Page 36 of Borrowed Bride

I sit up slowly and the warmth of my post-orgasm haze vanishes. Staring at the picture, nausea curls through my gut and I swallow so hard it echoes in my ear.

“What is this?” I ask tightly.

Gianna is pale, her cheeks absent the rosy orgasmic glow she had a moment ago.

“Why do you have this?” I repeat. “Why isshein this picture?”

“I’m sorry,” Gianna gasps and she stands abruptly, shaking her hands as she stumbles about on unsteady legs. “I’m so sorry. I was—fuck—I was going to tell you, I swear, I just couldn’t. I was scared you wouldn’t look at me the same again.”

The picture is old, but clearly cared for with the creases of being folded up for an age.

I can’t take my eyes off the picture, and I stare at it as a cavernous hole opens up in my chest. “Explain,” I say, strained. “Now!”

“I know Cherry,” Gianna blurts out. “Or I did, okay. I used to run with her when I was a teenager and I didn’t know any better. She should be in prison because I put her there, but she’s out and I don’t know why, okay? I’ve been looking into it, and she got an early release but I have no idea why. I’m sorry, okay? When I ran with her, a man died because of us and I was the witness. I put her away so when I saw her at the party, and then you showed me that other picture, I realized she was connected to Leonardo, and if you killed him, I’d never find out why she was here!”

Gianna is sobbing now, stumbling over her words but she still isn’t answering my question.

I stand abruptly and catch her by the wrist, jerking her toward me as I thrust the photograph into her face. “Not her,” I bark, having barely noticed Cherry in the picture. “Her.”

The taller, older woman in the background of the picture. It’s her that I recognize. Her that makes the air around me feel so thin.

Gianna whimpers and looks at where I’m pointing, then she frowns and honest confusion flashes in her tear-filled eyes. “Her? I—I have no idea. She was there a few nights, I think, but she was just on the arm of some guy that Mango met. She was a prostitute, I think?” Gianna looks up at me with eyes like glass. “Why?”

I release her and sink slowly down onto the bed with a long, low groan, the picture clutched in my hand.

“She …”

Gianna slowly sits beside me, wiping her tears and staring at the picture.

“She looks likeFawn.”

Gianna tenses up immediately. “Wait…your ex? The one who was killed by her ex-boyfriend.”

I nod stiffly, struggling to process. She was the love of my life when I was eighteen, and while it’s been a couple of decadessince then, it makes no sense why she’s in the background of Gianna’s photo. Gianna who is much younger and never would have met her.

“I don’t understand,” Gianna says softly. “Did Fawn have any sisters, maybe?”

“No,” I reply tightly. “She had no family. And at times, I felt the same, so we were perfect, in a way.”

As the shock fades, the chill of the room makes itself known, so I grab the end of the blanket and pull it over Gianna’s shoulders. This is Fawn. I’d know her face anywhere. The guilt keeps her fresh in my mind.

“You need to tell me everything.” I turn to Gianna and clutch at her hand. “I need every detail, everything you remember about everyone in this picture.”

Gianna’s mouth opens and closes. “Marco, it was so long ago I?—”

“Please!” I snap, then I catch myself and lower my voice. “Please?—”

“Sir!” Anton suddenly crashes into the room while knocking rapidly on the door, and a surge of rage rises through me like vomit. With one look at him, I know the stability I’ve been clinging to is about to unravel before my very eyes.

“What?!”

“Sir, Tara has been shot.”

“Oh myGod,” Gianna chokes and she clutches at my arm.

“And Dante?—”

My heart becomes steel. “What about him?”

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