anymore. I suspect you used it for as much leverage as you could to get back good with your family.”

She couldn’t tell him the truth, not without telling him all of the truth. “I’m sorry,” she said again. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. She would never be enough.

“I could probably forgive you for playing me for a fool. God knows I’m cocky enough to take it. But my mother died knowing I’d lost the ring, the heirloom, she had wanted passed down from generation to generation. That I can’t forgive.”

Dominic stood and walked out of the room. Cassandra could do nothing but cry and wish she could change the past. A wish she’d made a thousand times before.

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