Читать книгу One Night In… - Кейт Хьюит, Оливия Гейтс - Страница 32

‘MAY I come in?’

Emilia Bentano stood at the doorway of the Milan town house, a heavy designer bag over one shoulder.

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Meghan managed through stiff lips, after the shock of seeing this woman again—at her door—had eased.

‘I know I didn’t come off well in Greece,’ Emilia said. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘Are you?’ Meghan doubted it. So why was the woman here? To sow more discord between her and Alessandro?

That, she thought grimly, could hardly be done. In the week since they’d returned from Amorphos he’d been aloof, removed. The mask firmly in place. It happened every time their bodies— their souls, their hearts—joined, no matter how briefly.

He drew away; he grew cold. His charm was interspersed with careless mocking comments, a calculated indifference meant to drive her away.

Sometimes Meghan wondered if it would be enough to make her go.

She was so tired of the strain, the pretence. She wanted something real and warm and safe.

This was not part of our bargain.

Leaving him would tear her apart, heart and soul, mind and body. She would never be the same again. She would never be whole.

She didn’t know what else to do.

This slow torture was accomplishing the same thing, only more slowly, more painfully.

And yet at night Alessandro reached for her. Their bodies merged with a desperate yearning that seemed at odds with the strained pleasantries exchanged each day.

They didn’t speak, yet his eyes burned into hers as if memorising her features, as if sending forth a plea.

She just didn’t know if she had the strength to believe any more. To fight for it.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ Emilia said quietly, sensing Meghan’s indecision, offering sincerity. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Alessandro … perhaps explain why he is the way he is.’

Meghan’s hand tightened on the door handle. A warm breeze caressed her face; she could smell the begonias that tumbled in a riot from their pots onto the steps.

‘What do you mean?’

Emilia shrugged, smiled. ‘Don’t you have questions? Haven’t you wondered? Everyone has seen what a transformation Alessandro has made in these last months … wondered if it will last. If it’s real.’

‘I know it’s real,’ Meghan said coldly, but her heart was hammering and there was a hollow ring to her words that even she heard.

Emilia raised her eyebrows, cool and knowing. ‘Do you? Do you really, Meghan? Because if I were you in your place I’d wonder. I’d wonder very much.’

‘But you’re not in my place,’ Meghan observed with a detachment she was far from feeling. ‘As much as you may have once wanted to be.’

Emilia was unfazed. ‘Did Alessandro tell you that? Yes, we were lovers. I once thought we might marry … After all, a man like Alessandro would expect to marry eventually, and we’re very much alike.’

The thought that Alessandro was similar to this walking piranha made Meghan taste bile in her throat. Alessandro was nothing like this … not the Alessandro she knew.

The man she wanted him to be … the man she thought he wanted to be.

Yet was that really him? Or a façade?

A fake.

‘I think,’ Meghan said slowly, ‘you’re just trying to cause trouble. But I know you’ll bother me until I let you have your say, so you might as well come in.’

Emilia’s mouth curved up into a triumphant smile. Meghan stepped reluctantly aside, and the other woman sashayed into the house with such sultry confidence that Meghan wished she hadn’t given in.

Yet she wanted to know.

No matter what the truth meant, what it revealed.

She wanted to know.

Then there would be no more secrets.

‘What a quaint little home,’ Emilia said with a gurgle of laughter. ‘Does Alessandro spend much time here?’

Meghan heard the disbelief in her tone, as if she couldn’t imagine Alessandro relaxing in such a boring, bourgeois place.

Maybe he was bored, she thought numbly. Maybe it was all getting too old, too familiar. And it had only been a few weeks.

She led the way into the friendly square lounge, with its squashy red sofas, its long windows spilling sunshine onto the wide pine boards of the floor.

Emilia looked around with an expression of mild distaste, wrinkling her nose as if she were too polite to mention how awful she found it all.

Meghan gritted her teeth. ‘Sit down.’

‘Thank you.’ She perched elegantly on the edge of a sofa, her bag on her lap. She wore, Meghan saw, a tightly fitting red leather jacket and matching skirt, her legs long and bare, her toenails in open sandals painted scarlet.

Meghan sat across from her in an armchair.

‘Now, what is it you want to say?’

‘Ah, yes. Well … in fact …’ Emilia smiled the smile of a sly cat, a cat with a mouse’s tail dangling from its sleek jaws, and opened her bag. ‘I thought these might tell the tale better than I ever could.’ She took out a sheaf of newspaper clippings. Meghan’s stomach dipped.

She held out her hand and took them silently, grateful that her hand didn’t tremble. She leafed through them, one eye-brow raised, making her uninterest known though her mouth was dry.

