Page 25 of The Scandal Behind The Italian’s Wedding

CHAPTER FIVE

MINERVA’SHEADWASspinning and she couldn’t breathe. Didn’t breathe in fact until Dante’s private jet had lifted into the air. Only then did she believe that they might be safe.

Isabella was laid in a plush bassinet, and Minerva had no idea how Dante had managed to acquire it so quickly.

And in the time she spent wondering about that she found time to worry about photographs from the wedding. It was stupid.

But the headlines after their engagement party had been...

They hadn’t been outright cruel, but they had included a photograph of her from four years ago.

Seventeen, with her face streaked by tears, and him so much taller and broader and outlandishly beautiful than she could ever hope to be.

She imagined that the implication of the photo was he’d been involved with her even when she’d been scandalously young, but looking at it she knew no one would ever take that seriously.

He was Dante Fiori. She was... Minerva the Mouse.

The girl who was worth a date only so her class could get a look at her house. And she’d heard later he’d wanted to get a look up her sister’s dress, as well.

Violet had laughed herself hoarse after hearing that and then had gotten a deadly look in her eye. And Minerva had known if she’d ever seen Bradley after that Violet would unman him with the sharp end of her tweezers.

But that was the thing.

Violet was the hero in that story. The object of beauty and the one so above the idiocy she could laugh and make threats.

Dante was the hero in the story.

Willing to dance with her in spite of the fact she was gangly and unattractive and sad.

She was the object of pity.

And she feared when her wedding photos were splashed across the media it would be the same story.

Sad, pitiable Minerva snags a man due to a faulty condom.

Just thinking about Dante and condoms made her get hot to the roots of her hair.

“There will be supplies for her already on the island, as well,” he said casually as he poured himself a drink and settled back into the plush leather sofa.

Minerva curled more deeply into the chair she was seated on, leaning over Isabella and adjusting her blanket unnecessarily. “How?”

“There are people that work for the shell company. They will be gone by the time we get there. None of them will ever know who gave the instructions. Who actually owns the house. They won’t see us.”

“Why do you have something like this?”

“I bought it quite a while ago as a precaution. Because one never knows when one might need to escape.”

“Dante, you’re not involved in anything illegal now, are you?”

“No,” he said. “But when a man comes from a background such as mine he learns to be paranoid.”

“I suppose. And I never did learn to be paranoid enough. Not until now.”

Everything in her felt jumbled up.

She would love to think more about the kiss that he had given her at the altar. One that had turned so...intimate. But she hadn’t had time to think about it or parse the way that it had made her feel, not in the face of the threatening text that she had received from Carlo so soon after.

“It is only a small island,” he said. “The only building on it is my home, and the rest is unspoiled white sand and jungle. I think you’ll like it.”

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