Page 24 of Forsaking All Others

“Before your husband arrived,” Bryson accurately guessed.

I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t have to.

With a long sigh, he moved me by the shoulder and raised his free hand to cup my face. I pressed my cheek into his smooth palm and stared up at his dear face. He was my best friend, the only person outside the staff I saw almost every day. Without him, I wasn’t sure I would have made it through the year.

“Sometimes I wonder what I wouldn’t give to see you truly happy,” Bryson murmured, his thumb stroking close to my mouth, dancing over the edge. “Sometimes, I wonder if you wouldn’t be better off with someone who could make you truly happy.”

“And that person, I presume, is you?”

I closed my eyes as Dario’s voice cut across the night, hitting me like a slap to the face.

Bryson stiffened but did not drop his hand. Instead, he curled me into his side.

I looked up to see my husband framed in the doorway, the light at his back casting his features entirely in tarlike shadow. He seemed otherworldly, a demon sent from hell to haunt me.

“Maybe,” Bryson responded evenly. “But any of us in there would give our left kidney to see Fia happy. You’re the only one who doesn’t seem to give a damn.”

“You don’t know me well enough to make that statement,” he countered coolly, moving forward, the sound of his loafers against the tiles like a bomb clock ticking down to detonation. “And I hope it is fair to say you do not know my wife well enough to imply that you could make her happier than her own husband.” He paused just for a moment, but it was weighty. “Isn’t that right, Fiammetta?”

I swallowed thickly as he stopped at my shoulder, sinuously sliding his arm around my waist to pull me away from Bryson and into his side. I didn’t have to test his hold to know it was absolute, his fingers biting into my side almost painfully.

“No, he doesn’t know a thing about our marriage,” I answered honestly, voice raw because it hurt to acknowledge that even I didn’t know a goddamn thing about it either.

“It’s best if you leave now,” Dario said with false courtesy, the words wrapped in barbed wire.

Bryson hesitated, his gaze scouring my face for a sign I needed him to stay.

It gave me the resolve I needed to stand up to Dario’s tyranny. I straightened in his hold and tipped my head to glare up into my husband’s glacier eyes.

“Bryson is my guest, and this is my party. I’ll be the one to dismiss my guests when the night is over. We haven’t even played tombola yet.”

“Tombola?” Dario echoed. “That is an Italian game, Fiammetta. I doubt your new friends know of it.”

“I’ll teach them,” I declared stubbornly before telling Bryson, “It’s rowdy and loud and very fun. Everyone will love it.”

“I’m sure they will,” Bryson agreed with a slightly relieved smile. “Shall we go in, then?”

He didn’t offer me his arm the way he normally would have, and I knew it was because even my posh British doctor knew better than to flagrantly disrespect Dario.

I didn’t have any such qualms, so I wrenched myself from my husband’s side and linked my arm to Bryson’s. “Let’s,” I decreed before leading him toward the door.

I thought I might make it away unscathed, the handle of the door cold beneath my hand when I heard a low, dangerous growl of “Fiammetta” from behind me.

My head turned without permission to see Dario with his feet braced and arms crossed, looking every inch the punishing general.

“You do not want to play this game with me,” he warned.

“Try me,” I dared him, tossing my hair over my shoulder as I turned and walked back into the house with Bryson.

Papà had always told me it was common sense to keep the color red from a bull, yet I’d just waved a brilliant crimson flag in the face of my beast of a husband.

I knew before I closed the door behind me that I would live to regret it.

Chapter Eight

Fiammetta

We were just finishing a rousing round of tombola, Katya, the proud winner, still standing on the couch with her arms raised in victory, when the doorbell rang.