The Abandoned Groom Married his Ex's Enemy!

One. Two. Three. Inhale.

Four. Five. Six. Exhale.

Dominic kept counting long after the elevator doors closed.

By twenty, he could still see Alexander’s perfectly pleasant expression.

By thirty, he could hear Giovanni asking about Italy as though they were three old friends casually catching up in a hospital corridor.

At forty-seven, Dominic started over because he’d lost count while imagining slapping the smile off both their faces.

Repeat. One. Two. Three. Inhale. Four. Five. Six. Exhale.

His therapist had taught him this.

Whenever he felt cornered, challenged, or invaded, he was supposed to remove himself from the situation if possible, regulate his breathing, and count until the first violent wave of emotion passed.

Preferably before he said or did something he’d regret.

Dominic had thought counting to one hundred sounded ridiculous.

Unfortunately, it worked just often enough that he couldn’t dismiss it.

He reached sixty-two before deciding that going back into his father’s hospital room was currently a terrible idea.

Conrad was sick.

That was the only reason Dominic had stood there smiling politely while Alexander and Giovanni visited as though they still belonged anywhere near the Sebastian family.

They weren’t friends anymore.

Alexander certainly wasn’t.

And Giovanni had never been.

Yet there they’d been, asking Conrad if there was anything they could do for him and reminiscing about the old neighborhood like the last several months hadn’t happened.

Then Alexander had stood there acting genuinely pleased for him.

Congratulations on the gallery.

Dominic’s jaw tightened.

Congratulations, his ass. He wants to rub it in that he gave me the gallery.

And what was that nonsense about the restoration business?

Apparently Alexander Vance had decided that running one enormous company wasn’t enough and had developed a sudden passion for rescuing old doors and furniture.

Dominic hoped he enjoyed it.

Who the hell wanted to spend that much money restoring old things anyway?

It sounded like a resource drain disguised as craftsmanship.

And Giovanni wanted to visit Italy now?

Of course he did.

Dominic went somewhere beautiful, found something he genuinely enjoyed, and suddenly Giovanni Mercer wanted to go there too.

Wonderful.

If Giovanni had been around to hear that particular accusation, he might’ve pointed out that the Mercer family had Italian roots reaching back generations and hardly required Dominic Sebastian to introduce them to the country.

Fortunately for Dominic’s remaining dignity, Giovanni wasn’t there.

Dominic reached the ground floor and walked straight past the hospital lobby.

He needed to leave.

Preferably before he reached one hundred and discovered he was still angry.

By the time Dominic arrived at the gallery, the irritation had followed him all the way there.

That was disappointing.

He’d counted to one hundred twice in the car.

Apparently, mathematics had limits.

The gallery was nearly ready for tomorrow’s opening. The exhibition space had been cleaned, the paintings were already positioned, and the workshop had been prepared for the beginner sessions they planned to offer after opening.

Which meant Dominic couldn’t even break anything.

He looked around.

Everything cost money.

Worse, most of it was useful.

”Damn it.”

He went into his private work area instead.

An unfinished canvas waited for him.

Dominic stared at it.

Then picked up a brush.

He didn’t bother sketching first.

Dark charcoal went down across the canvas in broad, aggressive strokes, followed by deep red that he dragged through the still-wet paint until the colors bled into each other.

It wasn’t the way he’d been painting lately.

His landscapes had required patience. He’d spent ridiculous amounts of time adjusting light, softening distant hills, and mixing colors until they resembled what he’d actually seen in Tuscany.

There was nothing soft about this.

Dominic switched brushes.

Black gathered along the edges before cutting inward in heavy strokes. Muted gray followed, then another violent sweep of red across the center.

At some point, shapes began emerging without him consciously deciding to put them there.

Two tall figures stood in the distance.

They weren’t portraits. Neither had a recognizable face, and their bodies were little more than dark silhouettes beneath a pale, almost colorless sky.

Still, Dominic knew exactly who they were.

That irritated him enough to paint over them.

It didn’t work.

Their outlines remained beneath the new layers, distorted now but somehow more ominous.

”Fine.”

He attacked the center instead.

The figure there was different.

Bent slightly forward, nearly swallowed by the darker colors surrounding it, with streaks of red cutting across the body as though something inside it were trying to claw its way out.

Dominic stopped.

For the first time since entering the room, he became completely still.

He hadn’t intended to paint himself.

Apparently, his subconscious had other ideas.

”Traitor.”

He continued anyway.

The anger that had been looking for somewhere to go finally found one.

Every time Alexander’s congratulations replayed in his head, another stroke landed on the canvas.

Every time he remembered Giovanni standing comfortably beside him, Dominic added another layer.

Jealousy became black.

Humiliation became gray.

The red was easier.

That was simply anger.

Two hours passed before Dominic finally stepped back.

His arm hurt.

Paint stained his fingers, and a streak of charcoal marked his wrist, but the pressure that had followed him from the hospital was gone.

Mostly.

The painting in front of him looked nothing like anything else he’d produced.

It was ugly in places.

Uncomfortable.

The two distant figures remained almost untouched by the chaos around them, while the central figure looked as though he were either emerging from the darkness or being consumed by it.

Dominic wasn’t entirely sure which.

Perhaps that was why he liked it.

He stared at the canvas for a long time.

Then wrote the title on the temporary label.

THE WRATH

For once, he didn’t wonder whether Alexander would’ve liked it.

He didn’t wonder what Giovanni might think either.

Dominic simply looked at something he’d created entirely from an emotion he’d spent the afternoon trying not to unleash on another person.

His therapist would probably call that progress.

Dominic wasn’t quite ready to be that generous.

Still, nothing had been broken.

Nobody had been punched.

And the painting was actually good.

He’d take it.

The following morning, The Wrath became a last-minute addition to the gallery’s first public exhibition.

Dominic hadn’t originally planned to include it.

Then he looked at it again before opening and decided that if the gallery’s point was to give artists somewhere to show their work, hiding his own because it revealed too much seemed rather cowardly.

So he hung it.

The gallery was deliberately divided according to the kind of place Dominic wished he’d had when he first became interested in painting.

The main exhibition room gave new and independent artists space to display work that patrons could purchase or sponsor. Another section served as a workshop where complete beginners could learn without first buying an intimidating amount of equipment, since the basic materials were already included.

More experienced artists had their own training space, with professional painters invited on selected days to teach specialized classes for a fee.

It wasn’t revolutionary.

Dominic knew that.

But it was his.

By the time the doors opened, the first visitors were already waiting outside.

Dominic stood near the back of the exhibition room and watched them enter.

Some stopped at the landscapes.

Others moved toward the work of artists whose names they didn’t recognize yet.

Then someone stopped in front of The Wrath.

A second person joined them.

Dominic watched from across the room as they quietly studied the painting he’d created while wishing terrible things upon two men he’d smiled politely at less than twenty-four hours earlier.

Perhaps his therapist had been right.

There were healthier ways to deal with anger.

Whether Dominic Sebastian would consistently choose them was another matter entirely.