I Let My Sister Have the Man Who Broke My Heart novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: Two Million Dollars

Carla walked away along the hedge, and the ice in her glass rang the whole way to the house.

I stayed against the wall with my coat open.

"What did Mother pay?" I said.

Luca's hand dropped from my hip.

"She didn't pay," he said. "I did."

"For what?"

"The day your mother signed our contract, she asked for two million dollars in the Rossetti accounts." He kept his eyes on mine.

"She called it a dowry in reverse, for the trouble of sending you far away to a sick man."

I did not breathe.

"And you paid it."

"I'd have paid ten."

"She sold me."

"She sold you to a man she thought would be dead in three years," Luca said. "And she wanted the money before he went."

I thought of Mother's hand on mine at the table.

Do you want to end up a widow in Miami?

She had said it to make Carla sit down.

She had said it to make me stay.

I could not tell which, and I did not want to know yet.

"There's something else," Luca said.

"Tell me."

"You asked why I never wrote." He looked at the grass. "I went to your cousin's wedding in Brooklyn, Gemma. Eight years ago. You were nineteen."

Something cold went down my back.

I knew the day.

I had worn blue, and I had been tired, and a girl had been crying in the bathroom about a boy who had coughed through his own vows at another wedding.

I had said it in the hall, loud and sure and nineteen.

"I'd never marry a man who coughs through his own vows."

I had meant a boy from the other family, a cousin of someone I disliked.

I had not meant anyone.

"You were at the door," I whispered.

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