Page 25

I blinked because everyone who would visit us at such a late hour was currently in the room with me.

But Dario stood immediately from his leather chair, buttoned his blazer, and stalked from the room to answer the door, as if he knew who was there.

Indulging in my curiosity, I got to my feet to follow him and felt the rest of the party crowd into the hall behind me.

When I got within sight of the main hall, it was to see Dario opening the door for an absolutely exquisite redheaded woman.

I froze when he lightly cupped her elbow to bring her inside and then bent forward to warmly kiss her cheek.

“You look beautiful this evening, Aria,” he complimented her in a husky, intimate murmur I had to strain to hear.

She blushed, a pretty spill of pink down her high cheekbones. When she tucked her hair behind her ear, she revealed a diamond tennis bracelet so luxe, you could have seen the jewels from space.

“It’s the bracelet,” she explained bashfully. “It would bring out the beauty in anyone.”

“But especially you,” he retorted gently.

I didn’t know Dario could even speak that way.

Softly, tenderly.

As if he gave a fuck about someone.

My throat burned, and I thought it might have been because my heart was on fire.

“Who is this?” I asked Dario, the words coming out curt.

He didn’t even spare me a glance, accepting his coat from Bonnie, who had hustled forward to grab it from the closet for him. Aria stood there awkwardly while he donned the long black overcoat and then settled into his side when he took her arm.

“We’re going to listen to some jazz and have a drink or two,” he said over his shoulder in my general direction, already moving toward the door. “Do not wait up, principessa.”

A moment later, the door closed behind them.

“What just happened?” Katya murmured somewhere down the hall.

Someone, probably Lily, hushed her.

But Lily, her voice sage and weary, said, “I think, my darling, that was the passive-aggressive definition of touché.”

“But . . . why?” Katya asked and then grunted as Alessia elbowed her.

“Because of me,” Bryson muttered, closer to me than I’d known.

He turned me by the shoulder until I was facing him, my gaze still frozen and caught at the level of his chest.

The image of pretty, auburn-haired Aria under my husband’s arm potentially wearing a fortune in diamonds he had given her on her wrist was burned into my retinas.

When I had my twenty-first birthday three months ago, Dario had been absent all day and hadn’t even given me a card, let alone an expensive present.

Warm fingers gripped my chin and canted my head back, so I was forced to meet Bryson’s concerned gaze. “Fia, are you all right, love?”

I blinked, trying to gather my wits.

Because of course I should be okay.

My husband was such only on paper.

He was more of a stranger than a lover, more of a foe than a friend.