I Won't Bridge an Impossible Gap novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: I'm Asking

I did not sleep, and at midnight I stopped pretending to.

The photograph glowed on my phone, and I turned the screen face down on the sheets.

I put on a robe, and I unlocked my door with the key that lay on my side.

The east wing was dark.

A line of yellow light ran under the study door at the end of the hall.

I knocked once.

"Come in."

Alessio sat behind his father's big desk with his sleeves rolled and a glass of untouched whisky at his elbow.

Papers lay in rows, with the docks map spread under them.

He stood up so fast the chair rolled back.

"Nina. Is something wrong?"

"Yes."

I shut the door behind me.

"I've been thinking about the dinner, five years ago. Our engagement. Do you remember it?"

"Every minute."

"Ilaria stood up at the table and told your uncle and your captains that I was a gold digger from the Quartieri. In front of me."

"I remember."

"And you told me to let it go. Me. Not her."

He closed his eyes.

"Yes."

"For five years I thought, he's tired. He's busy. He'll fix it. And every Christmas, every funeral, every christening, I stood in that house and heard what she said about me, and I let it go, because you asked me to."

"I know."

"No," I said. "You don't. You think you do."

I crossed the room until I was one step from his desk.

"Do you know what I believed, Alessio? I believed that part of you agreed with her."

"God. Nina, no."

"I believed you were ashamed of me, and that the rings made of wood were the only joke you'd let me tell."

He came around the desk.

He stopped an arm's length from me, and he did not reach for me.

"I never agreed with her for one second," he said. "I said it to you because I knew you would let it go."

I stared.

"Ilaria never would. She'd have fought me for a year. You always forgave. I used that. I am the man who used the best thing about you so that I would not have to fight a girl I grew up with."

His voice cracked on the last word.

"That's the truth. It isn't pretty, and it isn't a defence."

I realized I was crying.

It did not feel like losing.

It felt like a stone coming out of a wall.

"And you?" I said. "What did you think when I left?"

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