Page 4 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

So why was he allowing them to see his anger, or whatever it was he was putting out, with her today?

Suddenly, she felt like a Cinderella whose carriage and dress might disappear any moment. Only the clock was malfunctioning and stuck at a minute before midnight.

After what felt like an eternity of letting the Italians around her nearly drown her, she cleared her throat loudly enough that it came to a sudden stop. “Adriano, may we talk please? In private,” she finally managed to say.

Gray-green eyes held hers once more, and his protracted silence clearly said he didn’t want to.

A cold sweat drenched her.

He knew.

He knew that she was sitting on a pile of lies and half-truths as tall as her.

“I have arranged a grand party to celebrate your…wedding,” Nigella cut in. “Late as it is, it has become necessary, Adriano. Everyone is talking about you now. Not just her.”

Nyra wasn’t sure if she was glad to be released from the end of the line like a floundering fish or angry that Nigella had cut into their angry, angsty eye-fuck across the room.

“What do you mean, Mama?” Adriano said.

“They’re saying it’s not a marriage at all. That you’ve kidnapped some barely adult girl from Vegas and are keeping her prisoner as your mistress. And that’s why you don’t dare show her to polite society.”

“One look at her,” Federico, Adriano’s younger brother and a privileged brat as far as Nyra was concerned, said with a laugh, “and they would know she’s more maid than mistress, Mama.” He dug an elbow into his twin Fabiola’s side. “You’re the social media queen, Fabi. Can’t you release a ‘candid’ of her and let people see our brother is simply suffering from temporary insanity?”

Across the table, Adriano’s chin reared down, shock radiating from his entire posture. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms, the tight lines around his mouth belying his calm facade.

Was he waiting for her to defend herself or to see how much worse his family’s taunts could get?

Fabiola’s dark gaze swept over Nyra—from her thick curls she’d bound tight in a braid to the loose, off-shoulder sweater, pausing at her bare neck and ears—and then she sneered. “Her hippie hobo look hardly matches my fashionista grid, Federico.”

A scoff and a snort came at Nyra from the others at the table.

“She can hardly be expected to match our family in fashion or conduct,” Nigella replied to her grown children’s giggles. “But what I really don’t like is that she won’t even make an effort. You’re ruining his name and—”

“Basta, Mama,”Adriano said, the two words soft and yet pelting through the room as if they were bullets.

To anyone else, he looked unmoved, even bored. Like one of the white marble busts spread over the estate. As if, even dead, they had to shout about the great Cavalieri name, lest anyone forget.

He’d never seen his siblings or his mother attack her so directly. He didn’t have an inkling of the kind of stuff they said to her. Because she’d never even hinted at it. The why of it suddenly baffled him.

More importantly though, what he didn’t get was that they were bolder today, taking their cue from him. Like a rabid pack that followed the alpha and would tear open something weaker at one command from him.

No, she was not weaker than him, she told herself.

She was younger, had zero power while his thrummed around him like some magnetic field. She didn’t have a dime to her name, but she was not weaker. She had survived before he had stormed into her life, had lived through much worse than his family’s taunts. Alone.

Whatever this was, she could withstand his temper, the cold burn of his anger.

As for Federico, she’d dealt with men far more dangerous than him. “If you think being a maid is worse than a mistress, Federico,” she said, meeting his eyes and letting her mouth curve into a mockery of a smile, “you’re well on your predestined way to becoming nothing but a footnote in the great history books of the Cavalieri family. Sorry, but no marble bust for you, buddy.”

“I’m not your buddy,” Federico retorted with as much disgust as he could pack into the word.

Nyra shrugged, and she thought she saw Adriano’s eyes, watching and drinking in every nuance in her face, gleam with something.

Humor maybe. Or acknowledgment.

But when she looked again, desperate for it, all she saw was the killing frost.

Nigella turned her glacial gaze to Nyra, any pretension to warmth gone. “How dare you talk to him like that? Adriano—”

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