She looked at him for what felt like a very long time, a kind of resolve on her face. “I didn’t believe you were a murderer. I still don’t.”
And something in him rocked a bit at that. “Because you had made such an in-depth study of my character over the course of that one dinner?” He didn’t like the emotion on her face then. He didn’t like emotion. He growled. “Perhaps, as we are standing here together, stripped down to honesty in this empty room, we can finally admit that what you truly wanted was to escape. And all the better if you could do it while hammered to the family cross.”
“Surely a martyr is what you wanted,” she replied, displaying that strength he’d heard in her music time and time again. And quietly. “Or why would you go to such trouble to present yourself as a savior, willing to haul a family like mine out of financial ruin—but only for a price.”
“I know exactly why it is I do what I do,” Benedetto growled with a soft menace. “A better question is why you imagined you could marry a man like me, surrender yourself to my dark demands, and have things end differently for you than the rest. Do you truly imagine yourself that special, Angelina?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and there was something in her gaze then. A kind of knowing on her lovely face that clawed at him like the storm outside, thunder and flashes of light. “But there were times you looked at me and it seemed clear that you thought so, Benedetto.”
She could not have pierced him more deeply had she pulled out a knife and plunged it into his heart. Then twisted it.
Benedetto actually laughed, because he hadn’t seen it coming. And he should have. Of course he should have.
Because there was nothing meek about his Angelina. His angel. She was all flaming swords and descents from on high in a blaze of glory, and if he hadn’t understood that when he had first seen her—well. When she’d played for him that first night, it had all been clear.
Then he’d tasted all that flame himself.
And there was no coming back from that.
She had introduced music into his life. Now it would live in him, deep in his bones no matter where in the world he went, and he had no idea how he was going to survive without it.
Or without her.
Because these last two months had been torture. If they had been a preview of what awaited him, he might as well chain himself up in his own dungeon and allow himself to go truly mad at last.
It almost sounded like a holiday to him.
“Are you going to kill me?” she asked, and despite the question, she stood tall. She didn’t try to hide from him. After a beat he realized there was no fear on her face. “Is that the truth of you, after all?”
And this was the life he had chosen. He had made a promise to his grandfather years ago, and time after time he had kept it.
He had considered it a penance. He had taken a kind of pride in being so reviled and whispered about on the one hand, yet courted and feted all the same because no matter what else he was, he was a man of a great and historic fortune.
Benedetto had considered it a game. For what did he care what names he was called? Why should it matter to him what others said? He had yet to meet anyone who wouldn’t risk themselves in his supposedly murderous presence if it meant they would get paid for their trouble.
He had cynically imagined he understood everything there was to know about the world. He had been certain he had nothing left to learn—that nothing could surprise him.
He understood, now it was too late, that the point of it all had been a woman like Angelina.
It was possible his grandfather had expected someone like her to come along sooner, so that Benedetto would learn his lesson. It had never been a game or a curse. It had been about love all along.
Love.
That word.
Franceschis do not love, his mother had told him with one of her bitter trills of laughter. They destroy.
Love yourself, his father had said as if in agreement, his tone mocking in response to his wife. He’d cast a narrow sort of look at his only son and heir. No one else will. Not because Franceschis destroy, or any such superstition. But because the only thing anyone will ever see is your fortune.
He loves me, Carlota had told him on the day of their wedding. He knows me. And so he also knows that my duty to you must come first.
She was joy and she was love, his grandfather had said stiffly on the morning of his grandmother’s funeral, staring out at the sea. And none of each can possibly remain without her.
I love you, Benedetto, his grandmother had told him long, long ago, when she’d found him hiding in one of the castello’s secret passageways. I will always love you.
But always had not lasted long.
As far as he had ever been able to tell, love had died along with her, just as his grandfather had said.
Something he’d been perfectly happy with all these years.
Until now.
When it was too late.
Because he knew how this scene between them was about to go. He played the monster and his wives believed it, and he’d been satisfied with that system since the start. There was only ever one way this could go.
He had always liked it. Before.
He raked his hair back from his face, and wished that he could do something about the way his heart kicked at him. Or better yet, about the fact he had a
