Absolution (Disenchanted Book 3) Read online

  “Play. Scare. Same difference. Our children will probably play out here, too. You know, we never talked about it, but how many children do you want? I would love to have a big family like my parents did, but it isn’t just up to me.”

  When she didn’t answer, I stopped walking.

  “Celia? Did you hear me, or are you in your own world?”

  She stopped a couple feet ahead and turned slowly to face me, her eyes downcast. “Marcello.” She said my name softly.

  Just like earlier outside the church, my stomach twisted. When her eyes met mine, it felt like someone punched me in the chest. She reminded me of Tess when her eyes had been misty as if she’d been ready to cry. Celia’s eyes were not damp, but it hurt to look into their stormy depths.

  “I have to tell you something.” Her voice was still soft, so soft, like she didn’t want anyone to hear, although there was no one around.

  I was reluctant to respond. Part of me wanted to just put a hand over her mouth and never let her speak. “What?”

  “I want you to know that you are my very best friend, and I love you, but…” Her next words came out in a whisper. “I am in love with someone else.”

  Chapter Two

  We always believe we know what we would do in certain situations, like, how we would react to bad news or someone else’s bad behavior. However, when it comes down to it, we never really know what we would do, or what we would say. I, for one, would never have imagined myself calm, almost numb, and speechless under these circumstances. My fiancée, the woman I loved and was supposed to marry in three weeks, just revealed to me that she loved someone else. I could only stand there amongst those twisting, winding grapevines and stare.

  “Marco?” she tentatively said my name and eyed me with apprehension.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you hear me?”

  I blinked slowly and spoke calmly. “I heard you, but I am waiting for the punchline because surely, you did not mean what you said. It isn’t possible that, with less than a month before our wedding, after a lifetime of friendship and months of loving each other, you would do something as reckless as having an affair.”

  She shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable with my words. “I didn’t have an affair. I didn’t say that I was with someone else. I only said that I am in love with someone else.”

  I inclined my head to one side as I studied her delicate features. “I suppose this is where you want me to end our engagement, send you on your way, and wish you well. After all, it would be the right thing for me to do. But…” I reached for her. She seemed surprised by my gentleness but allowed me to envelop her slender fingers in my hand. “I am not letting you go. You are confused. Someone has confused you, and you do not mean what you say. So, I will save us all the trouble of breaking up and getting back together. We were meant for each other, Celia. We’ve been meant for each other since we were children, and I won’t let a moment of weakness ruin that.”

  Her eyes glistened in the early afternoon sunlight. She blinked rapidly so her tears wouldn’t fall. “You would marry me anyway? Knowing I was in love with someone else?”

  My shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t believe you are in love with someone else, but yes. I still want to marry you. I am in love with you. I can love enough for both of us.”

  For a few beats of my heart, I believed she would acquiesce. After all, she was young, innocent, and susceptible to confusing love with infatuation. It had happened to me once. For a whole winter, I’d thought I was in love with Marcia, one of Francesca’s friends. She’d been my first kiss, and second, third, and…well…we’d become very intimate over those cold months. It did not take long, however, for me to realize that what we shared wasn’t love. The same could be said for Celia and her mystery guy. I was her first boyfriend, her first lover, and she did not really have much contact with other men outside of her family or mine.

  “I am not confused,” she whispered. Carefully, she detached herself from me. “I am thinking clearer than ever before.”

  For the first time since her confession, I felt a sting of pain. The numbness was wearing off. I moved closer to her, but she backed away until there were a couple of feet between us. It may as well had been a couple thousand miles.

  “I am not confused,” she repeated louder, fiercer. “I am not weak. I know exactly what I say, Marcello. I am in love with someone else, and I mean it.”

  My chest tightened, and my breaths came rapidly as my emotions fired back to life. My now empty hand clenched into a fist at my side. My voice stayed level, however. “When did this happen? With who? Why?”

