Page 50 of The Virgin's Dance with the Devil
“Don’t go,” he begged.
She shook her head and sniffed, biting her bottom lip before looking back at him. “I never want to see you again.”
“Marisa…”
“No.” She didn’t raise her voice, but her sharpness was deafening. She took a long breath. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “And I would do anything to –”
“No.” Somehow, this was even sharper. She stood taller. “I don’t want to hear another word from your lying mouth. I thought God sent you to me, but my sister was right. The world was right. You’re beyond redemption. You said my virginity makes me rarer than a unicorn, but that was the wrong tense – itmademe rarer than a unicorn. I believed in you and I trusted you with my heart, my body and my soul, and it was all a lie. You wilfully took my virginity so you could win your brother’s Swiss chalet. You and your brothers treated me like a piece of meat… no, a toy. I was just a toy to you, with less value than the chips used to gamble with in your casinos.”
“No!” He couldn’t let her believe that. “It might have started like that, but when I came to your room that night, Iwas already in love with you and knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”
He’d never seen such coldness in her stare before. Never known she was capable of it. “If you’d ever loved me, you would have told me the truth before taking the one thing you knew I was saving for the man I was going to marry, and when you said you were going to tell me the truthafterwe married…” She shook her head in disgust. “How dare you? Even if I believed that, how dare you connive to trap me in a marriage based on a lie, knowing I would never divorce you? When I think of everything you’ve done and all your lies, that one cuts the most. You were planning to steal my future. I might even have your child growing in me. You’re despicable, and I hope God does forgive you for what you’ve done, because I never will. Stay away from me, Rico – I never want to see you again.”
He was on his feet to block her exit before his brain had even engaged. “I am begging you, don’t leave like this. Don’t leave me, Marisa, please, I am begging you, don’t go. I will do anything to make things right. Anything.Anything.”
She tried to move around him. “Let me go.”
He stepped back, now blocking the door, panic scratching at him like he had a thousand rodents burrowed in him. “Please, Marisa. I know I’ve fucked up, and I know I’m an unconscionable bastard, I’m everything you say and think I am, but my love for you is the only –”
Her hand flew through the air and connected with his cheek before he could finish his final plea.
“Don’t you understand?” she screamed, her face red with anguish and fury. “I fuckinghateyou! Now let me go right this second, or I’m going to tell everyone what you and your despicable brothers did to me and I don’t care if it humiliates me too – there is no way I can feel more humiliation and pain than I already feel, so if you ever felt a damned thing for me, letmego!”
The last spark of fight in him extinguished. It wasn’t the threat he knew she’d never act on that did it. It was her curse. In all their time together, Marisa had barely made a mild profanity, so to hear that from her lips...
I fucking hate you.
It sliced him.
He’d taken this precious creature, this precious angel who’d given him nothing but love, trust and affection, and instead of recognising just how precious she was, he’d…
He’d done everything she said he’d done. Treated her like meat. Like a toy.
Opening the door to let her go was the hardest thing Rico had ever done. It was the only real unselfish act he’d made in his life.
He watched her walk to the stairs at the end of his floor. “I love you, Marisa,” he called behind her hoarsely. “I will always love you.”
She didn’t break her stride or look back at him.
Marisa had no recollection of walking to her sister’s suite. It was on the top floor of the block next to Rico’s. The hand that knocked on the door felt disconnected from the rest of her.Nothingfelt connected. It was like she was just a walking mass of cells.
Gennaro opened the door. His smile of greeting didn’t even reach his eyes before it fell. “Luisa,” he called urgently as he stepped aside to let Marisa in.
“What’s wrong?” Luisa’s voice called back from somewhere else in the suite, and then she floated into view… at least, it seemed to Marisa’s eyes that she floated. It wasn’t just herself that felt disconnected; it was everything. The world itself.
Luisa’s frightened face came into clearer focus. “Marisa?”
Suddenly feeling a desperate need to touch something solid and real, Marisa put her trembling fingers to her sister’s warm cheek. “You were right,” she croaked, barely aware tears were streaming down her face. “You were right about him.” And then her knees buckled, collapsing as Marisa’s world collapsed around her.
Rico couldn’t lift himself off the floor. The world was spinning around him. His world. Marisa. Gone.
His phone kept buzzing and ringing. His family. Soon, they would send someone to his suite to check on him and see what the hell he was playing at. The tequilas Mattia had lined up would be long gone.
He wanted to rip Tommaso’s head from his shoulders for what he’d done. Those damned messages.
He pinched the bridge of his nose to stem the hot tears that kept building and retracting. Rico hadn’t cried since he was a small boy, and Tommaso had called him a girl for crying when he’d fallen over and taken a chunk out of his knee. He didn’t think he even knew how to cry anymore, and what good would crying do if he could do it? It wouldn’t bring Marisa back.
