Chapter 74 Beautiful lies

Chapter 74 Beautiful lies
Alessandro

The silence is worse than any accusation. I lie in our bed, staring at the ceiling, the empty space beside me a physical ache. Every fiber of my being screams to go to her, to force the confrontation, to make her look at me so I can beg for understanding. The image of her in that blue light, so utterly shattered, pins me to the mattress. Cowardice, cold and familiar, holds me down.

I hear the soft click of her studio door opening. Her footsteps are silent on the rug, then pause outside our bedroom. I close my eyes, feigning sleep, my body tensed for a blow that doesn’t come. The door doesn’t open. After a lifetime of stillness, her footsteps retreat down the hall, toward the east wing’s guest suite.

She left our room.

The finality of it steals the air from my lungs. This is not a storm; it is a glacier moving through the house, through us, leaving a permanent, frozen silence in its wake. I count the minutes, then the hours, until the first gray light of dawn bleeds around the curtains. I have not slept. I have simply endured.

My phone lights up with a text at six. Danilo.

All cleaned up here. You two get some rest.
The mundane kindness is a knife twist.He has no idea the foundation has crumbled.

I rise, my body moving on autopilot through the rituals of dressing. A cold shower does nothing to shock me alert; I am already hyper-aware, every sense tuned to the emptiness of the villa. I choose a suit, the armor of the day, and go to find my wife.

She is in the morning room, seated at the small table by the window. She looks like a painting—posed, beautiful, utterly remote. She’s dressed in a simple cream sweater and trousers, her hair pulled back. The sapphire is absent from her finger. The absence is a shout.

A pot of tea steeps between us, untouched. She does not look at me as I enter.

“Bianca.” My voice is rough with disuse.

She pours tea into a cup, her movements precise. “The party was lovely,” she says, her tone flat, conversational. “Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time.”

It is the most terrifying thing she has ever said.

“Tesoro, we need to talk about what you saw.”

She finally lifts her gaze. Her eyes are not red from crying; they are clear, hollow, and deeper than I’ve ever seen. The vibrant woman from last night has been excavated, leaving a serene, empty shell. “Do we?” she asks.

“It seemed rather self-explanatory.”

“It wasn’t what it looked like.”

A ghost of a smile touched her lips, devoid of any warmth. “It looked like you kissing the woman you were engaged to before me. In your study. What part of that have I misinterpreted, Alessandro?”

The use of my full name, not Alesso, not amore, is a deliberate severing.

“She came to say goodbye. It was a moment of weakness, of pity. It was over before it began.”

“When was it?” she asks, still in that frighteningly calm voice.

“What?”

“The date. When did this… moment of pity… occur?”

I know the answer will damn me. I tell her anyway. “Two weeks before we flew to Cape Town.”

She nods slowly, as if a puzzle piece has clicked into a terrible picture. “I see. So when you came to me in South Africa… when you told me you were free, that your past was resolved… you were fresh from her lips.”

“It was a ending, Bianca.”

“It was a betrayal,” she corrects softly. “A lie of omission. You let me build a life on contaminated ground.” She looks down at her bare left hand, flexing her fingers. “You watched me fall in love with you, knowing this secret was buried between us. You asked me to marry you. You put your child inside me.” Her voice wavers, just once, on the last word, before solidifying into ice. “All while letting me believe I was your first choice, not a… consolation prize you moved to after your true choice left.”

“No.” The denial is ripped from me. I fall to my knees beside her chair, my hands gripping the arms, forcing her to look at me.

“You are the only choice. Jennifer was my past. You are my future. My life. My soul.”

For a second, something flickers in the hollows of her eyes pain, a terrible yearning. Then it’s gone, shuttered away. She gently, firmly, removes my hands from the chair. “You don’t get to say that to me,” she whispers. “Not anymore. The truth was on that video. Not in your pretty words.”

She stood, looking down at me where I knelt, broken at her feet. “I need to be away from here.”

Panic, black and consuming, rises in my throat. “No. Bianca, please. We can fix this.”

“There is no ‘we’ right now,”
She paused, her back to me. “Don’t follow me, fot the sake of what little might be left, just… don’t.”

she walked out, leaving me kneeling in the ruins of the perfect life I built on a lie.