Page 68 of Brutal Husband

“I can’t wait until you start to show.” Nero’s lips whisper up the side of my throat. “All those long, dark months, I pictured what you would look like pregnant. Your belly big. Your breasts so full.”

“Then why did you get a—” I shake my head. I need to keep them separate in my mind. Luca got a vasectomy, not Nero. I wish I knew why Luca did it, but the man with the answers lies rotting in a shallow grave.

“I don’t know why he got a vasectomy. It was his intention to start a family with you. He wanted your marriage to look as normal as possible.”

Tolookas normal as possible. So getting married was all about appearances to Luca. “The doctor told me that he got the vasectomy almost immediately after we got back from our honeymoon. He suddenly became so cruel and cold. Even colder than the man I remember from my engagement parties.Mom said it was my fault for sleeping with him before we were married. My husband had been testing me, and I failed. We started performing this horrible ritual every month. Cold, passionless sex, and he wouldn’t even look at me, and I put up with it because I wanted to fall pregnant so badly.”

With an agonized groan, Nero closes his eyes and buries his face in my throat, squeezing me tight. “That was my fault. All my fault. Not yours. I don’t want you to blame yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

Instead of answering me, he carries me back into the bedroom and lays me down on the bed. He gets in beside me and covers us both up with the still warm blankets. Unable to help myself, I wrap my arms around his strong body. This kind of intimacy should feel wrong. I’m lying in the arms of someone who’s forcing me to be with him.

Nero’s left arm is around my waist, and the daisy tattoo stands out amid the other ink. “Luca punished you because of what I did. I’m so sorry he made you suffer like that.”

Nero is apologizing for his brother? I thought Nero was firmly on Luca’s side, and I’m just the bitch who killed him. His apology makes no sense. “Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t painful. It was just humiliating.”

Anger flashes across his face. “It was cruel and sick, degrading you like that while getting your hopes up. I’m so outraged and jealous that I could put my fist through a wall.”

It feels shocking that Nero’s taking my side, especially because degrading me is something he’s always enjoyed. But when he does it, the strange thing is that I like it.

A few minutes slip by in silence while I listen to the pounding of his heart.

Finally, I ask the question that I’m most curious about. “Nero. Where were you all this time?”

What I really want to know is,Why did you abandon me when I think you were the brother I fell in love with?

I search Nero’s face, which is full of anger and resentment. He remains silent, and it’s clear that he doesn’t want to give me any answers.

“I need to know what my brother was up to while I was gone,” he says in a hard voice. “That girl’s hair clip in his office. What the hell was that about? Did the police suspect him of kidnapping her?”

“Not that I know of. I reported him missing not long after Harriet vanished, but the police sounded so uninterested that I doubt they believed there was any connection between the two cases.”

“Then I’ll look into it myself. For Harriet’s sake, and because I need answers.”

I look up in surprise. He cares what happened to Harriet? Luca drove right past everyone searching for Harriet the night she disappeared and went into the house without stopping to ask me or anyone else what was wrong. He was so bored whenever I brought up our neighbor’s disappearance. My husband’s coldness and indifference about the missing girl was just one more in a long string of disappointments, but it still hurt.

I wonder if I could have saved Harriet the day she disappeared by going to my husband’s office. It never occurred to me that she would be there, but should it have occurred to me? If I wasn’t a drunk who was so wrapped up in herself, would I have seen or heard something?

I’m filled with so much guilt that I moan and cover my face.

“Cara mia?What’s wrong?”

“If I hadn’t been a drunk,” I say tearfully. “If I hadn’t ignored everything that was wrong in my marriage, and if I hadn’t switched off because of the pain, maybe I could have saved Harriet.”

“How could you have known? Luca was very good at keeping secrets.”

He was, wasn’t he? He had a brother I never knew about. A life that he kept me out of while I stayed home.

“I don’t know how I stayed married to Luca so long. I should have divorced him the moment we returned from Paris. We had separate hotel rooms, and I didn’t immediately serve him with divorce papers. What kind of pathetic woman am I?”

Nero smooths my hair back and kisses my forehead. “I saw how your mother treated you. I don’t blame you for wanting to get out of that house for good.”

I blink the tears from my eyes and gaze up at him. “Really? You’re not just saying that while you actually believe I’m pathetic?”

“I’m not just saying that.”

I almost can’t breathe I’m so overwhelmed with emotion. Is this what having a husband is like? A man who listens to you, comforts you, holds you. Accepts all your flaws and wrongdoings. A man would only do that because he loves you.

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