Page 27 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

How dare they summon him as if he was their errand boy? As if he hadn’t remade their fortunes in the last decade a hundred times over?

He came to a standstill outside the boardroom, finding Bruno standing there like a stalwart soldier. Like him, his head of security hadn’t known a moment’s respite in three days.

“Any new information on who leaked it to the press?” Adriano asked.

Bruno shook his head. “As far as my sources can dig, no money was exchanged. The lack of a money trail makes it hard.”

“Have you checked my parents’ movements? And Fabi and Federico?”

Looking startled, Bruno said, “That’s…unfair, no?”

Adriano shrugged. “I didn’t protect her once. I won’t make that mistake ever again,” he said, useless anger tiding through him.

The last thing he wanted was for Nyra to retreat even further from him because someone had made her worst nightmare come true. “The security at the penthouse,” he said, “you should be there.”

“No, I should be at your side. It’s not just the board that’s getting wild. The chatter online about you and her has been pretty bad. All the old forums have been revived and the anger over her father’s actions is as violent as ever,” Bruno said. “She’s safe at the apartment, Adriano. If she needs anything after the last few days, it’s your reassurance that this hasn’t changed the status quo.”

“Christo, Bruno! She knows me.”

“Does she? You made me bring her back and you deserted her at the apartment. And you forbid her contact with her twin.”

“She’s not alone. She has Maria,” he said, guilt and anger twinning through him now. Why was it that it never came to him naturally what she needed? Why was he so bad at this…marriage, at this damned relationship?

“Nyra deserves to—”

“Basta!”Adriano crowded the other man, not that his half-brother flinched.

Once again, jealousy gripped him in a chokehold. That Bruno understood Nyra and her needs better than he did grated on him like barbed wire around his chest. That it was because Adriano was wired differently, because some things were beyond him, made it worse. For all that Bruno had been raised outside of the Cavalieri protection or the privilege it brought, his mother had been a kind, generous woman.

Whereas growing up as the heir, all Adriano had been taught was to never show weakness. With all the volatility he’d grown up with, he had simply decided that he wouldn’t take a wife at all. Until a waitress with bright eyes had toppled him. “I don’t need marital advice,fratello. Not even from you,” he said, and then pushed the double doors open.

Even facing the wrath of his board members—most of whom had less integrity than he possessed in his pinkie finger, felt easier than the confounding puzzle of how to win his wife and her easy affection back.

But this time, he would protect her, no matter what.

* * *

They were barely halfway through the torrent of complaints and advice his board had for him—including immediate divorce proceedings and discreetly packing his wife off to another continent never to be seen again—when the doors to the boardroom were pushed open.

Bruno scowled at this unsanctioned interruption.

A shocked hush fell over the room as their heads turned toward the doors. Adriano’s heart rattled against his rib cage.

Dressed in a brown leather skirt that fell a few inches past her knees and a pink cardigan and leather boots, it was his wife. At her ears, diamond studs glinted.

For a second, he couldn’t believe it was Nyra at all. With her thick curls running down her back like a silky waterfall, he thought it was her twin. She looked like something out of a glossy magazine, like a supermodel.

Until one’s gaze drifted lower.

The slenderness of her frame made her belly stick out. Her body had changed in the two weeks since he’d seen her, and he wanted to curse himself for staying away.

Around him, he could feel the collective focus of the room shift to her bump.To her.He thought he might have even heard a couple of gasps, the bolder ones even reaching for their phones.

The small matter of his heir—the next Cavalieri to hold the chairmanship—and that he had remained a bachelor for so long, had been a pain point for the board. He couldn’t count the number of times they had thrown their daughters at him.

When Adriano had shocked everyone by showing up with a wife, it had been another disappointment to them. Because he refused to parade her through high society for them to pick at like she was fresh meat.

She had been his secret, his respite,only his.

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