Courthouse.
Don’t be late
18: Chapter 18 Nine a.m.
Courthouse.
Don’t be late Catherine’s POV
His brain short-circuited.
He answered on autopilot.
“Yeah.
Yeah, okay.”
Across the table, Isabella’s face twisted so hard it nearly folded.
I wasn’t half as happy as I looked, though.
Touching Marco at all made my skin crawl, and I had to swallow the sick climbing up my throat just to keep my head on his shoulder.
When dinner wrapped and we spilled out into the corridor, I kept my arm hooked through Marco’s and turned to his parents with my best bashful smile.
“Mr.
and Mrs.
Conti…
Marco’s going to stay with me tonight.”
I felt Marco’s whole body light up beside me, and I could read the thought running through his thick skull like a headline.
“She’s going to win me back with sex.”
The Contis couldn’t nod fast enough.
“Of course, of course.
You two get a hotel room somewhere nice, make a night of it—”
Mrs.
Conti even reached out and yanked Isabella—who”d been trailing us like a stray, refusing to take the hint—straight out of the way.
“Cat, don’t you worry about your sister, we’ll drive her home ourselves.
You two go make that baby!”
Isabella nearly rolled her ankle off those sky-high heels, stumbling.
She stared up at Marco, eyes brimming, water shining on her lashes.
“Marco…
please…”
But Marco was already drunk on the fantasy of me offering myself up to him, too gone to spare her a thought.
His arm slid heavy around my shoulders, and he flicked his hand at her, dismissive.
“Isabella, just go home with my parents, all right?”
Mrs.
Conti hauled her off, half-dragging, half-shoving, and she vanished around the corner still choking back tears.
Then I felt it.
Somewhere behind me, I felt eyes.
The back of my neck prickled—that animal sense of being watched.
I turned.
Nothing but an empty corridor and the shadow of a pillar.
Lorenzo’s POV
I’d stepped out for air and gotten a floor show instead.
Not one of them noticed me standing in the shadow of the corridor pillar.
People rarely did, until I wanted them to.
I didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
Just stood there.
So.
The woman who couldn’t clear her calendar for me—her “husband”—had spent the evening tucked into another man’s shoulder, promising him a baby.
Twenty-four hours.
That was how long the ink had been dry on our marriage certificate before she made a fool of me.
I watched her lean into him.
Watched her laugh, soft and sweet, the way a wife should laugh for the man she’s bound to.
My hand curled slowly at my side, and somewhere under the ice a low, black heat started to move.
In my world, this was the part where men disappeared.
Where a name got crossed off a list and a body got poured into wet concrete two states over.
Marco Conti had no idea how close he was standing to the edge of the earth.
He was breathing my air, touching what belonged to me, and he unaware whose crosshairs he’d just wandered into.
I could end him with a phone call.
Two words to Leo and this smug, spineless little social climber would be a missing-persons flyer nobody ever cashed in.
I’d done it for less.
But no.
That would be mercy, and mercy wasn’t on the menu tonight.
I looked at her again—that face, God, that face—and forced my jaw to unlock.
She only looked like the one I remembered.
That was all.
A resemblance.
A ghost wearing someone else’s skin.
And even the ghost had shown me exactly what she was: a woman who’d smile at the man who”d already climbed into bed with her sister, who”d forgive the unforgivable and call it love.
Weak.
Foolish.
Someone else’s problem.
She wasn’t worth the concrete.
She wasn’t worth the drive.
I turned and walked, slow and silent, the shadows folding around me like they knew their master.
My pulse stayed even.
My face gave nothing.
That’s the first thing they carve into you as a Romano—the ones who show their fury are the ones who bleed out from it.
I drew my phone from my breast pocket.
Found the contact I’d saved the morning after the wedding.
“Mrs.
Romano.”
I used my true family name in private.
Though marriage certificate bore the alias Lorenzo Marino for secrecy.
I typed one line, cold and final, and let my thumb hover over it for exactly one second before I sent it.
“Nine a.m.
Courthouse.
Don’t be late.”