Page 11 of That's Amore

FOUR

Dante

Istared at my phone after I ended my call with Elysa.

How had a docile woman becomethis? Or was she always like this and that submission had been an act?

The truth was I didn’t know my wife.

We’d been together a year, and I had spent a fair amount of time with her, sure, but I didn’t know her.

What I did know was that she desperately wanted a divorce andquickly.

Once again, I wondered if she’d met someone, and that was why she’d moved so fast to break ties. The idea didn’t sit well with me, not that I had the moral high ground. I understood that she thought I wanted Lucia and believed that viscerally, I’d broken my marriage vows. So, if Elysa had as well, I couldn’t hold it against her, could I?

Like hell!

I picked up my phone and contemplated calling the private investigator we had on retainer and ask him to find out if my wife was screwing around. It left a bitter taste in my mouth. It was disrespectful, especially since Elysa had never given me any reason to believe she was cheating on me. She’d been loyal and affectionate, even loving, despite my need to keep an emotional distance between us.

She never used sex as a tool to manipulate.

We made love often.

And the thought struck me that she never initiated sex. I always did because I was hungry for her all the fucking time. She participated actively and vocally, but she didn’t make the first move.

Why?

The knock on my suite door pulled me out of my reverie.

I hadn’t gone back to the flat since Elysa left.

I couldn't.

There was too much of her in the flat because of the empty spaces she’d left, and it made me uncomfortable and sad as fuck. It made me miss her, which was ludicrous. I was just surprised she’d made the first move when it came to a divorce—that’s all. I just needed to get my head around that, and we could move on with our lives. She would find someone and?—.

“Come in,” I bellowed, angry at the thought that Elysa would find someone else to go on walkswith, cook gnocchi with fresh truffles for, and make gelato for. She’d suck some other man’s cock and let someone lick her and….

Just the thought made me want to kill the motherfucker.

Lucia came into my suite. Her Victoria Beckham skirt suit was impeccably fitted to her body. Eight years ago, we’d been together for six months. She’d wanted more, and I’d not been ready. She’d taken it well, and a couple of years ago, when she started working for me, I’d felt a spark. I didn’t act on it for two reasons. One, she worked for me, and the other was that Nonno kept talking about this girl from his village. I didn’t want to string a woman along if I’d have to submit myself to marriage with a stranger.

Lucia didn’t know about the circumstances of my marriage. She was our corporate lawyer, so she had nothing to do with the marital paperwork that had been drawn and signed by Elysa and me, which included a very strictly worded prenuptial agreement that I insisted upon. Nonno had seen no reason to have one. After all, marriage was forever—until death do us part.

I didn’t tell him about the prenup and told Elysa not to as well.

She had not blinked. She had taken the document and presumably enlisted Maura’s aunt’s help to translate both the Italian and the legalese into English.

“I want these parts struck.” She’d placed thecontract on my desk at work, where we’d met for lunch to talk about the upcoming wedding.

I read the parts and frowned. “Explain,” I demanded.

She’d been nervous but firm. “If we have a child and we get divorced, I’m not giving you full custody. We will co-parent.”

“This is standard Giordano prenuptial agreement language,” I told her.

She shook her head. “No way.”

“You’re fighting over something that doesn’t exist, Elysa, and like I?—”

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