Chapter 0002

Layla

I froze. Unable to move, unable to fully process the words. Unable to recognize the cold, unfeeling man towering above me. He wore my Vasco’s face and yet, he spoke as a stranger. “We should get a divorce.”

No, this couldn’t be my love. When Vasco smiled, he was the sun itself. But this man … It was like all the happiness in Vasco’s heart had vanished overnight, leaving him empty and cold. A shell of the man I’d once called husband.

Like he didn’t even recognize me.

“I don’t understand.” My words drifted through numb lips. Soft at first, but when they failed to crack this hardened new facade, anger surged through my chest. Hard and hot and sharp.

So my words came out the same—hard. Hot. Sharp. “Explain.”

Still, his face didn’t change. Seeing me shocked, saddened, hadn’t broken through the stranger’s visage, but it seemed my anger wouldn’t be strong enough to, either.

“We married too hastily.” The man who’d been my husband reclined against the mantle. His dark eyes stared back, emotionless as his voice. “I realized how … incompatible … we are.”

“Incompatible!” I could no more comprehend that word than any of the others he’d spoken. My hands found my hips, the stupid fake nails I’d put on for this wedding like claws in the lace of my dress. “We’ve never even argued before!”

No, from the start, we’d been a match made in heaven. After that first physical pull that had dragged us together beneath a rain-slicked sky, we’d discovered our bond reached so much deeper than the flesh.

Conversations that never so much as paused, let alone ended.

Laughter that could fill rooms.

Heartfelt confessions.

Passionate lovemaking, too, yes. But so much more than that. Our love had always been more than physical. So much more. Connection. It’d been connection, down to the very soul.

And yet …

“Divorce,” Vasco said in that same deep, toneless voice. “Is the rational choice for both of us.”

He said it like he was serious. Like he meant it.

“Rational?” My anger was quickly turning to panic—hysteria. I couldn’t crack through that mask, why couldn’t I crack through to the man I knew was underneath? Surely, this couldn’t be real—it was an excuse. Something else was going on here, and I needed to find out what it was. I needed to reach him—

Vasco stepped forward, halving the distance between himself and me. For one moment, I thought maybe he would reach for me. Touch me. Embrace me.

A flimsy stack of papers appeared in his hand. Extended in the narrow space between us. White and bold and there, like a peace offering in reverse. “Sign this, and the house is yours.”

I could only stare at those clean white pages. White, printed in black. White and black, like he seemed to find our situation—in love, and then not. White and black.

No shades of grey.

I shook my head. “No. I’m not signing anything.”

“Layla.” For the first time since I’d walked into the room, his voice almost softened. “Please. For your own sake. Just … sign it. We don’t need to bring lawyers in.”

Or maybe it was the sound of my name on his lips, softening me. God, how many times had those two little syllables melted me down to the core?

“I’m not signing anything, Vasco.” I wouldn’t let him hear my weakness. No, I’d built my life on being strong, and that wouldn’t stop now. “Until you tell me what the hell is going on. The truth. For once, the truth.”

“The truth.” Any softness lingering in his voice vanished in a trace. Maybe he did know me after all—knew me well enough to know that soft pleading wouldn't work. “You want the truth?”

“Always. The truth.”

No matter how hard it hurt, the truth was alway better than a lie. I’d believed that since I was a child, since the news of my parents’ death had forever rocked my world.

“Remember, you wanted this,” Vasco murmured, but I barely heard the words as the door to our bedroom opened behind him. A woman stepped through, and for a moment, my head cleared of thought.

Beautiful.

She was beautiful. Possibly the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, glowing in the pale afternoon sun. Her soft, olive skin, dark eyes, and glossy black hair spoke of clear Mediterranean heritage, but her beauty spoke for itself.

And she was standing in the doorway to our bedroom.

“Vasco …” The name died on my tongue before I could form a coherent thought. Because another one had taken root in my mind.

I recognized this woman. I’d seen her before—in the photograph I’d discovered in Vasco’s wallet. Him, a suit-clad cadre of handsome Italian men, and this breathtaking Italian beauty.

“Vasco.” My voice shook slightly, my earlier composure nowhere to be found. “Who is this?”

Who was this woman, in my bedroom, more beautiful than me, taller than me. Far, far more regal and queenly than even that woman I’d smiled at in the mirror not twenty minutes ago.

But it wasn’t Vasco who answered. He merely regarded me with that same cold stare as the woman stepped to his side.

“Aurora Falcone.” She didn’t bother to extend her hand in greeting. “Vasco’s childhood friend. And fiancée.”

The word echoed in my head like a shout through a hollow cave. Because that’s what I’d become—a hollow shell, empty of thought, reason, emotion.

A dream. This had to be a dream. Right? There could be no other explanation for my Vasco’s empty stare, for the breathtaking woman beside him, our opened bedroom door behind her—them.

Vasco’s fiancée.

A dream. No, a joke. It had to be. A cruel, sick joke, and I’d had enough of being the butt of it.