  Celia’s eyes closed briefly as she took a deep breath. “There isn’t a time I can point to and say for sure when. It happened over time. Years. I didn’t realize how strong my feelings were until recently. I can’t say why. There isn’t just one answer to that question.”

  I felt like someone was cutting off my oxygen as it dawned on me that she meant what she said. This was no girlhood crush that would pass.

  “You didn’t say who it is,” I choked out. “It must be someone I am familiar with because we know all the same people. Who is it?”

  Her gaze dropped to the ground. “I won’t tell you that.”

  “I deserve to know.”

  She crossed her arms while somehow narrowing her eyes and widening them at the same time. Her mouth was tilted in a mocking smirk. The look was shockingly condescending, like I was a silly child uttering silly things. “Marcello, what difference will it make? What could you possibly do with that information? You’re too soft-hearted for a confrontation. Knowing will only hurt you more.”

  I wanted to rage, to shout at her, but I couldn’t. It just would not come. I was like a volcano, hot and furious on the inside, yet unable to release the pressure. “I am not soft-hearted.”

  Celia closed the distance between us and placed her hand over my heart. Staring into my eyes, she spoke softly. “You have the softest of hearts, Marcello. I love you for it, but it isn’t enough. Someday, you will find someone who thinks it’s enough. Maybe by then, you will be able to forgive me.”

  She kissed my cheek, and it felt like the last kiss ever, and that was it. A very underwhelming breakup for two people who had been tied together in one way or another since childhood. She walked away, and I, with my soft heart, let her go.

  I don’t know how long I stood out there in the vineyard, holding back my tears and trying to grasp what just happened. Obviously, I knew Celia had just dumped my ass, but I could not understand how we had gotten to this point without my notice. I did not believe I was naïve, but there must have been some sign of her deterrence. Either that, or she’d been an excellent liar.

  When I finally went inside, I felt dazed. I wandered the halls of our impressively large home without any destination in mind. My heart hurt. I swung back and forth between anger and the verge of heartbroken tears. The life I’d had planned was over, and I had no idea how I was going to start over. Several times, I wanted to go after her, to make her see reason, to make her realize she was wrong and that she belonged with me, but I knew if I did that, I’d be reduced to begging. I wasn’t quite ready to be on my knees yet.

  On the first floor, I rounded a corner just in time to see someone make a hasty exit through a door that led to the courtyard. My family and our close friends often used the courtyard as a shortcut to get from one side of the house to the other. That person was clearly headed toward the front of the house. I’d only caught a glimpse of them, but I was mostly sure it had been Tess. Momentarily, I was sidetracked from my misery as I recalled that Tess hadn’t been at the meal. She’d told Massimo she had other plans.

  As if I’d conjured him by mere thought, my brother came out of the conservatory that ran almost the full length of the corridor. We often used that room for daytime entertaining. The views of the gardens and the mountains far beyond that were incredible.

  Massimo didn’t seem to notice me, and
I wasn’t sure I wanted to be noticed. So, I stepped partially into the doorway of a bathroom to wait for him to leave. He stared through the wall of glass into the courtyard. The muscles in his upper body were tensed, poised to move forward, perhaps to chase after the person I thought was Tess. It could have been any woman, though. My brother wasn’t secretive about his activities.

  Images from the morning at Mass suddenly rushed into my head. Celia’s gaze on someone else, not me, a secretive smile on her face. Massimo staring back at her. Celia’s and Massimo’s disappearance afterward, and then their reappearances only moments apart. The way she’d watched him, unaware that I’d been watching her.

  The thoughts rattling around in my head were preposterous and unreasonable, but more memories only made them seem less preposterous and very reasonable. Several times over the past few weeks, I’d come home to discover Celia already at the house. It wasn’t necessarily unusual considering how close she was to my family, except there was one time I’d stumbled upon her and Massimo deep in a whispered conversation. It could have been nothing, or…

  Eyes narrowed, I watched his shoulders slump and heard him curse under his breath. He turned and went back into the conservatory without ever seeing me. I stood where I was a few minutes longer, trying to adjust my thinking because the ideas that continued to pop up were wrong. My brother was a player, but he would never play with my fiancée.

