Page 48 of Forsaking All Others

Well, I would support me.

I was months away from earning a degree, and even though I hadn’t really planned to get a job, now it was a certainty that I would.

I could be married to the man, but I wouldn’t allow myself to count on him.

Not again.

Gertie was just opening my door with a breakfast tray balanced on one hand when I swanned into my bedroom, ready for the day. She looked startled by my appearance, but then it was only eight o’clock in the morning, and I was wearing a deep-red sweater dress and red-soled Louboutin heels as if I was going out to dinner.

“Fia?” she asked.

I grabbed a piece of buttered toast from the tray, took a bite, and smiled at her. “I don’t have time for breakfast today, Gertie, but thank you. Do you know where my husband is?”

“I-In his study,” she stuttered, because she was naturally shy and submissive, and something about my crackling energy made her uneasy.

I tried to temper the ferocity of my smile as I nodded in thanks and moved beyond her into the hall and down the stairs toward Dario’s study. Voices spilled from beneath the closed door, and I crept closer on my tiptoes to eavesdrop while I could.

“You’re lucky I’m in a good mood,” Dario was saying, sounding anything but happy. “Otherwise, I would hurt you exactly the way they hurt her.”

“You were always so dramatic,” Lando, his father, returned with a click of his tongue. He often found Dario childish and boring, sentiments he related passive-aggressively whenever he got the chance. “Sometimes I wonder what your brother would have been like in your position.”

There was a heavy silence, one I spent reeling through.

Dario had once had a brother?

“He would have been even more dramatic than me. Of that, I can assure you,” Dario drawled. “And as much as I appreciate the art of deflection, we are not talking about him. We are not even talking about me. We are talking about the fact that the Russians have been making threats against my wife for months and, even doubling her protection, they got to her.”

I blinked hard at the confession, my suspicions confirmed.

Dario had known I was in danger and kept me in the dark.

Even after our wedding day, after losing my entire family in one swift attack, he had thought it wise to let me live in dangerous ignorance.

Fury licked at my breastbone, around the edges of my ribs like a fire that threatened to consume a whole house down to the studs.

Without further hesitation, I opened the study door and pushed inside.

Lando and Carla were both sitting on the couch to one side of the room, Dario in the large leather chair, and his right-hand man Cesare and left-hand Ciro standing on either side of him like guard dogs.

Their eyes came to me immediately, but it was Carla who stood and gathered me in her arms to stroke my hair.

“Darling girl,” she murmured as she petted me. “What you’ve been through! How awful.”

I didn’t allow myself to take comfort from my mother-in-law even though the part of me who had never known her mother ached to remain in her hold. Instead, I stepped away until Carla’s hands dropped and she frowned at me in concern.

“I’d like to speak to my husband alone,” I asked politely, seeking out Lando because even though Dario had taken over as capo dei capi, Lando was old-school authoritarian and still believed he ran the Family.

He peered at me, lips pursed. “You’ve been through a lot. Perhaps you should be in bed.”

I tried to smile but was afraid it looked more like a feral showing of teeth. “Perhaps you would let me have a word with my husband?”

Lando’s faux concern melted into a glare, but it was Carla who clucked her tongue and moved into my side again, sliding an arm around my waist. “You’re out of sorts, of course. Let me take you to the kitchen for some tea and a nice little girl talk.”

“Let me talk to my husband,” I bit out, trying not to snap because she meant well.

She blinked her huge pale-brown eyes at me, and I was reminded again how young my mother-in-law was, only twenty when she’d had Dario. She seemed hurt by my abruptness, and a small part of me panged at that when she had planted the seed of my own independence, but I refused to let myself take comfort in her when I had mysteries to uncover.

“Leave us.” Dario’s low voice cut through the room without option for rebuttal.