Page 68 of Marry Me Not
I reached behind me and found the door handle.
He wrapped his hand around mine before I could turn it. I pressed my back against the door, fighting for slivers of space. He was so close that he filled my entire field of view. Everywhere. He was everywhere.
His lips lowered close to my ear. “Vita convinced my past girlfriends to snoop through my shit. Give her information. Spy on me.”
A beat. He let go of my hand and shifted back.
Shock wrapped a claw around my lungs. “What? Why would she do that? You and her are on the same side.”
His laugh was bitter. “My mother likes to be in control even more than I do, Fabiana. She wants to know everything happening inside this family. I made a decision to put a woman on my arm who couldn’t be bought by Vita because we already had an arrangement worked out. One who knew that if she betrayed me, she’d die. Vita hated that she couldn’t get through to Rosa the way she’d gotten through to all the rest.”
I swallowed. My mind raced as I tried to piece it together. “How did she do it?”
“Found what they wanted. Gave it to them. Money. Fame. Favors. Everyone had something.”
“Everyone?”
“Every. Single. One. Even the last blonde I picked up at a bar three years ago and fucked that same night. Caught her snooping through my phone when I went to take a piss. Vita had planted her there for me.”
My horror felt like a living, breathing thing. No wonder Cosimo was distrustful. His own mother had engineered the conditions for it. “Three years ago. You haven’t been with anyone else for three years?”
A muscle in his jaw fluttered. “No one.”
I couldn’t hold back my gasp. That was impossible. Or it should have been. Men like Cosimo did not go three years without touching anyone. “Rosa?—”
“She doesn’t like men. It was one of the many reasons I chose her—she wouldn’t get any ideas.”
He wasn’t lying. I could see it in the wariness behind his eyes, in the way his mouth tightened slightly after he said it, as if he already regretted telling me.
Inside me, my heart pounded. Hard. “Did you think Vita would use me too?”
The answer was written all over his face before he said a word.
And suddenly, a dozen things clicked into place. The way he’d warned me she’d charm me. The way he’d seemed certain I would run to her for help. Maybe even the reason he’d insisted I handle the wedding planning myself.
He’d thought I’d fall for it. Become a player in her twisted game.
I couldn’t even fault him for it. How could I when I’d just learned that every woman who got close to him had once been another pair of eyes reporting back to his mother? If Vita had gotten through to all of them, she probably would have gotten through to me eventually.
“I would never have been okay with anyone she chose for me, Fabiana.”
Of course he wouldn’t have been. Not because he was stubborn like she’d made it seem, but because anyone she touched turned into a weapon against him.
I’d made Cosimo the villain of my story. But he had his own villain to overcome.
His gaze moved over my face and then dropped to my lips again, slower this time. Deliberate.
Heat curled low in my stomach.
Was he thinking about the kiss?
Was he wondering if it would feel the same here without an audience, in this cramped little room that smelled faintly of starch and dust and candles?
I was.
“You done with the interrogation?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. It felt like I’d swallowed my tongue. Through the door, I could hear people chattering. The guests had arrived.