  I thought about Tess, the tears that were in her eyes as she told Massimo she was “better than that.” Better than what? What had that meant? And why had she looked at Celia like that? At the time, I’d been unable to understand that look, but now, it was becoming clearer. I recognized it as hate. Tessa looked at the girl who had once been her friend with unfiltered hatred.

  My breath left me in a loud gasp. How could I have been so foolish? How could I have been so blind to what was right in front of me?

  I was walking down the hall without even realizing it at first, not until I stopped in the doorway of the conservatory. Massimo stood by the fireplace brooding, a drink in his hand.

  “How long?” I heard myself ask.

  My brother’s head shot up. “Marco. Sorry, I didn’t see you come in. Would you like a drink, little brother?” He crossed the room to a small table and began to pour me a glass of the brown liquor. “I could use some good company.”

  “How long?” I asked again, the words sharp.

  That caught his attention. He turned and met my gaze as he stood upright slowly. “How long what?”

  “How long have you been taking her to your bed? How long have you been convincing her that she loves you?”

  Massimo recoiled and then stilled, eyes wide with bewilderment. His voice lowered to a mere whisper. “How did you know?”

  I moved deeper into the room, hands fisted. “She told me.”

  He released a heavy breath. “Shit. Really? She told you?”

  “Yes. So, how long?”

  He smashed a palm into his forehead and let out another deep breath. “Shit, brother. How long? Forever. That’s how long.” A cynical laugh escaped his mouth. “I didn’t know it. I didn’t recognize what I felt. I didn’t realize that I…I love her. I’ve always loved her, but I didn’t know that I really love her. For a little while, we were just flirting, I guess…getting closer. Then, last night—” He rubbed at the center of his chest as if he was in pain. “Last night…fuck, Marco. I feel like when I was inside her, she stole my soul.”

  Quiet. Timid. Introverted and modest. Unflappable, laid-back, receptive, and unassuming. Compliant. Calm. Composed. Unruffled. Those are some of the many words used to describe me by my teachers, friends, and my family. Non-confrontational. Soft-hearted. Words I’d always been perfectly fine to live by, words that I’d taken as compliments, suddenly, meant something else altogether. Now, I saw those descriptors for what everyone must have really meant, especially Massimo and Celia. They thought I was weak. They thought I was so weak that they could do their worst to me, and I would…what? Lay down and take it?

  A monster had lain dormant inside me, a beast I hadn’t known existed until now. It was awake, seething with hatred, and bloodthirsty. I gripped the fury raging through me, embraced the monster within, eager to share in his violence.

  My fist connected with Massimo’s face hard enough that he staggered backward against the mantle and nearly fell. Before he could recover, I hit him again, and a third time. He was bigger than me, always had been, but I’d had the element of surprise. Even though he tried to gain his footing and hit me back, I had him on the floor in seconds. I sat on his torso, punching, punching, and punching, screaming curses at him, uncaring that blood was splattering across the tiled floor.

  Someone else screamed. Hands tried to pry me off Massimo, but I easily shrugged them away and kept pummeling my brother. My glasses slid off my face and clattered to the floor, but I ignored that and hit him again. And again. He managed to get his arms up to block his face, but some of my blows still landed. I heard more voices and felt more people pulling at me, but I wouldn’t stop hitting Massimo with both fists. I didn’t stop until someone coldcocked me in the jaw. I slipped off my brother and cracked my head against the tile. Vision blurring, I saw the little woman standing over me, fuming, hands still clenched at her sides. My mother—my fucking mother—had literally knocked me on my ass.

  I laughed before I passed out.

  Chapter Three

  Marco

  Present

  When I first told Lydia about Celia and Massimo, I’d left out many details. I’d been honest when I told her that I’d behaved badly, but I never told her how bad I got. She didn’t know that I’d given my brother a concussion, or that he had to recover at my cousin’s house because I was volatile for days after the incident. I hadn’t told her that I’d screamed at Celia and called her a lying whore, that I’d frightened her. I also left out how nasty I’d been to my sisters, my parents, and pretty much anyone who came near me. I’d been a real bastard.

