Rocco and Mandy: A Red Team Wedding Novella (Book #6.5) by Elaine Levine Page B

lost her, lost himself, to Kadisha’s lie.
    “You’re scaring me, Rocco.”
    “It was all a lie.”
    Mandy huffed a sharp breath, her eyes questioning his. “What was?”
    “I almost died because of Kadisha’s lie.”
    Mandy covered her mouth with the fingers of one hand, but couldn’t stop her tears. “Rocco—”
    He led her over to a bench near the opening of the big stable. He was silent for a minute as he gathered his thoughts. “I think Kadisha cared for me the first couple of years of our marriage. But somewhere between the second and third years, she seemed to change. She grew critical of me, of Zavi. I didn’t put two and two together until yesterday.” He looked at Mandy.  
    “Kimble said the chokehold I had on my memories was not only keeping the painful ones at bay, but it was also keeping the answers I sought always out of my reach. Yesterday, I opened up to my memories.”
    “Oh, Rocco.” Mandy reached over and held his knee. “I wish you had come to get me before doing that. You shouldn’t have been alone.”  
    “I remembered overhearing a couple of village women doubting her due date or speculating that she might be having twins.”
    “Do twins run in your family?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t think so. I asked my mom about that one time when I was a kid. I didn’t understand what twins were”—he smiled at her—“but I was hoping there was another of me out there somewhere. She said she didn’t know of any twins in her family. I don’t know if that’s true of my dad’s side. I never knew him.
    “Anyway, I was worried that Kadisha might be having twins and might need better care than she was getting in the village. I sent her to a mobile medical camp run by an international group of volunteer doctors.” Rocco handed the paper to Mandy, forgetting that it was in French and she couldn’t read it.
    “What am I looking at?”
    Rocco pointed to the field where the doctor listed her pregnancy as four months along. “She told me she was only two months pregnant. I had been gone the three months prior to that.”
    Mandy’s jaw dropped. Her green eyes were huge as she looked up at Rocco. “She wasn’t carrying your baby.”
    Rocco shook his head. “No, she wasn’t. It was only a week later that she blew herself up and leveled the village.”
    “Oh. My. God. That poor woman. How terrified she must have been. How desperate.”
    Rocco shook his head. He reached for her hand and lifted it to his mouth to kiss. “This is why I love you. Only you would see it from that angle, feel her fear, despite the heinous way she chose to cover her infidelity.”
    “Do you think she was raped?”
    “No. Her first fiancé had come back into the area. Ehsan Asir.”
    “The guy who kidnapped me?”
    “Yes. He told me he’d figured out who I was and that he’d come here to take revenge for everything I’d taken from him. I think he worked on Kadisha for a long time. It would have been hard for them to be together very often or for very long. I think he turned her against me and seduced her.”  
    “I think he turned her against Zavi, too. Zavi didn’t seem to have been very attached to her.” She looked up at Rocco. “We talked about it when I put the garden in.”
      “She had to be terrified of what would happen to her when the truth came out. She could have been stoned to death for her infidelity. Of course, I wouldn’t have let that happen, but she no longer trusted me enough to confide in me.”
    Mandy handed him back the paper. He sighed and leaned back in the bench. “I came to tell you that I finally understand what was happening. And I’m sorry. God, I’m so fucking sorry. I put you through hell.”
    Mandy reached for his hand. “Yes, you did. And I love you all the more for it.”
    Rocco frowned as he looked at her. “How so?”
    “It shows me just how deeply you love the people in your life, especially your children. It’s an honor to share my life with a man like