He could see the heedless, carefree way he’d walked into the apartment, throwing his keys on the same table he always did, then heading toward the bedroom to find the lovely wife he’d long since convinced himself was his perfect partner—if nothing more. Never anything more emotionally charged than that.
Because their marriage had been so analytical, so cool and careful, in the light of day. They spoke of their union as if it was a practical business arrangement they’d undertaken for the sake of their common goals with no emotional component whatsoever—and then they tore each other to shuddering pieces in bed every chance they got, again and again and again.
And she was the first person he wanted to find when he had news to share, good or bad. He couldn’t even remember how she’d replaced Dante in that role, only that she had. It was as much because he and Dante had stopped thinking and acting as a single unit in those days—the erosion of trust between them, he thought now, that had followed that incident with the girlfriend they hadn’t known they’d had in common when they’d been eighteen—as it was because of anything Anais had done herself.
Would he have understood what all of that meant in his own time, if she hadn’t played him the way she had? He’d already thought it was astonishing how the two of them, raised in such different yet similarly unpleasant circumstances by hideously selfish parents, had stumbled upon each other the way they had. Would he have eventually comprehended what should have been obvious to him from the start—that their marriage had never been cold in any way at all, and they’d only been pretending otherwise? He’d never know.
Dario could still remember the flush on her cheeks, the wild look in her eyes, when he’d found her standing there in the little hall outside their bedroom with one hand braced against the wall—as if she’d run to stand there, to face him. That was what he’d thought in that last moment before his whole life had imploded.
She’d stared at him, her face pale and her eyes blazing, neither of which had made sense to him. Had he moved closer to her then? He could never remember. Because that was when Dante had stepped out of the bedroom behind her, one of Dario’s shirts wide open on his chest and a look Dario couldn’t read at all on his face.
And Dario couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. He’d been eating and breathing the company then, juggling meetings all day and preparing for them all night. He’d barely seen his wife at all. He’d certainly not seen enough of Dante while he’d been shoving his whole face to the grindstone night after night. He’d already been feeling shut out of his own life, a stranger in the two most important relationships in his life. It had been a dark time for him already, and he’d even been worried about how much the only two people in the world he really cared about seemed to hate each other...
But they didn’t hate each other, he’d understood then with sickening clarity. Like a kick to the gut. Clearly, that had never been what was happening between the two of them.
And that was when he’d understood exactly what Anais was to him, what she’d meant to him that whole time. Why he’d moved so quickly with this woman from the start. Why it had seemed something like destined, though he’d never have used that word.
Right then and there, in the hallway with his half-dressed twin, he’d understood his own foolish heart much too late.
Here, six years later in a completely different part of the city and the two of them much different people than they’d been back then, he jolted out of his ugly memories to find Anais still standing before him. Still watching him with that same arrested and fearful look on her face.
He still didn’t know what it meant, what any of this meant—only that he was clearly hurting her. Whatever she’d done six years ago, whatever karmic reward he believed she deserved, he was the one doing the hurting now.
And he couldn’t lie to himself any longer and tell himself he didn’t care about that. But he also couldn’t seem to stop himself.
“The only thing you could possibly do for me requires time travel,” he told her, and he didn’t know where that came from or why he sounded like that, gritty and nothing like calm or cool. But maybe he’d never been fooling anyone with that, anyway. “And for you to be a completely different person than who you turned out to be.”
He realized he was moving as if to touch her again and he jerked himself back. That way led nowhere good, especially in a conference room surrounded by glass walls that his entire company could see through right now.
“Answer me one question,” she said, her voice low and strained, though all he could see on her face was the stubborn jut of her jaw and that same glitter in her eyes. “You’ve made a lot of decisions based on my betrayal. The way you left then. The things you’ve said. The way you made sure I could never contact you and the way you ended your relationship with your brother. What if you’re wrong?”
He laughed at that. “About you?”
“About all of it. About me. About your brother. About what you saw that day. Think about all the things you’ve done, Dare. Up to and including the kidnap of your own child, transporting him across state lines and an ocean, for no other purpose than to get back at me.”
Her hands had curled into tight fists by the time she finished speaking, and she was trembling slightly, very slightly, as if the force of her words was tearing her open where she stood.
And Dario hated this. He hated all of this. He was afraid that what he hated most was that there was no way back. There was no pretending she hadn’t cheated on him, or ignoring who she’d cheated with, and there was no making believe there wasn’t a five-year-old boy in the mix now. There was no road back to what he wanted—what he still wanted, damn her, despite everything—and no way to admit he wanted it.
She was as lost to him as if he’d never met her. More, perhaps.
And what roared in him then was like a hurricane, mighty and vicious.
“That would make me a monster,” he told her softly, hardly able to hear his own voice above the din inside him. “Is that what you want to hear? A petty, vicious man, much like the father you claimed to loathe before you treated your own marriage the same way he treated his. But you see, I don’t spend any time worrying about such things.”
“Because you’re so certain you’re right?” Her voice cut through the noise inside of him, that endless howl of loss. “There can be no doubt once you’ve made up your mind? How delightful it must be, to be so perfect and correct at all times. You must find all the rest of us mere mortals a great trial—”
“I told you before it wasn’t the first time,” Dario bit out, cutting her off. “Did you think you were special, Anais? Did he tell you that you were? Guess what? He lied. You weren’t the first woman he sampled without my knowledge while she was meant to be mine.”
He could feel the mirthless smile on his own mouth then. He could feel that hard look in his eyes, because it was ripping him apart, too. He could see the way she flinched at the sight. And he didn’t tell her the rest of it—that Dante hadn’t known that Lucy was playing them against each other. That they’d both gotten rid of her and supposedly moved on. That he’d had that festering distrust of his brother ever since.
Dario told himself none of that mattered. “But you were the last.”
* * *
It was a war, Anais told herself, and that meant she used what weapons were available to her.
No