A Scandal in the Headlines(56)

Something in her changed then. She felt it shift. Elena didn’t care that his fingers around her arm hurt. She didn’t care that the look on his face would have frightened her once.

She didn’t have to be afraid of him any longer. She didn’t have to run. Alessandro had given her that much. As she looked up at Niccolo now, Elena finally accepted that even if Niccolo had been who he’d pretended to be, it still would have been over between them.

It had been over the moment she’d met Alessandro.

Even if she’d never seen him again after that night in Rome, she would have known the truth: that she’d loved a stranger for the duration of a dance far more than she’d loved her fiancé. It would have ended her engagement one way or another. Maybe, she thought then, she’d actually been lucky that dance had forced Niccolo to reveal himself. It would have been much, much harder to leave the man she’d thought he was.

“But then,” Niccolo was saying, “he doesn’t care about you, does he? He wants the land. Do you think he would trouble himself to marry you otherwise?”

He shook her, and that hurt, too, but she didn’t try to pull away. She didn’t defend Alessandro’s motives or worry that she didn’t know what they were. She didn’t cry or protest. She stared at him, memorizing this, so she would never forget what it felt like the moment she’d not only stopped being afraid of Niccolo Falco, but stopped feeling guilty about how this had all happened in the first place.

Inevitable, something whispered inside of her. This was all inevitable.

“I never would have married you,” she said then, her voice smooth and strong. “Alessandro only expedited things. You would have shown your true face sooner or later. And I would have left you the moment I saw it.”

“Look at where you are,” Niccolo ground out, his fingers digging into her arm. “This tiny town, all alone. Have you really convinced yourself that a man like Alessandro Corretti, who invited half of Europe to his last wedding, cares about a nobody like you?” He laughed. “Wake up, Elena. The only difference between Alessandro Corretti and me is that he has enough money to be a better liar.”

Elena would have to think about that, she knew. She would have to investigate the damage he’d caused with that hard, low blow. But not now. Not here.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with that land,” she said, ignoring the rest of it. She let him see how little she feared him, let him see she wasn’t shaking or cowering. “It will never be yours. You lost it the moment you thought you could hit me.”

His face flushed even redder, even angrier than before. He yanked her closer to him, shoving his face into hers, trying to intimidate her with his size and strength. He was a petty man, a vicious one. But she still wasn’t afraid.

“I’m not scared of you anymore, Niccolo,” she said very distinctly, tilting her head back to look him full in the face. Not hiding. Not running. Not afraid. “And that means you need to let go of my arm. Now.”

Whatever he saw in her face then made him drop her arm as if she’d turned into a demon right there in front of him. And Elena smiled, a real and genuine smile, because she was free of him.

After all this time, she was finally free of him.

“Step away from my wife, Falco.”

Alessandro’s icily furious voice cracked like a whip, startling Elena. Better, it made Niccolo move back. Alessandro was beside her then, his hand stroking down her back, as if he was reassuring himself that she still stood in one piece.

Or, the cynical part of her whispered, marking his territory.

“Give us a minute.”

It took Elena a moment to realize that Alessandro was speaking to her as he stared at Niccolo, murder in his dark green gaze. She frowned up at him.

But the Alessandro she knew was gone. There was nothing but darkness and vengeance on his fierce face. The promise of violence, of blood. Like a black hole where the man she loved should have been. It made every hair on the back of her neck prickle in warning. It made her pulse pick up speed.

It made her want to cry, as if they’d lost something.

“Alessandro, please,” she said softly. “He’s not worth it.”

Niccolo sneered. Alessandro only seemed to grow bigger, taller. Darker. More terrifying. And she’d never seen his face so cold, those dark green eyes so remote.

“Alessandro,” she said again.

But he still didn’t look at her.