Her sister got up and pulled her in for a tight hug.

“He does. Give him some time. I don’t think he ever had anyone believe in him the way you do. And I think it’s the opposite. I truly believe he doesn’t think he’s worthy of you.”

Juliettta hugged her back. “Thanks. I have a meeting in a minute. Meet you at Mama’s tonight?”

“yes.” Carina got her coat. “Trust your gut, and do what you think is right.”

After her sister left, Julietta pulled herself together and headed toward the conference room. She needed to be calm. Cool. Allow him to work it out on his own and be patient. She clicked off her earpiece, grabbed her files, and took her place at the table. The department heads trickled in, laughing and joking. She fell into her role without hesitation, automatically bringing business back to being the main focus, challenging her directors on various questions, pushing for more efficiency, better production, bigger sales, always more.

Her fingers gripped her pen, eyes unfocused on the screen. The PowerPoint slides flashed with fury in an endless rhythm.

She needed to talk to her husband.

The little voice inside whispered, growing louder as the meeting droned on. Julietta stood in front of her team and knew in that moment nothing else mattered except pre-serving the precious gift she had found in a simple business merger.

Love.

The pen rolled from her fingers. She pulled off her headset and threw it on the table. Her employees stared at her, startled at her sudden jerky motions. “I have to go.”

Her assistant, elena, raised her voice. “We’ll wait if you need to take a call. Marcus can pass out the new marketing statistics.”

She shook her head hard. “No. I need to leave. I have to go talk to someone. Meeting dismissed.”

She fled the building without a glance back.

…

The door slid open soundlessly and she entered the office.

He stood with his back toward her. Dressed in a custom designed black suit, the cut of his pants and tight jacket showed off the hard lines of his body. His hair was loose, and blond waves hit the tops of his shoulders. His stillness reminded her of someone separate from civilization, as if he drew in the world’s energy and locked it up inside himself. Her heart lurched in pain and a wanting that would never go away.

“you need to talk to me. Tell me. I deserve that.”

He turned. Those piercing tiger eyes met her gaze and shredded past the surface to her soul. Slowly, he inclined his head. “of course. you’re right. I apologize for avoiding you.

I just don’t think this is working out.”

She swallowed past the fear and remained still. “Care to explain?”

He spoke as if he wasn’t in the room with her. A wall surrounded him, reminding her of a pod who spoke human and acted human but owned no soul. “I told you from the beginning I wasn’t good at this. I think spending so much time together, and being married, blurred the lines. I don’t think you’re in love with me, Julietta. If we take a step back and concentrate on why we did this in the first place, we can go back to the way things were. I can’t risk Purity because of emotions that aren’t even real.”

Her temper snapped. She closed the distance, moved past the wall, and made bodily contact. He jerked as she grabbed his biceps and dug her fingernails into his jacket.

“Don’t you dare patronize me about my own emotions,”

she hissed. “Do you think I throw words like that around? I love you. It’s not going away, and it’s not neat and tidy. Now, cut the bullshit and tell me what happened. Did something from the past come up?” She paused. “or someone?”

The surprised gleam in his eye confirmed her suspicions.

“exactly what I thought. If it was that bastard who put those marks on you, I’ll kill him myself. What happened? Did he or she dredge up the past? remind you of all the reasons you don’t deserve to be happy?”

She struck a nerve. rage and grief battled for domi-nance, and he grabbed her arms, shaking her slightly. “Why are you doing this? I’m not good for you, never was. Don’t ruin this between us. Let’s step back, get our footing, and try to focus on why we did this in the first place. To settle a debt. To make your mama happy. To solidify La Dolce Famiglia.”

“Fuck that,” she growled. He was in front of her but hovered on the edge of nothingness. Julietta was afraid if she let him slip over, she’d never get him back. “I don’t care about work or La Dolce Famiglia or anything I once believed in. right now, all I want is you. Now tell me the truth.”

“My foster father contacted me. From prison.”

The words were ripped out of his mouth in a snarl. He let go of her and stepped back, as if he couldn’t stand the thought of touching her. He shook his head and rubbed his forehead. “Tell me,” she said softly. “I deserve to know, don’t you think?”

