Catherine’s POV
I thought it would hurt.
It didn’t.
There was nothing left in me but a slow, crawling disgust, like I’d stepped in something on the sidewalk.
And out of nowhere, my mind flicked to Lorenzo.
He’d never pull something like this.
Cheap.
Theatrical.
Clutching a girl to his chest and making a scene in a crowded mall like the world’s saddest soap opera.
Whatever else that man was, cold, unreadable, terrifying in that quiet way of his, he had a kind of dignity Marco couldn’t fake with a lifetime of practice.
Lorenzo would never make my skin crawl the way this one did right now.
Then I caught myself.
Why was I doing that?
Measuring Marco against Lorenzo like it meant something.
Lining up a man I’d married on paper against a man I’d wasted years on.
They didn’t belong in the same thought.
I shoved it out of my head.
Then Julia actually clapped.
Slow and mocking.
“Wow.
So brave.
So manly.” She tilted her head.
“I just wonder if your parents will find the doe eyes half as adorable as you do.”
“Bella is sweet and innocent and kind,” Marco said, chin high.
“My parents will adore her.”
Hearing those words, sweet, innocent, kind, wasted on the girl who’d stolen my boyfriend behind my back, made my stomach turn.
Beside me, Julia physically shuddered.
“Your eyes might be broken,” she shot back, “but your parents’ aren’t.”
“Let it go.” I started walking, done wasting oxygen on them.
“Come on.”
But as I brushed past Marco, I felt him go still.
Then he leaned in.
“Catherine,” he said, and his voice actually cracked.
“Dinner tonight.
At my place.
I’ll come pick you up.”
Isabella’s face went sour as spoiled milk.
She grabbed his arm and hauled him off before I could get a word out.
Julia watched him get dragged away and clicked her tongue.
Eating what’s on his plate while eyeing what’s in the pot.” She turned to me, suddenly serious.
“And I’ve been telling you this for years.
That sister of yours is bad news.
It wasn’t enough she snatched up everything you ever had growing up.
Now she’s lifting your boyfriend right out from under you.”
She’d always hated Isabella.
I’d known that for as long as I’d known Julia.
But I’d waved off every warning she ever gave me, brushed it aside as her being dramatic, told myself Isabella was just a spoiled kid who didn’t mean any harm.
I laughed, and it came out bitter and small.
“I spent my whole life treating her like a kid who didn’t know any better.”
Julia rolled her eyes so hard I worried she’d pull something.
“Kid, my ass.
That girl’s probably got moves that’d bring a grown man to his knees.
That’s exactly how she’s got Marco wrapped around her finger.”
“You know what really burns me?” she went on.
“Every single time you two went on a date, your darling sister just had to tag along and be the third wheel.
And here I thought she was clueless.
She’s been drooling over her sister’s man this whole time!”
“It’s fine.” I shrugged.
“I traded up.
She wants a new brother-in-law that badly, she’s welcome to try her luck seducing this one.
If she’s got the skill for it.”
I thought about Lorenzo.
That cold, unreadable face.
That voice like the dead of winter.
If Isabella could actually seduce a man like that, hats off to her.
For one absurd second, I pictured it, Isabella batting her lashes at him, and Lorenzo saying something flat and horrifying like “chop her up and feed her to the dogs.” And then, out of nowhere, some guy in a black suit hauled her off by the collar like roadkill.
I shook my head fast, half-laughing at myself.
No.
He wasn’t that dramatic.
He’d told me himself, he was just some low-level guy at Romano Group.
A nobody in a nice car.
Julia hadn’t caught up yet.
She just stood there, blinking.
“Wait.
What do you mean, traded up?
Did you seriously jump straight into a new relationship?”
“No,” I said.
“I got married.”
“WHAT?
You got ‘MARRIED’? This story is hosted at g.com.
To ‘WHO’?” Her shriek nearly cracked the skylights.
“A stranger.”
The word “stranger” left my mouth, Julia’s ankle rolled clean off her sky-high heels.
She caught herself on my arm, wheezing.
“Are you kidding me right now?
‘I’ got a one-night stand out of last night.
‘You’ went and got yourself a whole husband?”
“Watch the shoes,” I said, steadying her.
“Forget the shoes.” She grabbed both my shoulders and shook.
“Show me.
Right now.
I need to see the man who reduced Catherine Vitale, queen of overthinking every decision she’s ever made, to a courthouse in under an hour.”
“I don’t have a photo of him.”
Her jaw dropped.
“You married a man and you don’t even have a ‘picture’?”
“It happened fast,” I muttered.
Fast was putting it kindly.
“Okay, whatever.
Is he at least hot?”
I thought about it.
About that cold, carved face.
That voice like the inside of a freezer.
“He’s hot.
Really hot, actually.
There’s just…
something about him.
I can’t put my finger on it.” I shrugged.
“And he’s loaded.
Car, apartment, the whole thing.
Works at Romano Group.”
Julia went dead quiet.
She stared at me for a long moment, eyes narrowing to slits, like she was doing math and hating the answer.
“Catherine.” Her voice dropped.
“You’re telling me a man who looks like ‘that’, with a house and a car and a job at Romano Group, walked up to a random woman on the street and asked her to sign a marriage license?”
“…Yeah.”
“That doesn’t reek of scam to you?
At ‘all’?”
“I mean—”
She held up a hand.
Half a minute ticked by.
Then her whole face shifted, going grim and certain, like she’d just cracked a murder case.
“I’ve got it,” she announced.
“He’s gay.
Cat, you’ve been catfished into a marriage.”
I blinked at her.
“Where in the world are you getting ‘gay’ from?”