suffocation, its stability, which allowed her to stand in the circle of his arms, feeling his beloved body seeking her and enfolding her, without collapsing in a mass of misery.
It also gave her the strength to push away, even though she felt she pushed away from her life source.
She staggered a step, barely aware of the hundreds of people around, watching them. She had eyes and senses only for Vincenzo, for noticing how his hair and face were captured by the atrocious lighting of the airport, enhancing every gleam, emphasizing every jut and hollow.
A blaze of love and longing shriveled her heart. She’d been too optimistic thinking there had been a chance she’d survive this. There wasn’t.
He reached for her again, hands urgent, coaxing, moving over her back, her arms, her face, leaving each feeling forever scarred with the memory of what she’d never have again.
“Come with me, amore,” he urged again.
“I can’t.” Her voice sounded as dead as she felt.
“You can’t do anything else, amore. You belong with me. To me. You’re the only one for me.”
“That’s not true, never was, never will be.”
His arms fell away, and he looked at her as if she’d just emptied a gun in his gut.
“You—you don’t…” His bit his lower lip then his voice plunged to a hoarse rasp that sounded like pain and dread made audible. “You don’t love me?”
She should say she didn’t. He’d stop blaming himself for his role in her devastation, stop trying to make amends. This was what he was here doing, after all. And she no longer blamed him for anything. She only wanted to set him free.
She still couldn’t bring herself to lie. Not about this.
She escaped answering. “I am not the one for you, Vincenzo. Anyone else would be better for you. Anyone who doesn’t have a family with a criminal history.”
His devastated expression fell apart with the snap of tension, morphed into the very sight of relief. “This is what you meant? What you’re thinking?”
“It’s not what I’m thinking. It’s the truth.”
“According to whom?”
“To the world.”
“Does it look like I care what the world does or doesn’t think?”
He spread his arms, encompassing the scene around them. Everyone was staring openly at them, the buzz of recognition, curiosity and amusement rising. Some were even taking photos and recording videos.
Embarrassment crept up her face. “You do care or you wouldn’t have married me as a social facade. And when the truth comes out…”
“It never will.”
“…it will cost you and Castaldini too much. That’s why it’s a fact that any woman who doesn’t have a family with a criminal history and connections would be better for you.”
“No one is better for me. No one is better, period.” She started to shake her head, her heart ricocheting inside her rib cage at his intensity and the unwilling rise of hope. He caught her face, his hands gentleness and persuasion itself. “And pretending to care about that social facade was just so I could have you without admitting the truth. All those years I’ve been looking for a way to have you again. Because I haven’t been truly alive since I walked away from you. And now I can’t live without you. I only cared about your family’s crimes when I thought you’d been involved in them, but lately, not even then. And now none of that is an issue. I’ve managed to wipe your family’s slate clean.”
“Y-you did…? How?”
He told her, quickly, urgently, as if needing to get this out of the way, to move on to what he considered relevant.
And she felt her world disintegrating around her again.
“I never suspected… I always thought… God!” Tears gushed, then burned down her cheeks. “The years I spent being angry at Dad and Daniel, thinking they were irresponsible, criminal, when they…they…”
He dragged her to him, protecting her from her anguish, all the missing parts of her fitting back. “You can now have your family back, forgive them for everything that has been beyond them and be happy loving them again.”
She raised her eyes to his, unable to grasp the enormity of it all. “How can you be so…so forgiving, so generous, after all they’ve done to you?”
“Conceiving you is an achievement that would make up for any past or future crime. And then they were under threat. A threat I ended, so they can now go on with their lives without the shadow of fear.”
She started to protest and he scooped her up in his arms, clamping his lips