My Sister Popped The Bubble Of My Happy Marriage novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Ask Me Later

Leandro's POV

She asked me how I knew how Fiorella told her stories, and I told her.

"Because I stood behind Fiorella's chair at family dinners for two years and listened to her explain everyone away."

"Everyone believed her. Ugo never did."

Mirella sat with her hands flat on the table, and she did not look away from me.

"Say the rest," she said. "Rule two."

So I said it.

"Three weeks before he died, your grandfather sat me down in his study."

"He said you'd have to leave that house on your own feet, or you would never believe you could."

"He said I wasn't to carry you out, and I wasn't to warn you, and I wasn't to touch you."

"And if you wanted me, that was yours to say. I was never to ask."

She was quiet for a moment.

"And you obeyed."

"For two years."

"You could have broken it."

"I came close once."

I had never told anyone this.

"It was your second winter. The Cattaneo anniversary dinner. You came out to the car and sat in the back, and you cried so quietly I thought the engine was making the noise."

"At the townhouse you didn't go in. You sat on the back step in the cold, in that thin dress, until three in the morning."

"I stood across the street under a tree. I got as far as the curb."

"And?"

"And I thought of his hand on my shoulder in that study, and I went back to the car."

My voice did something I didn't want it to do.

"I've hated myself for that step every day since. I'd do it again, because I gave my word to a dead man, and I hate that most of all."

She got up from the table.

I thought she was going to tell me to leave, and I was ready.

She came around it and stood in front of me, close enough that I could smell the sweetness of her hair.

"You thought I would only want you because you saved me," she said.

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