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Chapter 33

Author: Blaze Nukko
last update Last Updated: 2024-10-29 19:42:56

"I believe Nina said so," he returned evenly.

"But you don’t?" She was staring up at the face of a breathtakingly beautiful creature who could have come straight out of a Titian painting.

"Your hair is darker, and your eyes are grey, not blue."

But the shape of her mouth, the small pointed chin, and the hourglass shape of her slender figure inside a gentian-blue gown that could only have been fashioned by the finest haute couture looked like Charley.

"How old is she here?" she asked with a reverent murmur.

"Forty-nine," he replied, dragging another gasp from Charley’s shocked lips because she looked barely eighteen. "My grandfather commissioned the painting as a gift for her fiftieth birthday." He claimed that her beauty was the only thing about her that kept them together. She claimed they stayed together because she allowed it, despite the countless affairs he enjoyed during their long marriage.

"She loved him, you mean."

"I like to think so, though I don’t believe he deserved such
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    Ten minutes to get ready to leave was nothing compared to the nine long hours it took to fly back to Milan. Dami wasn’t talking. He’d withdrawn behind a wall of icy courtesy, and Charley couldn’t blame him. His pride had been hit, as had his integrity. Charley didn’t think he was ever going to forgive any of them for it.And the only slither of comfort she could glean from it all was that Charles’s arrest had not leaked out into the public arena. Dami spent most of the flight on the telephone, working to ensure that it remained that way.They arrived at Linate Airport early in the morning to dark clouds and heavy rain. A limousine with blackened windows picked them up and transported them to Milan.Dami remained on the phone throughout that journey too, the monotone flow of his voice never tiring, though Charley had switched it off hours ago.Half an hour later, they were in his Milan apartment. Dami was checking his mail. Charley moved off, looking around her, aware that he was watch

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