My Fiancé Confessed to Cheating novel · Chapter 2 of 32
Chapter 2: Red Heels
Soaked and filmed by strangers, with her card canceled, Rosaria walks the coastal road home and finds Saverio with Graziella against her own window, and he asks if she would have forgiven Gaetano.
I landed on my hands and knees in the puddle.
It had rained on Palermo for four days straight.
The water was brown and cold, and it went straight through the silk.
I tried to stand.
My legs folded under me.
Saverio didn't get out of the car.
He looked down at me through the open door.
"Do you see now, Rosaria? Without me you can't even get off the ground. So how exactly do you plan to live if you leave?"
He pulled the door shut.
The car swung back onto the road and hit the next puddle on purpose.
A wave of muddy water came over my head.
I knelt there until the taillights were gone.
Then I made myself get up.
My veil had come loose and was floating behind me.
I left it.
A bus went by slowly.
Faces pressed to the windows.
Two teenage girls on scooters stopped across the road and held up their phones.
"Is that a bride?"
"Film it. Film it."
A man walking his dog stared, then crossed to the other side.
I stood at the edge of the road and raised my arm for a taxi.
The third one stopped.
The driver looked at my dress, at the mud dripping off my hem, at my bare arms.
"Fare up front," he said. "And two hundred euros for the seats. Cash or card."
I had nothing but the little satin bag on my wrist.
Inside was the card Saverio had given me a year ago, the one linked to his account.
I handed it through the window.
The driver tapped it on his machine.
It beeped twice.
"Declined."
"Try again."
He tried again.
"It says canceled, signora."
Saverio had done it in the car.
Between the bakery and the shoulder of the road, he'd found time to cancel my card.
The taxi pulled away.
Then the rain started again.
Within a minute I was soaked to the skin.
Within ten, my shoes had rubbed my heels open, and I took them off and carried them.
Then I dropped them in a ditch.
The coast road to Mondello runs past the beach clubs and the old fishing huts.
I had driven it a thousand times in Saverio's car.
I had never walked it.
The gravel at the edge cut into my feet with every step.
Cars hissed past me in the rain.
Nobody stopped.
By the time I reached the white villa, I couldn't feel my toes.
The gate code still worked.
I pressed my thumb to the front door scanner.
It took three tries because my hands were so cold.
The lock clicked open.
The first thing I saw was a pair of red heels.
They sat on the mat beside the black shoes Saverio had worn that morning.
Graziella only wore red heels.
She had worn them to my first wedding.
She had worn them at my bedroom window three years ago.
A black lace bra lay across the hall tiles.
Then a pair of underwear.
Then an off-the-shoulder top I had helped her pick out last Christmas.
I followed them into the living room.
And I stopped.
Saverio had Graziella pressed against the big window over the sea.
His mouth was on hers.
His wedding jacket was on the floor.
Three years ago I had stood in a doorway exactly like this.
I had watched Gaetano with exactly this woman.
My stomach turned over.
A sound came out of me that I didn't recognize.
Then my knees went, and I was on the floor.
Saverio looked over his shoulder.
There was no guilt in his face.
No panic at being caught.
Only irritation.
"Don't act like it's the first time you've seen a man cheat," he said. "You've seen this exact thing before."
Graziella pulled the curtain across herself.
She wasn't ashamed.
She was smiling.
"Rosaria, I have to give your man credit," she said. "Saverio's better than Gaetano. At least he had the decency to tell you first."
They were supposed to go to a hotel.
She'd said so in the car.
He had brought her here instead.
To our house.
To the room where he used to rub my feet while I cried.
Saverio laughed at her.
"You really do know how to make a man happy. Better than she ever did."
He kissed Graziella on the cheek.
Then he picked up his shirt and walked toward me.
He crouched down.
He reached out, like he was going to touch my face.
I smelled her perfume on his fingers.
I doubled over and threw up on the white tiles between us.
Saverio stood up fast.
His face went dark.
He looked at the mess, then at me.
"My cheating makes you sick?"
His voice was very quiet.
"What if it were Gaetano? Would you have forgiven him?"
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