LITMIR.BIZ

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no matter what he did, Dad kept spiraling downward. This friend even took care of us after he died, financed my education until I graduated.”

      “And you didn’t like that. Even though you liked the man.”

      “God, how do you keep working out how I feel? Do you read minds?” She groaned. “But of course you do. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.” Before he could tell her it was only her he was so attuned to, she went on. “Yeah, I love him. But I hated feeling so helpless, so indebted. I worked, paid my rent and expenses, but he was adamant about not letting me get a tuition loan. I only accepted when he promised he’d let me pay him back.”

      “But he was only humoring you so you’d accept.”

      “Your insight is uncanny, isn’t it? You realized at once what I only realized when I got a great paying job and demanded to repay him only for him to—surprise—refuse to take a cent.”

      “But you drilled your way into making him take it, giusto?”

      “Assolutamente giusto…dead right. I bet he finally took the money so he’d hear the end of it. Not that that was the end of it. When my mom finally gave me a real idea of the magnitude of our family’s debt to him, I became consumed with the need to repay it all, so I’d feel free, and she would, too.”

      “And I bet you managed to pay it all back.”

      Her lashes fluttered down again. “Eventually, yes.”

      “And that cost you. What did it cost you, bellissima?”

      Her lips twisted in something too much like self-loathing. “Marrying the worst possible man.”

      The world stopped. His heart followed. “You’re married?”

      Her eyes slammed back to his, enormous with alarm and agitation. “No. I’m divorced. Six years ago now. Grazie a Dio.”

      His heart attempted to restart, lurched and clanged against the insides of a chest that felt lined with thorns. “Was he rich?”

      She winced. “Filthy.”

      “Like me?”

      “Uh, no. Your wealth transcends filthiness into obscenity.” He couldn’t reciprocate her tremulous attempt to lighten things up. “You married him so he’d repay your family’s debts?”

      “Actually, it was his idea. I was his PA and he heard me on the phone with my mom and used it as another pressure tactic.”

      “He needed to? You weren’t attracted to him?”

      “I felt nothing beyond unease that I couldn’t reciprocate his interest. But the job was great, so I kept hoping he’d find someone else. He didn’t, kept pointing out that I didn’t, either, that maybe I can’t feel…passion, which was okay because love stories never end well, anyway. I began to think he was right, as I knew nothing of what makes a relationship work or what a man who’d make a good husband was like. Compared to my father, he seemed like the essence of stability. And he made a solid case for a marriage between us built on mutual respect and realistic expectations.”

      He barely stopped himself from snarling. “He conned you.”

      “Oh, no. I decided to disregard my reservations, my lack of feelings for him, followed the lure of paying off my family’s debts in one chunk. I dug my own grave by being so mercenary.”

      He snarled now. “You were nothing of the sort. He was the conniving bastard. If he felt anything for you, he would have freed you from debt and left it up to you to take him or not.”

      “That would have only transferred my debt to him, and I would have felt honor-bound to marry him anyway.”

      “He could have made it clear that there would have been no debt, or offered that you repay it in installments.”

      “I did insist on including the condition in the prenups that our funds be separate and whatever he loaned me I’d return.”

      “And he pounced on those terms,” he bit off. “You were what? Twenty? Twenty-one? And how old was he?”

      “I was twenty-three. He was thirty-nine. And a widower.”

      “He did con you. He convinced you to consider it a business deal in which pros outweigh cons, pretended he was satisfied with that. Until he got his hands on you.” Her shrug was loud with concession. He wanted to slam his fists down on the table. “And he didn’t pay off your debts.”

      “How did you…? Oh, OK. I did say I married the worst man.”

      “Actually, you said paying your debt cost you marrying said man. Most would assume that he did pay it. But I’d bet my fortune he didn’t. I know that because I know users, and that man was beyond that. He kept after you to break your resistance, but instead of building anticipation as he pursued you, he built up antipathy, planned to wreak vengeance on you as soon as he had you in his power.” He caught her hand, pressed it. “I only wish to God the extent of his aggression was the passive breaking of the pact he never meant to keep. But he didn’t stop there, did he?” She shook her head. “He abused you. Verbally, mentally.” The last word seemed to cut him as it came out. “Sexually.”

      She stared at him again as if he’d torn her open and looked inside, distress brimming with the shock of exposure, with the misplaced shame of the victim.

      At last she gave a choking gulp. A mortified nod admitted his insight. “I bought his excuses, his blame, for four months. I didn’t love him, he was frustrated, yadda yadda. Then he…he…”

      “He hit you.”

      She lurched. Her chest heaved. With a sharp inhalation, she muttered, “He put me in the hospital.”

      Four

      Durante had never considered himself a violent man.

      Now, as he stared down at her bent head, murderous aggression took hold of his every nervous transmission. Need boiled his blood—to defend her in retrospect, to avenge her, to torture and cripple that vermin who’d hurt her.

      Words left his lips in a vicious staccato. “Tell me you reported him and he’s now serving time.”

      “Uh, no…actually, I didn’t.” He heard something rumbling, vaguely realized the sound was issuing from him. She rushed in to add, “But he didn’t get the chance to come near me again. I started divorce proceedings before I even reached the hospital.”

      He glared at her, his brain seeming to expand in the confines of his skull with the brutal buildup of anger, the inability to vent it. At least not yet. He would pay that man back.

      She suddenly shut her eyes. “Okay, let’s rewind and replay before I dig a hole to Malaysia. I made it all sound so pathetic and self-pitying, and that isn’t how I see my life. I’ve had it way better than most people. Despite my father’s problems, so many things, starting with my mother and our benefactor, provided me with a secure and reasonably happy childhood. I had a great time at boarding school and college, and my marriage, ugliness and all, lasted only four months and I own up to my role in it. I’ve established my own company and I loved every second of exploring and achieving so much on the way. My mother died, but I’m thankful she didn’t suffer long and that I had such an incredible friend and parent for so long. So…I hope I haven’t caused you to reach your whining tolerance level.”

      She was making light of her ordeals, and, maledizione, meaning it. The expectedness of her last words awoke his humor, which he thought an insult to the suffering she’d related. But her come-on, laugh-with-me expression forced him to submit.

      He coughed a distressed laugh. “You sent my sense of perspective levels through the roof, after they’d dwindled to trace elements. You forced me to revise how I perceive my own life. Seems I’ve been guilty of letting my…issues rule my

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