Page 48 of The Sicilian Billionaire's Neglected Wife
“Come here,” she whispers, taking his hand.
I try to move, try to stop this, but I’m frozen. Trapped. Pounding on barriers that don’t exist while she leads another man toward their bedroom.
She turns back once, and for a moment I think she sees me. Think she’ll stop this nightmare. But she looks right through me like I’m already a ghost, already erased from her life as thoroughly as she’s trying to erase herself from mine.
Then she starts unbuttoning her dress, and I’m screaming but no sound comes out, thrashing against nothing while she offers another man everything that used to be mine—
I wake with her name tearing from my throat, sheets soaked with sweat, heart hammering like I’ve just run five flights of stairs again.
No. Fuck. No.
My phone screen glows 3:47 AM. No messages. No missed calls. Just that digital silence that’s been eating me alive for days.
I check anyway, desperate for any sign of her. A read receipt. A typing indicator that appears and disappears. Anything that proves she still exists in the same universe as me.
Nothing.
Always nothing.
The ring on my pinky catches the phone’s light, throwing fractured rainbows on the ceiling.
Just like her eyes used to catch the light when she smiled.
Used to.
Past tense.
Everything about her is past tense now.
I stumble to the bathroom, splash water on my face. The mirror shows a stranger with hollow cheeks, three-day stubble, eyes like burnt-out headlights. This is what Aivan Cannizzaro looks like without his wife.
Pathetic.
Lost.
Exactly what I deserve.
****
MY PARENTS ARRIVE FORlunch at some tourist trap near the harbor. I haven’t slept since the nightmare, haven’t showered, probably look like death walking.
“You look terrible,” Miguel observes calmly. “What have you been up to?”
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that,” I bite out, “considering you’re the one who had my wife abducted?”
Selena looks at me with a pained expression. “I know you don’t truly think that, Aivan.”
“What else am I supposed to think when I can’t even talk—”
“It’snotthat you can’t,mijo,” Miguel interrupts. “But it’s that you don’t deserve to after what you’ve done.”
Anger gets the best of me, with my fist slamming hard against the table, but it’s only my stepmother who flinches. “Basta!You have no right—”
My father’s face hardens. “If I can arrange your wedding, what makes you think I can’t just as easily arrange your divorce...and another wedding for Sienah to another man?”
Did my own father just threaten—
Did I just fucking hear—