“Fiancée.” Finally, finally, I found my damn tongue. And when I tilted my gaze up to fix on hers, I couldn’t help but think how the delicate curl of her lip—the most dainty of sneers—made her brutally ugly. “How can Vasco have a fiancée when he’s married to me?”

“A pathetic country bumpkin like you?” The sneer turning her lip deepened, and her words spit like venom from between them. “As if you’d ever deserve someone like Vasco. And that’s why he’s chosen to come home to me.”

Come home. More words to echo to my big, empty skull. Home. Where was home for Vasco? Not New York, where we’d met. Not Alaska, where we’d run to.

But maybe we’d never run to here. Maybe it had always been about what we were running from.

Home.

I pried my gaze from Aurora to meet Vasco’s dark stare. I didn’t need words to ask the question; he knew me well enough to read the accusation in my stare. Say it’s not true, Vasco.

But his silence spoke so much louder than words ever could.

Truth.

His silence spoke truth. And in the wake of such cold betrayal, my heart shattered to shards. Like the flowers still cast over the peach tile, the pieces of my heart sprawled across the floor between our feet.

Truth.

So clear, now it was laid in front of me.

“I was just a toy, wasn’t I?” The words escaped my clenched teeth in a snarl. “A plaything. Something pretty to look at for a while.”

My fingers snagged the papers still extended in his large hands. Half crumpling them, but what did I care? What did it matter anymore, whether they were wrinkled or crinkled, as long as my signature was on them, where he wanted it.

“You never told me anything because you were always planning to return to your true match.” Vitriol spewed from my mouth, but I didn’t care.

The pulverized pieces of my heart—so willingly, so freely, given!—didn’t care. Not anymore. Not when he’d so cruelly, so coldly, taken my offering and smashed it to smithereens.

I tossed the papers down on the coffee table, slammed my knees onto the tile beside it. Didn’t even feel enough to know if they’d bruised. The pen nearly tore through the page as I signed it.

My signature looked like the cut of a knife—black on white—but it didn’t matter. I stood. Hands shaking, legs shaking, as I closed the space between us.

I pressed the pages to his chest, feeling the warmth and hardness of his body even though those cold, crumpled pages. With my free hand, I pointed towards the door.

That door still opened to our breathtaking backyard, where our wedding party still awaited us, silhouettes in the afternoon sun against the ragged backdrop of cruel, unforgiving mountains.

“Go.” My words didn’t shake, even as my knees did, as that pointed finger trembled in the air. “Go now. Take your fucking pet, and never come back.”

He had no parting words for me.

He strode towards that door without a backwards glance for me, the woman he’d wooed, married, impregnated, and just as easily, as swiftly, abandoned. His gorgeous new plaything clung to his arm like maybe she wasn’t capable of walking under her own volition.

Bile burned the back of my throat.

Vasco and his new wife—the one that was not me—walked through the door and into the wedding that was meant to be mine. In plain sight of everyone I knew. Everyone I loved. Everyone who’d ever meant something to me.

It was all I could do to keep breathing. Keep standing. Keep the shattered shards of my heart beating when all I wanted to do was lie down on the cold tile and let them stop.

Danielle reached me first. “Layla? What’s going on?”

“Layla?” Nikki jogged in behind her. “Are you all right?”

I ran shaking fingers through my hair, dislodging my braid, my flowers. My dress had rumpled when I’d knelt. Those fake fingernails had torn the fabric. I already looked a disheveled wreck, and all I’d done was stand here.

I was never meant to be a beautiful bride, a pretty plaything.

My hands clenched into fists at my sides. “The wedding is off.”

“What!” Nonna nudged Danielle and Nikki out of the way as she barreled into the room like a train come off the tracks. Always a force of nature, my Nonna.

But when I held up a hand—steady—she stopped. She was a force of nature, but I was, too. I’d learned, after all, from the best. “I want to be alone.”

I turned away from them. Left them at the door as I slipped soundlessly through the one Aurora had only moments before vacated.

Our bedroom.

A sprawling expanse of wide windows, soft white walls, more pale tile. A vast bed, cushioned with pillows and throw blankets. So much comfort and luxury—a room of love.

The room in which I’d shared so many memories with my Vasco—no. With Aurora’s Vasco. And now, the photos I’d pinned to the walls seemed to laugh at me. How could I sleep in this room, in this bed, with all those happy faces smiling down at me?

Vasco’s smile was a lie.

My fingers curled around the first frame, and I tore it from the wall. Hurled it to the floor so the glass shattered against the stupid impractical Mediterranean tile.

I should have known when he wanted to build a Mediterranean house in the middle of Alaska that he was dragging pieces of his stupid, secret past with him. I should have asked more questions. Pressed harder for information.

I slammed another picture against the floor.

Another.

It wasn’t until the fourth that the tears welled behind my eyes. And a scream tore free of my throat. Pain, so much pain, tearing my chest in two. Tearing my body. Diving down into my gut—

My scream deepened as the pain reached lower. Consuming me from the inside out—real pain. Physical pain.

Darkness crawled around the edges of my vision, and the last thing I saw was the floor hurtling towards me.