Page 76 of The Scandal Behind The Italian’s Wedding

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“WHYISMY sister back home?”

Dante looked up from his desk to see Maximus standing in his office doorway. No one should be standing in his office doorway. He paid his secretary well to keep that from happening. And Maximus really shouldn’t be standing there.

“She missed her family,” he said, keeping his expression neutral.

“Why is that?”

He pressed his hands on his desk and stood. “If you didn’t know already that we’re divorcing, then let me be the first to tell you. But I assume you did already.”

“I didn’t want to have to kill you, Dante, but I will.”

“Maximus, I know you excelled in boxing at school, but I’m a street fighter. You’re not going to kill me.”

A dark glint shone in his friend’s eyes and Dante had the sense that he had gone too far. “Your mistake is always underestimating me, friend. You don’t know everything that I could do to you.”

“Whether you believe it or not, Minerva was in control of all of this. And her leaving... I asked her to go to protect her.”

“My mom told me the whole story. I know Isabella isn’t your baby. I had a hard time believing it in the beginning, I have to admit.”

“So, she told you what Minerva did?”

Maximus nodded. “And if my sister wasn’t crushed, I wouldn’t be here. I would assume that you had done what you did to protect her, and now the deal was done but obviously something happened between the two of you.”

Dante lifted a shoulder. “I won’t lie to you. She was my wife.”

“What happened to your Catholicism?”

“Tell me,” Dante said, his temper fraying, “what would be the greatest sin? To divorce your sister or keep her with me for the rest of my life. You know me, Maximus. You know that I’m not...part of your world, not part of the one I came from. Not part of Min’s or Isabella’s. You know that I don’t know how to... I don’t know how to be part of a family. Not even yours.”

“Your own choice, Dante. We’ve always wanted you to be part of us.”

“And I don’t know how to do it,” Dante said, frustration eating at him. “Tell me. How should I be a good husband to Min? You don’t know how to be a husband. What can you tell me?”

“Nothing about that. Though I had thought that you were a decent human being. My father opened his home to you and I called you brother. Was I wrong to do that?”

Dante had told himself he didn’t care about much. But hearing his friend ask him if he was wrong to call him brother made something crumble inside him. The bit of heart, of humanity, he had left.

“If you care about Minerva at all...” Maximus continued.

“I do,” he bit out. “I love her.”

The words made the back of his neck prickle. Made sweat bead at his temples. He loved her. It was the thing he feared most because it was the one thing he could not control.

Not ever.

And he’d sworn he would never...

Minerva King.

She had been a girl when he’d first met her. How had she reached around inside him and changed him like this?

How had she become his dearest dream and greatest nightmare all at once?

“Then why are you doing this to the both of you? Go back to her.”

His throat was dry. “I... I can’t.”

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