“That was different,” Hoka said, with a flatness that warned against further commentary. “I had no choice.”
Matteo laughed. “That is the lie you tell yourself so you can continue believing you are a good man with principles.”
My father raised an eyebrow over the rim of his glass. “Interesting. I notice you are not including yourself in that category.”
“Of course not,” Matteo said easily. “I’m not a good man. I am, however, an honest one. I love my wife to insanity. I would bleed anyone who tried to hurt her, and I would eviscerate myself to keep her happy, but she knows perfectly well there is no leaving me. Ever.”
The room went quiet after that. Matteo hadn’t shocked anyone, but with him there was always something worse in hearing a man tell the truth too plainly.
I looked down at the drink in my hand, then finished it in one swallow.
Emily had been in danger again. Matteo stepped in where I should have. Hoka thought I had failed her. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the one thing that should have brought me relief, the fact that she had been strong and cold enough to hand Adam over without guilt, only made me want her more and hate myself for leaving her alone even harder.
“Well,” Matteo said at last, as if we had all just finished discussing weather patterns instead of dismantling my life, “if it helps, she also told me very clearly that she was not Adam’s anything, and not Pietro Benetti’s girl either. She is Emily Hart.”
That made me look up.
My father’s expression changed by the smallest degree. Hoka said nothing at all. Matteo, of course, continued to look delighted.
And that one detail, more than the rest of it, lodged itself under my ribs and twisted.
Not Pietro Benetti’s girl.
Emily Hart.
Of course she said that. Of course that would be the line she drew. And of course some part of me, even aching and furious and half drunk on grief, admired her for it.
I wanted a woman strong enough to stand beside me.
It turned out I had found one strong enough to stand without me too.
“I did what was best for her.”
“Okay,” my father replied.
“I did,” I insisted. “You said it yourself. Bringing her into our world was a heavy thing to do.”
“I did,” my father said, and the evenness of his tone scraped across my nerves so hard it almost made me laugh. He sounded like a man pacifying a child too stubborn to notice he was losing an argument with his own reflection.
He is though, isn’t he? That is exactly what you are.
“Say what you want to say,” I muttered.
My father looked at me for a moment, then set his glass down. “I’m not here to advise you anymore, Pietro. I told you before there are some realizations no one can hand you. You have to arrive at them yourself. Otherwise you spend your whole life mistaking inherited wisdom for conviction.”
I said nothing.
Hoka, irritatingly silent for longer than usual, finally leaned back in his chair and crossed one ankle over his knee. “There is a difference,” he said, “between protecting a woman and deciding her life for her because you are afraid of what loving her will cost you. One is strength. The other is fear wearing principle as a disguise.”
That landed too cleanly.
I gritted my teeth and looked away.
Matteo, naturally, chose that moment to sigh with theatrical disappointment. “God, you are all so exhausting when you try to be philosophers. The answer is simple. You love the woman, the woman loves you, she gets kidnapped, you kill half a warehouse, then she looks good in an elf costume and hands a man over to me without blinking. This is not complicated. The two of you are clearly deranged in highly compatible ways.”
Elena, who just appeared with a plate of hors d'oeuvre, let out a long-suffering breath. “Darling. We discussed this.”
“What?” Matteo said. “I’m being helpful.”