“The bastard’s up for parole, and he wants me to write a recommendation on his behalf. If I don’t, he said he’d leak out to the press what happened, who I once was.”

The air pulsed with electricity as if a tornado hovered, ready to strike. In the quiet of the center of the storm, she took a deep breath. “And who were you?”

“I lost my parents when I was nine. Went into the sys-tem. Got picked up by him and his alcoholic wife. They liked to take the older ones since no one wanted them. Always had a few kids going in and out, but I became his favorite.

He liked to beat the pride out of me, as he used to say. I learned early not to tell, or the others got hurt. It’s funny when you hear stories like that: The first reaction from people is always the same. Just tell the social worker. But a lot of them aren’t like in the movies, where they want to help.

Many of them just need to get their placements done and turn a blind eye to a bruise now and then.

“Anyway, there was a little boy named Danny. Looked up to me. As I grew older, Dickhead liked to use the younger ones as bait. you know, if I didn’t do what he asked, he’d beat the shit out of them instead of me. I could take being beaten, but they couldn’t. I counted the days till I was eighteen and legally free. By that time, I’d promised Danny I’d take him away. But I needed to get myself fixed up with a job and a place first. I told him to wait for me.”

An agony of grief poured through her, but she kept her tone even. “Is that when you found Jerry?”

“No. There’s no job for an eighteen-year-old with no di-ploma and no money. The shelters were almost worse than the foster home. Almost. I started to learn the rules of the street. Found places to sleep, people to steal from, restaurants to haunt. I learned the gangs who ruled and how to survive. But Danny was getting restless, and he didn’t want to wait any longer. I stopped checking in with him as much, and I think he thought I’d abandoned him.”

A shattering silence fell over the room. “What happened?”

“He came looking for me. Packed his shit and snuck out at night. But he didn’t know where to find me. Gossip came from the street that there was a young boy who tried stealing food from a rival gang. They beat him to a pulp. He didn’t survive. I found out it was Danny.”

Julietta closed her eyes, fighting the nausea that ripped at her stomach. “Did your foster father get blamed?”

“Nah. He told the worker Danny ran away and that I sicced the gang on him. They found me and brought me in for questioning. I saw it in their faces, the knowledge that I’d killed him by not keeping my word. I promised I’d get him out, keep him safe. Instead, I killed him.”

The woman who loved him wanted to cry and rage and comfort. But he was past that and spiraling down a pit of blame he’d been nurturing since his foster father planted the idea in his head. She snapped her voice like a whiplash.

“And how is that your fault, Sawyer? Did you beat him up?

Did you deliver him to the gang who killed him?”

“No. But if I had gotten him a message beforehand, he would’ve waited.”

“Bullshit. His father was beating him daily. He would’ve tried to run away before he did, and I don’t think any message of yours would have stopped him. He’d had enough, and he ran into the wrong crowd, and he got killed. But you didn’t kill him.” He stared as if surprised she was still there.

“How did you get your scar?”

He rubbed his cheek. A small smile touched his lips. “I went after the gang. It was me against six, but I managed to put three in the hospital. They knifed me. It never healed right.” The energy seeped out of him, bone by bone, and all she glimpsed was a man who had surrendered his hope.

“The next two years were a blur until I finally found my way to Jerry. There was a little girl, Molly, who I also tried to help. She ended up hooking on the streets rather than live with him. ended up dead of an overdose before I could get to her. you know the rest.”

“And your foster father? How did he finally go to jail?”

“I finally went after him. All those years, he’d poisoned me to believe no one would think I told the truth. I was worried about the others. After Danny and Molly, nothing mattered. I just knew I couldn’t let him hurt any more kids.

one social worker listened to me. I exposed the truth and testified in court. of course, it was too late for the ones he had already ruined, but at least they locked him up for a long time.”

Julietta gathered all her strength and walked over. Tilted her head to gaze up at him. His beautiful face looked down at her in puzzlement, not understanding why she wasn’t leaving him or cringing in disgust. She didn’t know if he’d ever heal his wounded soul, but she refused to walk until she knew this man couldn’t give her the love he held tightly under wraps in the mistaken impression he’d hurt someone he cared about.