He Canceled Our Wedding Ninety-Nine Times, So I Joined His Enemy novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Wrong Ointment

I did not go to the Ruggieri house.

I went to the apartment we kept in the city, the one he used when he stayed in town, because my passport was in the desk there.

Massimo was already inside.

He tossed a half-empty first-aid kit onto the table and spoke without looking at me.

"Take care of your back."

I did not touch it.

Inside the kit, on top of the gauze, lay a tube of burn ointment.

Three days ago Paola had posted a picture of Massimo dabbing that exact tube onto a scrape on her knee.

I was deathly allergic to it.

Five years ago, the week he took over, rivals had stabbed me in a hallway while I stood in front of him, and the house doctor treated the wound with that ointment.

My throat closed, and it took a full day in the hospital before I woke.

Tullio told me later that Massimo stood outside the ward the whole time, chain-smoking, with hands so unsteady he could not work the lighter.

The next morning he had every tube of it thrown out of every family property.

He announced to the room that anyone who brought it near me again would be gone.

Now he had put it in my hands.

I picked up the whole kit and dropped it in the trash.

"You can be angry," Massimo said, sighing. "You can't ignore a wound."

I said nothing.

His phone rang.

He looked at the screen, and his face went easy.

"Baby, are you feeling better? Don't be scared. I pulled the security footage. Yesterday afternoon the hallway was empty and somebody slipped in and changed that file."

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