Page 82 of The Arrangement

That time, it was his head that jerked up. “What?”

“My life, I did love it. Loved Roman so much. And I love the life I’m just beginning to build with you.”

Anton felt frozen at her words, and when Viviana finally stepped close enough to pat his chest, all that pressure and pain he’d been fighting off ceased to exist. He could breathe. His heart continued to beat. When her fingers fisted in the blood-stained silk shirt he wore, she stepped to his side.

“I’m going to go to bed now.”

“Okay,” he murmured, not sure what else to say.

“Please be there for me to wake up to in the morning. You promised.”

Chapter Eighteen

“If he is, that means something’s about to happen, man. You need to keep a keen eye out and be careful. Get those bulls of hers on a closer detail for a little while. Rocco shouldn’t be left at home, ever. You know the drill.”

“Yeah, point being if he’s gone into hiding, though,” Anton said, tilting his head back to blink up at the ceiling. “And we don’t know that Sonny has, Ivan.”

“Hard to say,” his lawyer agreed, “given his wife didn’t follow along. I’d take my fucking wife.”

“Do you think he loved me?”

The phone nearly fell out of Anton’s hand as his boots dropped off the shelf he’d propped them up on. Slowly, he turned to face Viviana who stood looking almost resigned in his office doorway. The nervous action of her hands wringing had him swallowing back rising emotions.

“Ivan, I need to go. Call me back immediately if you find out more.”

“Everything okay?”

Anton didn’t answer the man. He dropped the phone with a loud clatter to its receiver. One week. It had been one week since the crapshoot his birthday had turned into, and Viviana hadn’t said a single thing about anything come the morning after.

Those early morning hours after he’d crawled into their bed, however, had been a different story. Over and over again she’d stirred, her tears falling and soft cries waking him up. Anton hadn’t known what else to do but let her cry it out and hold her all the while, and when she reached for him in a whole different way, he gave her that soft and slow, too.

Then, she’d finally fallen asleep. In the morning, she went on like nothing was amiss. When asked, everyone had the same report: Viviana wasn’t talking about it.

Anton didn’t know what to think.

Maybe he thought she wanted to move on, forget it. That didn’t mean he thought it was a healthy way to go, but it was up to Viviana to figure out what it was she wanted or needed from it all. So, just the fact that she was standing in the doorway asking a question like that was a huge leap forward.

“Who, baby?”

Viviana took a hesitant step into the room, pursing her lips. “Roman. I mean, would it be so terrible to believe that he did?”

“No, that wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. Of course he loved you, Vine. Why would you think that he didn’t?”

“Because I was the child of another man. Every time he looked at me, how could he not see someone else staring back? It wouldn’t be a crazy assumption on my part to believe he might have resented me in some ways. Sure, he and Mom put on a good act all those years we were growing up, but that had to have been all it was.”

“It wasn’t. They very much loved each other, it just took a while to get them both to a healthy place. I don’t know how that all came about; that’s their own story, I suppose. One Roman didn’t share with me when we sat down and talked in Barbados, but I think that might have had a lot to do with the fact that the man who slept with his wife was just feet away.”

The heavy sigh she released sounded shaky. “How could they even stand to be near one another? Roman was a jealous man who would have put you to shame, Anton. I don’t get it.”

“Nicoli knew he’d done wrong. He took another man’s wife to his bed, even if he hadn’t known she was married. When it came to Roman, he took a step back and let him be because what the hell else was he supposed to do, really,” Anton replied, laughing bleakly. “There was a lot of respect that went around when so much disrespect had already been slung out. It wouldn’t have worked between them otherwise. Both of them were dangerous, charismatic, and intelligent men. It couldn’t have been easy to just sit there like Nicoli did and swallow his pride, just like it couldn’t have been easy for Roman to sit across the table from him and not kill him. They fucking deserved medals.”

When she didn’t speak again, Anton drummed his fingers on the oak desk.

“I know he loved you. You, out of everyone in the whole situation, were the only innocent one. Didn’t ask to be born. Didn’t choose your parents. Are you going to fault him for never wanting you to feel like you do right now?”

The saddened look that widened her eyes and had her plump bottom lip drawing between her top teeth had Anton backtracking instantly. “Shit, that’s not what I meant, Vine.”

“Yeah, I think it was,” she whispered.