Page 57 of Vengeful Vows

He doesn’t acknowledge me, but as I run up the sidewalk, he remains where he is, like a prison guard, until I’m inside Amelia’s.

Without a word, she wraps me in her arms and holds me while I sob.

Only when I’ve gotten a small grip on my emotions does she step back.

I haven’t behaved this way in years—not since my breakup with Brad. But I didn’t have a fraction of the feelings for him that I do for Nico.

Amelia invites me into the kitchen where I drop onto a barstool in front of the island. After shoving a tissue into my hand, she crosses to the fridge and pulls out a gallon of milk.

“Milk? Don’t you have any wine? Or maybe vodka?”

“I think you’ve had enough.”

I’d only had a little champagne, but I had chased it down with the scotch. And I still really haven’t eaten, not that food sounds good.

While I rub my arms, wrapping myself in misery, she makes cocoa, and I tell her every gruesome detail about the evening.

“Holy crap,” she says with a whistle. “We’re going to need half a gallon of rocky road.”

Ice cream and hot chocolate, a miracle cure for a broken heart.

She loads up a tray with her version of an emotional first aid kit, and we move into the living room where I curl up on the couch.

“So you think he approached you at Alessandro’s engagement party on purpose?”

In retrospect, I have no doubt.

There were plenty of beautiful women there, many of them vying for his attention. I know I’m not unattractive, but I’m…ordinary—not in the same league as most of them.

“So he’s the older brother of the girl who was in your brother’s car the night she died?”

As I shovel in another spoonful of chocolate and marshmallow and nutty goodness, I nod.

“An eye for an eye,” Amelia muses.

But how?

Then it hits me. “He made me fall in love with him with the intention of breaking my heart the way his sister’s death broke his father’s.”

Amelia presses her lips together. There’s no sense in denying what I’ve said.

“And that hurts your brother,” she adds.

I drop my spoon, and the metal clatters against the side of the porcelain bowl. “You should have seen his eyes when he realized what Nico had done.” My brother is a haunted man, and he started to come out of it when he met Adriana. And now the anguish is back, and I’d do anything to take it away.

“It’s coldhearted.”

My phone chimes. Since I need peace—I know I’ll be tempted to read anything Nico sends me—I push the button to silence my notifications.

Nico Moretti.Who the hell is he?

Then I begin talking about other things that now strike me as strange, but I had conveniently refused to look at when I fell for him, head over heels. His ring with the twin emeralds. I saw the same one on Lorenzo’s finger. Was Matteo wearing a similar one? Much as I try to remember, I can’t bring that detail into focus.

But Sergio calls him boss rather than Nico or Mr. Moretti.

Of course that may mean nothing. He’s been keeping his identity secret, and everyone around us has been complicit.

I narrow my eyes at Amelia. “What name was on his credit card? That night of the fashion show.”