He Cheated on Me Until He Learned Who My Brother Was

The next evening, Damiano's hand rested at the small of my back as we crossed the threshold into Bianca Rossi's penthouse. His touch burned through the black silk of my dress, every measured squeeze a counterfeit of tenderness, a performance staged for a room full of people who answered to names I had spent nine years trying to forget. The air smelled of cut lilies and cold money, of Turkish tobacco drifting from a far corner where men in tailored suits stood too still, watching the door the way soldiers watch a perimeter.

"Adriana, tesoro, try the champagne." He pressed a crystal flute into my hand, then kissed my temple with theatrical slowness, ensuring the gathered crowd caught every second of it. The gesture earned a glance or two, a few thin smiles. I felt my own mouth move into something that wasn't quite an expression.

Across the room, Bianca held court in red. The dress matched the flush riding high on her cheeks, and her dark, mascara-lined eyes tracked Damiano's every movement with the patience of a predator that has already chosen its hour. She lifted her glass to him, just barely, a private salute that no one else in the room was meant to read. I read it anyway.

…

I excused myself from the crowd, desperate for a single breath that didn't taste of her perfume and his lies. The corridor that led toward the restroom stretched ahead of me, dim and lined with framed photographs of people I didn't recognize, all of them smiling the way people smile when a camera is pointed at them and a debt is owed somewhere just out of frame.

"Well. If it isn't the runaway sister."

Bianca's voice came from behind me, soft as a blade slid free of its sheath.

I turned. She leaned against the wall, a champagne glass dangling from her manicured fingers, the red dress moving with her like something alive. Beside her my black silk suddenly felt like a child's idea of mourning, plain and earnest and out of its depth.

"Must be nice," she said, "living your perfect little life while your brother handled everything alone." Her lips curled. "Do you have any idea how selfish that makes you? Abandoning family like that?"

My throat closed. Family. The word landed wrong in her mouth, too knowing, too precise. How did she know about Lorenzo? About any of it? Those were details I had buried so deep that I'd told only one person, late at night, in the dark, when I'd believed myself safe enough to bleed a little.

Damiano. Of course. He had handed it all to her. Every confession I'd whispered in the quiet between us, every fear, every guilt-stained admission about the brother I'd left behind to carry the name alone. He had taken the softest parts of me and given them to her as ammunition.

"What's the matter?" She pushed off the wall, closing the distance until her perfume crowded out the air. "Cat got your tongue?"

I pressed my thumb hard against the bare spot on my finger where his ring used to sit, that phantom weight, and forced myself to stay still.

"You should know," she went on, "Damiano and I have history. Deep history. The kind that doesn't just evaporate because some girl decided to play house with him for a few years."

I set my back against the wall, willing the sting behind my eyes to stay where it was.

"Tonight's the night, Adriana." She tipped her glass back and drained it, then let her arm fall lazily to her side. "I'm taking him back. He's always been mine. You were only keeping his bed warm while I was away."

I couldn't breathe. She moved closer still, her red-painted mouth curving into something cruel and luxurious, a smile that had no warmth in it at all, only appetite.

"Want to hear something fun?" She traced one finger down my bare arm, slow, proprietary. "Two days ago. While you were off at that little photography workshop of yours."

My stomach dropped through the floor. Tuesday.

"He came to my place first." Her voice sank to a whisper, intimate, poisonous. "But then he had a better idea. Said he wanted to do it in his bed. Yours and his."

The corridor seemed to narrow. Somewhere behind us the party murmured on, glasses clinking, a low ripple of laughter, the ordinary sounds of people who had no idea what was happening six feet from their champagne.

"Those silk sheets you love so much?" She leaned in until her breath was hot against my ear. "We made quite a mess of them."

My knees gave a fraction. I gripped the wall to keep myself upright as bile climbed the back of my throat.

"The way he grabbed my hair. Pushed me down." She dragged her own fingers slowly through her dark hair, savoring it. "God, Adriana. The things he did to me that he would never do with you. He said you were too vanilla. Too safe." She laughed, low and delighted. "But me? I bring out the animal in him."

The memory of Tuesday night surfaced before I could stop it. How I had climbed into those same sheets, exhausted and content. How Damiano had kissed me goodnight in that same bed, murmured something soft against my hair, and I had believed every word.

"You should have seen how fast he stripped those sheets afterward." Her fingers closed around my wrist, cool and certain. "Wouldn't want his precious Adriana finding out what a bad boy he really is. Though I'll admit." Her grip tightened, and her head tilted a fraction too far as she smiled, the elegance of it slipping for just an instant to show the thing crouched underneath. "The fear of getting caught? It made the whole thing so much hotter."