You Wanted an Ornament, You Got a Mafia Queen Chapter 06

You Wanted an Ornament, You Got a Mafia Queen Chapter 06

Bianca had walked straight out of college and into Marco’s world.

He’d been generous with her, let her be seen in all the right rooms.

She’d never once seen him look at anyone the way he was looking at her right now.

“I just… shared some things from my life. I never showed your face-”

“Hand it over.”

He said it quietly. That was worse than shouting.

Bianca blinked back tears and held out her phone with shaking hands.

Marco scrolled.

Post after post. Comment after comment.

The longer he read, the darker his face got.

“Who gave you the right to post this? What makes you think for even one second that I have any interest in you?”

The tears came out.

“It hurt my pride,” she choked. “This is my first real job and everyone from school was so impressed. I just wanted to…”

He looked at her and felt nothing but tired.

“Delete every single post. Then go to HR and put in your notice.”

Her head snapped up. The tears stopped.

“Why? You liked having me around. You liked me. Why would you do this?”

“I have a fiancée.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “What exactly do you think you have that would make me interested in you?”

“But you took me to Vegas. You cancelled the deal with her family. You let me stay in your suite. You took me out, you brought me to the birthday dinner. If that’s not liking someone, what is?”

Bianca wasn’t performing. She genuinely didn’t understand.

Marco pulled at his tie.

“The business angle, you wouldn’t get it. As for the rest of it? I thought it was funny. You were easy

to tease. And I wanted to see how Elysia would react.”

The room swayed.

Everything she’d thought she felt, everything she’d thought he’d felt, had been a test.

Not for her.

For Elysia.

She was a prop. She was less than that. She was a tool someone had picked up and used without ever seeing her at all.

She pressed both hands over her face and ran out of the office.

Marco sat in his chair for a long time after that.

Memories surfaced without asking.

When they were barely old enough to talk, adults would ask him: do you like Elysia?

He’d looked at the small, pink-cheeked girl across the room and felt something warm go through

him.

Yes, he’d said. I’m going to marry her someday.

That had gotten a lot of laughter from the grown-ups. ·

Then they grew up. And he knew they were going to get married. That was just the truth of things.

He’d wanted to lay the whole world at her feet.

Just to see her smile.

But then things changed. Running the family changed him.

He needed room. New air. Different things.

Elysia hadn’t seemed to change with him.

So there was friction. That was all it was.

That was all it was.

Except now, sitting here, he could no longer make that sentence sound true.

He picked up the phone and told his assistant to book him on the next flight to Toronto.

Some things needed to be said face to face.

Back in Toronto, I’d started coming into the office to work on the Valente partnership project.

Adrian moved his workspace to the office next to mine.

At lunch one day, something came back to me.

“Hey, you picked up a call for me when I first got back, right? Who was it?”

Adrian thought for a second.

“Oh. They hung up right when I answered. I assumed it was a wrong number and didn’t mention it.

I nodded. Made sense.

All my contacts had names attached.

“Elysia, we have tomorrow off. Where do you want to go?”

Over these past few weeks, I could feel what he felt. It wasn’t subtle.

“Adrian. I know how you feel about me. But I just got out of something. My head’s still not clear. I

don’t want to use you as a way to get over someone else. That’s not fair to you.”

Everyone online says the fastest way to get over a relationship is to start a new one.

I don’t believe that.

If your heart isn’t empty yet, there’s no room to let someone in.