Page 52 of Deception & Desire

Her hand reaches for mine. The edge of her bandages crumple slightly as she strokes across my palm.

“I don’t know,” I confess back. Then, after thinking about it, I say, “Something important.”

She nods as if this is a satisfying answer.

We just lay in silence, stealing this moment by stretching it out as long as we can.

“I’m so angry at you. All the time, I’m angry, but there’s alsothis.” She stops stroking my hand to squeeze it instead. “And then there’syouwho keeps walking away.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to, but you didn’t choose this. You didn’t choose me. You feel obligated, and I can’t…I won’t take advantage of that.”

Her face crumples into something so far from satisfaction she almost looks like an entirely different person. She’s still so lovely. She’s still lovely when she rolls away onto her back.

“Why did you do it?”

I frown at the question. “Do what?”

“Threaten my father?”

It takes me a second to place a conversation that feels like a lifetime ago. A conversation in an elevator in a hotel with a woman who had just become my wife.

“Mia…I never threatened Marco.”

She glances over at me, eyes shining with something distraught. “Don’t do that. Don’t lie to me.”

“I told you I would never do that. I didn’tneedto do that, why would I…” something suddenly clicked. “You never believed me, did you?”

“Just tell me the truth! If you just admit it, then maybe I can…maybe we can talk about it, maybe we can fix this.”

A part of me feels a pang of something warm at the thought of forgiveness—only this is not something I need forgiveness for.

“I never threatened him, Mia. I swear it. And…” I take a breath, knowing my next words might just incriminate me further. “I don’t think Teo would have either.”

“He didn’t,” she replies with certainty.

Ah. She’s spoken to him. She believed him. Which means all this time…

“Look, I think this is something you need to discuss with your father,” I say, surprised by how pragmatic the words come out. “But I need you to know that I would never. I could never intentionally hurt you.”

Her eyes flicker over to mine, and I pray that she sees the truth in my face.

This has been hurting her.I’vebeen hurting her.

“Okay.”

My heart skips. “Okay?”

“I’ll talk to him.”

I let out a breath. “Okay.”

The moment stretches again until Mia sighs and gets up.

“I’m sorry,” she pauses but continues before I can ask what for. “I didn’t get much information for you yesterday. Things went south a lot sooner than expected.”

I close my eyes for a moment to realign myself.

“We know that intercepting their shipments has caused them a fair bit of inconvenience. Hopefully, Amos is too distracted trying to placate his clients to notice us working against him.”

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