Page 86 of Bene

“Sorry about that,” Cara said.

Vanna shrugged. “It’s okay. I can find Bene.”

“He’s still busy.” Gian took a couple of steps into the hallway, turning his head a bit to stare at some of the portraits as he passed. “But I can keep her company until he finds his way back to her.”

“Perfect.”

Not wanting to intrude on Gian and Cara’s moment as the two met in the middle of the corridor, the man already leaning in for a kiss from his wife, Vanna turned around. Her gaze fell on another portrait, one she had looked over previously, but now seemed to take center stage.

Featuring Gian in a chair fit to be a throne, he dominated the painting. His fingers curved around the intricately carved wooden arms of the chair, and his left ankle rested on his right knee while his head turned slightly to stare off at something that one couldn’t see in the painting. His profile, showing off the strong line of his jaw, and the curve of smirking lips reminded her of the man’s sons … but especially Bene.

“Which one is your favorite in here, hmm?”

Vanna’s heart stopped.

She swore it did.

“Sorry,” Gian said, chuckling as he came to stand beside her. “Didn’t mean to startle you, Vanna.”

She didn’t bother to lie and say he hadn’t. “It’s okay … and I’m not sure.”

“On your favorite, you mean?”

“Well, that’s a lie. I like the one with your wife and sons.”

“Ah.” Gian turned a bit, eyeing the portrait three spaces down where it proudly rested for everyone to admire. “My favorite, too.”

“Really, not all the ones or any of the ones that you’re featured?”

Gian chuckled, his handsome features softening as he turned to meet her gaze. “Not at all … see, I love my wife more than anything in the world. She’s an angel and I am only a well-dressed sinner standing next to her. And since this,” he said, waving at the hall and his home, “was the world she gave me, it only seems appropriate that I make sure everything in it revolves around her. I made a lot of mistakes in my life, but Cara wasn’t one of them.”

Truth.

That’s what stared back at her.

Guilt.

It’s what killed her.

Vanna saw a man who loved his family.

She heard another man in her mind.

A vendetta.

Her promise.

The war raged on.

A silent battle.

Vanna was losing.

Or was that her heart?

She didn’t know anymore.

Bene figured Vanna wouldn’t be in the kitchen of the mansion, but since he was passing it on his way back to the dining room and grand entrance his parents were using for the dinner party, he decided to check just in case. When he’d left her earlier to help Christopher move something upstairs from one room to the other, because their mother refused to allow Gian to lift a finger, Marcus had been giving her a tour of the downstairs.