  There were times, years later, when I could still feel the intensity of that anger and resentment I’d carried within me. I hadn’t just felt betrayed by Celia and Massimo. I’d felt betrayed by everyone I knew because, in my mind, they had all considered me weak. My temper improved after I’d been in the States for a year or so. Eventually, I was able to talk to Massimo and Celia like a normal person. Still, I was never the same after that.

  I was thankful for what I’d gone through with them because the situation had made me a stronger person. However, I was still ashamed of my behavior back then, and I was more nervous than I could have anticipated taking Lydia home. I didn’t want her to know about the boy I’d once been or the horrible things I’d said and done. I didn’t want her to know how weak and pathetic I’d been. Maybe no one would purposely come out and tell her all that had happened, but these things had a way of leaking out little by little. What would she say if she knew?

  I watched her as she slowly awoke beside me, stretching as best she could in the confines of her seat. Her eyes opened, and the first thing she did was push the shade up to look outside. She hissed as the bright light hit her, but she squinted and continued to gaze out of the window for a couple minutes.

  “Good morning?” I said tentatively.

  She glanced over her shoulder at me, a smile on her face. “Sorry. Good morning. I just wanted to see where we were, not that I would know just by looking. I just wanted to see.”

  I moved to the window with her, our cheeks smashed together as we shared the view.

  “Hmm. I am not sure where we are. All the mountains look the same from up here.”

  “I wonder how many planes have crashed in these mountains,” she murmured, more to herself than to me.

  I gave her a sidelong look. “I don’t know, and don’t you think that is a little morbid considering where we are?”

  She turned her head to meet my eyes with a slight lift to her eyebrow, and her luscious mouth curved on one side. “Are yo
u scared?”

  “Terrified. You should hold me and comfort me.”

  Her arms went around my neck, and she pulled me to her for a kiss. Dio mio, she was going to kill me with that perfect mouth. Twenty-four hours ago, our relationship was strained. I couldn’t say for sure if there would be anything left of us after this trip, but with the way she kissed me, wild hope bloomed in my chest.

  A throat cleared behind me. Reluctantly, I separated myself from Lydia and turned to find one of the flight attendants. He seemed unfazed by our mini make-out session, but then again, he’d probably seen much worse on a private jet.

  “Mr. Mangini, we will be landing in about an hour. Can I get you any breakfast before we begin landing procedures?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He gave us a few options before going back to the front of the plane. We needed to wake the kids so they could have a quick bite to eat and use the bathroom before we had to strap in, but I wanted to steal a few more minutes alone with Lydia. After we landed, I wasn’t sure how long it would be before we were alone again.

  “How are you feeling, Tesoro? How is your nausea?”

  She waved it off and looked out the window again. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

  The vomiting had worried me last night. We were flying over the Atlantic, so there weren’t many options if we had to make an emergency landing. If she had continued to vomit, I would have forced the captain to make a decision, even if that meant turning around or landing somewhere else. Since she’d also been sick during the wedding reception, she might have had some kind of stomach bug. If that were the case, I could be the next one tossing my cookies after all the spit we’d swapped.

  Speaking of swapping spit…I wanted to curl my fingers in her hair and kiss her again, but her anxiety was returning. I could not blame her. She was visiting another country without a solid grasp of the language and spend days in a houseful of strangers. She had every right to be nervous, but I had to admit to myself that I was proud of her. Two, three months ago, this trip would not have been a possibility, even though we had discussed it. Lydia would have been terrified and distrustful. Her willingness to accompany me on this trip with her children spoke volumes. Her trust in me was humbling. I knew I would have to do everything possible to make her comfortable during the visit—well, as much as I could under the circumstances. I had a strong feeling that what happened in Italy would decide our relationship. No pressure or anything.