Amadeo’s smile is forced now as he moves to pick up the envelope Bruno left. He breaks the seal and takes out the folded sheets of paper. He holds them out to me.

“What is it? Just tell me what it is,” I hear myself snap as I take a step away as if the sheets of paper might burn me.

“Annulment.”

I look at the sheets in his hand then up at him. “You can’t annul the marriage. It’s iron-clad. You made sure.”

“I pulled some strings. You can be free, Dandelion. This can be erased.”’

“Erased?” My eyes burn, my forehead furrows. “Like a year of my life was erased? What’s a few more weeks?”

Amadeo steps toward me, concerned but also confused. I look at Bastian and see how the hand at his side is a fist.

“You want to erase it?” I ask, feeling my lip tremble. “Erase me?”

Amadeo looks at me gently. “No, sweetheart, I don’t want to erase you. I don’t want to erase us,” Amadeo says.

“Then why?”

“It has to be your choice. You have to choose. I gave you my word once. Freedom for you and Emma. It’s yours. With the condition that it comes with our protection of course. At least until you…”

“Until I what?” I snatch the pages out of his hand and glance down at them, then toss them aside. “Until I what, Amadeo? Marry again? Have some other man to protect me because I need protecting?” I’m not sure if I’m more angry or hurt.

Amadeo’s jaw tightens.

A low growl comes from Bastian. I give him one glance and see he’s put his whiskey down. It’s taking all he has to stay where he is and remain silent.

Amadeo steps toward me and takes my arms. “What do you want, Dandelion?”

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t want me.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Bastian says. I’m not sure if he’s talking to Amadeo or me when he comes to stand at my back, taking a fistful of hair and turning my head in his direction. “You think we don’t want you?”

I look at his face, the pain I’d once glimpsed on it that had made it hard to look at him, I see it again, there, underneath everything. A constant. That’s what damage does. It hovers. Ever present.

“I love you,” I tell him. It comes out of nowhere. No, that’s not right. It comes from my heart. “I love you, you fucking idiot!” I turn to Amadeo, slap my fists against his unmovable chest. “I fucking love you! You can’t just erase me. Erase us. That’s not how this works.”