Page 168 of Ricardo

“No.” He points at me. “You understand possession. You understand taking charge and calling it love. You understand seeing something precious and closing your fist around it before anyone else can touch it.”

My jaw tightens.

“And you understand walking into a room with all that power and making people feel like refusing you is disloyal.”

“That is enough.”

“It isn’t even close to enough.”

“Dante.”

He steps closer, and the hurt in his eyes is so plain, the sight of it nearly breaks something in me.

“I trusted you with her,” he says.

My chest tightens.

“I trusted her with you.” My son’s voice shakes.

“And somehow I am the fool standing between you both, finding out after the fact that the two people I trusted most in the world had a secret together.”

I step around the desk.

“Dante—”

“Stay there.”

I stop.

The command comes out of him like pain, and I obey because he needs me to.

He looks startled for half a second, as if he did not expect me to listen.

Then the anger comes back.

“Did you think about me at all?”

“Of course we did.”

“Don’t.”

“It is true.”

“You thought about yourself,” he says. “You thought about wanting her. You thought about having her. You thought about how long you could keep this quiet before I became inconvenient.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.” My voice hardens despite my effort to contain it. “You may be angry. You may hate me for this. But you will not reduce what I feel for Julia to something cheap because you are hurt.”

He stares at me.

Then his mouth curves into an ugly smile.

“What you feel for her,” he repeats.

I say nothing.