my infidelity and paid her for fake photos?”
“They weren’t fake,” she cried. “Everybody in New York knew you were having an affair! Too bad I was the last to know.”
His fingers tightened around her shoulders. “They are fake photos because I did not sleep with Chelsea Tate—ever—after our relationship began.”
His rage and the icy, menacing look on his face vibrated through her like a sledgehammer. Riccardo had never lied to her. Not once in their marriage. Until Chelsea. Truth was like a badge of honor to him—it was the De Campo creed, the way he conducted his life. Better to be brutal and get it over with.
What if she was wrong?
“Lilly?”
She yanked herself out of his grasp and turned away. Her brain moved wildly through the possibilities. Photos could be doctored. They were doctored all the time. Maybe those hadn’t been shots of him and Chelsea. It had been hard to see their faces after that initial shot of them kissing...
A cold, buzzing feeling descended over her. Would Lacey Craig have dared to sell her fakes? Wouldn’t she have been worried Lilly would take them straight to Riccardo, who would have pronounced them as such and sued the hell out of her?
Or maybe Lacey hadn’t known they were fake...
Oh, God.
Riccardo took a step toward her, his face hard and determined. “How much did you pay for those photos?”
She shook her head.
“How much?”
“One hundred thousand dollars.”
“A hundred thousand?” His brow furrowed. “They wouldn’t give you a full-page ad for a hundred grand...”
Lilly felt her world fall apart.
His gaze sharpened on her face as understanding dawned in his eyes. “That was the money you said you sent your parents?”
“Yes.”
He sucked in a breath, his fists clenching at his sides. “You trusted me so little you would do that without talking to me?”
“You kissed her, Riccardo! You went home with her, intending to sleep with her. Where in that is there anything that says I should have trusted you?”
His jaw clamped shut. He was silent for several long moments, each one driving the stake that was impaling her heart deeper and deeper.
Finally he raised his gaze to hers and asked quietly, “Was there ever any point in our marriage you were happy?”
She fought the fire burning the back of her eyes. “That first year after we married was the most amazing year of my life. I loved you, Riccardo. I worshipped the ground you walked on. You were my knight in shining armor who’d swooped into my life and made it whole again. But somewhere along the way I lost my glitter when it came to you. You didn’t want me the same way you did before. And it was torturous for me to be with you like that.” She looked down at the sparkling ring on her finger. “So I left.”
“You left because you thought I didn’t love you anymore?”
“I left because we were destroying each other. You became obsessed with that job—obsessed with having your birthright. And you left me alone to deal with the fallout of being Lilly De Campo. Something I couldn’t do on my own.”
He was silent, a granite mask stretching across his face. She hugged her arms around herself and listened as a chorus of tree frogs filled the air with their haunting, rhythmical song.
“You never once thought I might be struggling too? That I might need my wife?” He said the words quietly, deliberately, his face devoid of emotion.
“How would I have known? You’re like Mount Vesuvius. You keep everything inside until you explode. And when you do there’s nothing for me to respond to but the anger.”
His dark gaze rested on her. “I could say the same about you.”
“Yes, you could.” She nodded. “I have a ton of baggage, I know. But at least I acknowledge mine.”
His mouth pulled tight as her arrow hit home. He swung away and walked to the edge of the terrace, rested his elbows on the railing as he looked out at the sea. “I always thought if you wanted something bad enough you made it happen. That we could resolve our differences because we loved each other that much.”
The lump in her throat grew so large it felt as if she was aching all over. “Sometimes,” she choked, “love isn’t enough.”
He turned around, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the setting sun. The dull look on his face made the rest of her shrivel away.
“A marriage needs trust to survive. And between the two of us I think we’ve proved we have none.”
And there it was, she thought miserably. Their marriage summed up in one glaring truth.
“It was never going to work.”
Her words sat flat and lifeless on the night air between them. Riccardo’s head snapped back, a flare of angry color slashing across his cheekbones. His steps as he closed the distance between them were jerky, full of a barely leashed rage that made her suck in a breath. When he stopped in front of her, his furious glare leveled on her face, her heart seemed to stop.
“We may have spoken a lot of truths tonight, Lilly, but do not, do not absolve yourself of the responsibility you carry for this marriage. You checked out. You left me. You chose to give up. And you will own that.”
She pulled in another breath, but it wasn’t enough, and desperately she dragged in another. There never seemed to be enough oxygen on the planet when she was with Riccardo because he sucked it out of her. Stripped her bare.
He stared at her for a long moment, waiting for her to respond, waiting for her to give him what he demanded of her, but she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth.
He spun away and stalked toward the French doors.
“Ric—”
“I need some space.”
He disappeared inside. Lilly watched him go, too numb to react. Where was he going? The sound of the front door slamming made her heart drop. He was leaving?
She ran to the front door and threw it open, but only the glaring darkness of the Caribbean night stared back at her. She would have heard the car if he’d taken it. He must have gone on foot.
She closed the door and fumbled with the deadbolt to lock it. Unsure of what to do next, she turned and leaned against it, pulling in deep, long breaths. Then she slid down to the floor and did the thing she hadn’t let herself do since the week she’d left Riccardo.
She sobbed her heart out.
Tears streamed down her face in a barrage that it seemed would never end. Her worst fear about her marriage had been both proven and unproven in one explosive conversation that had left her so raw and exposed she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to close herself back up again.
Riccardo had kissed Chelsea Tate with the intent of sleeping with her. And even though he hadn’t been able to do it, the fact that he’d kissed Chelsea—the thought of him kissing her—splintered Lilly’s heart into a million pieces.
How could he? The man who’d promised to love and protect her that day in the cathedral when they’d been married, whom she’d let down all her barriers for, had betrayed her in the worst way possible. Because, she thought numbly, wasn’t kissing the most intimate act of all?
Somewhere, someplace deep down inside her, she’d been hoping she was wrong. That Riccardo had been telling her the truth when he’d said nothing had happened between him and Chelsea and that her early naive belief that nothing could touch them was true.
But it wasn’t something she could hang