Romano
13: Chapter 13 Mrs. Romano Abby’s POV
“Of course, but there’s something I need to give you.” Our gazes locked, but he didn’t smile.
He just reached into the pocket of his suit coat.
“This is for you,” Matteo said, pulling out a small red box.
I froze when he opened it.
Inside sat a pair of diamond-studded rings.
They were simple, elegant, and understated.
But the moment I saw them, my breath caught, and I knew my eyes trembled.
No.
It couldn’t be.
This ring…
this exact pair of rings…
If I remembered right, these meant everything to Matteo.
They were the only things his mother had left him.
My mind flashed back, a wave of sickness and guilt rising in my throat.
In my previous life, after we had become bitter rivals, I’d foolishly believed one of Nicholas’s lies.
I’d forced Matteo, in a cruel power play, to put these rings up as the stakes in a business bet.
I hadn’t actually wanted to take them; it was a symbolic move to humiliate him.
But that same night, the rings were accidentally lost, falling from a yacht into the dark sea.
I would never forget what happened next.
Matteo hadn’t cared about the crowd.
He’d dived in, spending the entire night searching the cold, black water.
He never found them.
And I had carried the guilt of that moment, the weight of his desperate search, for a very long time.
That incident had cemented our hatred for each other.
And now…
here he was.
Willingly.
Matteo took out the ring, his voice deliberately casual, breaking the silence.
“We’re married now. Gotta have some kind of symbol, right?”
He held it out to me, and then he told the most blatant lie.
“My assistant picked these out randomly.”
A lie.
He was lying to my face, pretending they were worthless, just to give them to me.
I looked from the ring, to his unreadable face, and back again.
The weight of what he was doing—giving me his mother’s rings and acting like they were nothing—hit me with a force that left me breathless.
I slowly held out my left hand.
He slid the ring onto my finger.
It was a perfect fit.
I curled my fingers and gave him a small, tight, half-smile.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
“Real random.”
I extended my left hand, palm up.
“Then I’ll trouble you, Mr. Romano, to do the honors.”
I watched calmly as Matteo took my hand.
He slid the ring onto my finger with care.
My heart gave a sudden, unexpected jolt.
The left hand…
closest to the heart.
That simple ring—his mother’s ring—now felt like a tie that wrapped us together, invisible but strong.
Before he could say anything, I took the men’s ring from the box.
I grabbed his hand—warm and solid—and pulled it toward me, slipping the matching band onto his finger.
“There. Done.”
Matteo lowered his gaze, his eyes surprisingly soft as he looked at our rings.
“Mrs. Romano. From today on, let’s get along.”
My lips lifted in a small, genuine smile.
“Likewise, Mr. Romano.”
We walked out of the bureau and into the cool, silent night.
I checked the time on my phone—it was ridiculously late.
“It’s been a long night,” I sighed, looking up at him.
“I promised my grandpa I’d go visit him tomorrow.”
I paused, and on a sudden impulse, I asked, “Want to come with me?”
“Yes, I’ll come with you tomorrow.” His voice was smooth, and the corner of his mouth ticked up as he glanced at the new, matching ring on his own hand. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“But first, let me give you a ride home… Mrs. Romano.”
He said the name gradually, tasting it, a slow, devastatingly handsome smile spreading across his face.
Oh, god, so handsome!
Then he opened the car door for me.
I slid inside, the leather cool against my skin.
The drive back was wrapped in a strange, thick silence.
It wasn’t awkward; it was charged.
We were two people who had just signed a contract with our lives, and the ink was still wet.
I caught him glancing at me more than once, a quick, assessing look.
Then he glanced again, and this time, that same slow smile returned, like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
He looked like a man who’d just won a bet he didn’t even know he’d made.
When he pulled up to the massive, dark gates of the Sinclair residence, the spell was broken.
I stepped out, and the new, heavy weight of the ring on my finger suddenly felt like a spotlight.
I walked inside, the grand foyer tomb-quiet.
My heart nearly did throw itself out of my chest when Mr. Sullivan appeared silently from the shadows.
“Miss Abby,” he said, his voice neutral.
His gaze, however, was not.
It darted down, just for a second, to the unfamiliar, sparkling ring on my left hand before rising back to my face.
“I didn’t realize you had gotten… close… to Mr. Romano.”
I stopped, my hand on the banister.
The old Abby would have stammered, hidden her hand, and lied.
The new Abby just smiled—a tired, slightly wicked smile.
“Well, we just got married,” I said, my voice carrying in the silent hall.
“So yes, you could say we’re getting closer.” I started up the stairs, adding over my shoulder, “Isn’t it amazing, Mr. Sullivan?”
I didn’t wait to see his reaction—the stunned, slack-jawed shock of the most unflappable man I knew was a pleasure best left to the imagination.
I closed my bedroom door, the solid click echoing the finality of what I’d done.
I leaned back against the wood and let out a long, shaky sigh of relief.
I held up my hand, staring at the ring—his mother’s ring—as it gleamed under the soft lamplight.
“Mrs. Romano,” I whispered, testing the weight of the name.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across my face.
“Hmm. It suits me so much better than Mrs. Anderson.”