Chapter 2 [Where Do You Think You're Going?]

Emily's POV

"What does this mean, Marcus?"

My voice came out strange. Too calm. As if I were watching the scene from the outside, from some distant place where the pain couldn't reach.

He turned around so fast he almost knocked the redhead off the table.

"Emily." His eyes widened. Only for a second. Then came that cold mask I knew so well. "What are you doing here?"

"I asked what this means."

The redhead, Claire, Nathalie had said, slid off the table with deliberate slowness, adjusting her dress as if she hadn't just had her legs spread for my boyfriend.

She looked at me with a crooked smile.

"Oh, so it's you." Her voice was sweet, poisonous. "The photographer."

"You know who I am?"

"I know." She ran her hand through her red hair with a bored air. "The maid he keeps around when he's bored. Isn't that right, Marcus?"

I waited. I waited for him to deny it. To say it was nothing like that.

Marcus zipped his pants with a sharp movement.

"Go back to the hall, Emily."

"What?"

"You're upset." His voice was so cold it seemed to come from a stranger. "Leave here. Now."

"I'm upset?" My voice finally rose. "I just caught you with someone else, Marcus. Someone else! After 2 years in hiding, after all the promises..."

"Promises?" He laughed, but there was no joy there. "What promises, Emily? That I would introduce you to my family? That we would live together? You really believed that?"

"You said..."

"I said what you wanted to hear." He took a step toward me. "You're a photographer I fuck when I'm horny, Emily. That's all."

The air left my lungs.

Claire laughed behind him.

"Get the fuck out of here!"

The shout echoed in the dressing room, and I felt each syllable like a slap.

I don't remember leaving there.

My feet moved on their own. I passed through the hallway, entered the party area, and it was there that the shock began to give way to something more painful.

The face I saw blurred through my weak vision belonged to a waitress who turned to me, her eyes wide. I must have been a sight. My dress crumpled, my makeup smeared, my gaze lost.

"Signorina, are you okay?" She asked.

I didn't answer.

I kept walking.

I entered the middle of the party like a ghost. People were laughing, drinking, dancing to the music coming from the gardens. No one there knew that my world had just collapsed.

A woman in a long dress bumped into my shoulder and let out an irritated "excuse me" when she saw I wasn't getting out of the way.

Another couple passed by me, and the man looked me up and down with an expression I couldn't decipher.

My vision kept blurring.

The tears came without warning. Thick, hot, streaming down my face as I crossed the main hall.

I passed by a group of models laughing around a drink table. One of them saw me and the smile died on her face.

I couldn't even feel shame.

I could only walk.

I went through the back door, descended the stone steps, and the cold night wind hit my wet face. A light rain began to fall, mixing with the tears, and I was grateful for it.

At least now no one would know where one ended and the other began.

The party continued behind me. The music, the flashes, the laughter. The world moving on as if nothing had happened.

I started walking.

I didn't know where to. I only knew I needed to get out of there. Needed to run, disappear, vanish.

The lawn turned to mud beneath my heels. The rain grew stronger, plastering the dress to my body, running down my face along with the tears I could no longer hold back.

The promises. The sleepless nights waiting for him to call. The dinners alone because he had another commitment. The excuses, the lies, the "we'll talk later."

All of it for him.

And I was pregnant.

My hand pressed against my belly without me realizing it.

How was I going to tell him now? After everything? After hearing I was just "a photographer he fucks when he's horny"?

My foot sank into the mud, and I felt my body begin to fall. The hole came out of nowhere, dark, deep. My arm stretched out trying to grab onto something, but there was nothing.

I was going to fall.

Then...

A hand grabbed my waist.

Firm. Warm. Strong.

Long fingers dug into my hip with a force that stopped me from falling, pulling me back against a solid body. The mud dripped from my feet, and for a second I was suspended, caught between the fall and the ground.

The scent reached me before any words.

Something woody, deep, with a touch of smoke and something I couldn't name. Mixed with the rain, with the wind, with the night.

My heart still racing, my legs weak, I turned my face upward.

And I saw.

Dark eyes stared at me with an intensity that made me forget how to breathe. A marked face, a square jaw, dark hair wet and plastered to his forehead. The black suit was soaked, the shirt clinging to his broad chest.

And his hand remained on my waist.

Firm.

As if I would fall again if he let go.

His voice came out deep, rough, with an accent I couldn't place.

"Where do you think you're going?”