If I let her father off the hook, I could maybe salvage what we had. Even if she found he was a piece of shit, she was too loyal to her family to forgive me for destroying them. And if shewas, by some miracle, okay with me taking down her father, could our relationship survive the aftermath? I damn sure wasn’t going to sit across from the Laus at Thanksgiving every year and make nice, and I doubt they’d welcome me, anyway.
I couldn’t keep her, and I couldn’t let her go.
Not yet.
I closed my eyes, trying to find the best way out of this clusterfuck.
Logic told me I’d already stolen my moments with her tonight and that I needed to distance myself before I fell any deeper. Emotion told me to fuck logic and tell it to shove its reason up its ass.
My head or my heart. One of them would win.
I just didn’t know which one.
CHAPTER32
Vivian
Ileft Paris on a blissful high.
Delicious food. Beautiful clothes. Amazing sex. I’d worked during my time there, but it’d felt like more of a vacation than some of my actual vacations.
Plus, the Legacy Ball planning wasfinallyrunning smoothly, wedding prep was on track, and my relationship with Dante was the best it’d ever been.
Life was good.
“It was awful,” Sloane said as we exited the movie theater. “What was with the airplane scene? And thelove confession. I would throw up if anyone compared me to the planet Venus, especially after knowing me for only three weeks. How could anyone possibly fall in love in three weeks?”
Isabella and I traded amused glances. We’d had to postpone our movie night due to my Paris trip, but we’d finally watched the rom-com Sloane had been hounding us about.
As expected, she hated it.
“Time works differently in fiction,” I said. “You know you can stop watching these movies any time, right?”
“I hate-watch them, Vivian. It’s therapeutic.”
“Mmhmm.”
I caught Isabella’s eye again, and we both turned away so Sloane couldn’t see our smiles.
“Anyway, I have to go home and feed The Fish before he dies on me.” Sloane sounded like the task was equivalent to scrubbing the subway tunnels clean with a toothbrush. “I have enough on my plate without having to deal with a dead animal.”
She’d kept the goldfish her apartment’s previous tenant left behind, but she refused to give him a proper name since its presence in her life was “temporary.”
It’d been over a year.
Isabella and I knew better than to mention it, though, so we simply bid her good night and parted ways.
I stopped by Dante’s favorite Thai place on the way home. Greta was on her annual leave in Italy, so we were on our own, food-wise, for the next few weeks.
“Is Dante home yet?” I asked Edward when I returned to the penthouse.
“Yes, ma’am. He’s in his office.”
“Great. Thank you.” I’d tried to get Edward to call me by my first name when I first moved in, but I gave up after two months.
I knocked on Dante’s office door and waited for his “Come in” before I entered.
He sat behind his desk, his brow furrowed as he stared at something on his monitor. He must’ve just gotten home since he still wore his office suit.