Meghan handed them back, heart pounding, for the meaning was obvious enough. The clippings were plastered with photographs of Alessandro at parties, his arms around various scantily clad women, his expression somewhere between a rake’s smile and a drunken leer.

He looked, Meghan thought with a sinking feeling, like someone she never wanted to know.

Emilia smiled and said sweetly, ‘Look at this one.’ She took the clippings, sifting through them until she came to the one she wanted and handed it back to Meghan, tapping the photo with one scarlet nail.

Meghan glanced down, recoiled slightly from the photograph of a smoking ruin of a car left on the side of the motorway. The one word in big block letters stood out in bold relief: OMICIDIO?

Murder.

She stared unseeingly, unthinkingly, down at the newspaper. She heard Emilia purr, ‘Now do you want to know?’

‘I think,’ Meghan replied, barely keeping her voice above a whisper, ‘that you’re going to tell me.’ She looked up, her eyes still dry, her heart weighing heavy like a stone. ‘And then you’re going to leave.’

‘You know Alessandro was a bit of a playboy?’ Emilia began, clearly relishing the telling.

‘More than a bit, I believe,’ Meghan replied, and Emilia looked slightly discomfited that she took this news so calmly.

‘Did you know, then,’ she continued in a harder voice, ‘that he and his brother were involved in a car accident? A highly suspicious one, with Alessandro as the driver.’

‘Suspicious?’ Meghan repeated, trying to sound scornful and not quite succeeding. ‘What’s suspicious about a car accident?’

‘A lot of things. They’d just had a very public argument—at one of Milan’s fashionable parties. Alessandro was angry, and accused Roberto of something—no one heard exactly what this was, and no one would have believed him anyway, of course. Roberto was loved by everyone—kind, gentle, always turning a blind eye to Alessandro’s antics. But this time he got upset. I was there and I saw it.’ She leaned forward, eyes glittering, involved now in the story, the drama. Meghan, afraid now, could only watch and listen.

‘Roberto looked terrible,’ Emilia recalled. ‘Pale, shaken, like he was going to be sick. Alessandro kept on at him, accusing him, so Roberto tried to leave. Alessandro wouldn’t let him, though— he grabbed his arm and started shouting. They ended up leaving the party together—Alessandro threatening, Roberto looking terrified. The next thing we knew Alessandro had crashed the car, killing his brother while he walked away with barely a scratch.’

Meghan’s mind and heart reeled from this information. It could explain so much … if she were able to understand it. Still she shook her head, managed to give a disdainful little laugh. ‘Do you honestly expect me to believe that he engineered an accident where his brother was killed and he remained uninjured? That’s ludicrous.’

Emilia inclined her head in acknowledgement. ‘Perhaps. But the accident was on a stretch of smooth road—not a car in sight, no twists or turns. According to police reports, the car just veered off the road into a tree.’

‘It’s been known to happen before,’ Meghan said.

The bands around her chest, her heart, eased—if only a little. An accident couldn’t assign blame, no matter what the newspapers said.

‘What did Alessandro say about it?’ she asked now. ‘He must have given some explanation.’

Emilia shrugged. ‘Of course he was driving recklessly. But with the di Agnio name … The car had to have been going seventy miles an hour. It’s a miracle he wasn’t killed.’

‘And the press twisted this into a case of murder?’ Meghan shook her head.

‘You have to admit it makes a certain amount of sense,’ Emilia persisted in a silky purr. ‘Think what Alessandro stood to gain from his brother’s death—CEO of one of Italy’s most important companies, prestige, respect …’

‘Oh, has he got those?’ Meghan queried sharply. ‘Because it doesn’t seem to me he has.’

Emilia was silent for a moment, watching Meghan with a sneering pity. ‘You have no idea what he was like, do you? He may seem like a handsome knight in shining armour now, all set to rescue you, but in this country he was reviled. Pictures of him have been smeared across the tabloids for years, and I know from experience that rumours about him tend to be true.’ Her mouth curved in a lasciviously knowing smile that made Meghan bite down on her lip, taste the metallic tang of blood. ‘The public turned a blind eye to all his playboy antics, his women, but they couldn’t stand what he did to his brother. They blamed him. They wanted to blame him. He destroyed the beloved Roberto di Agnio, Italy’s golden boy.’

‘I’m sure the press had a field-day with it,’ Meghan said tightly, her control beginning to splinter. ‘It still doesn’t make it his fault.’

‘Unless,’ Emilia said, her voice little more than a whisper, a hiss, ‘he did mean to crash the car …’

Meghan felt the blood drain from her face, her body turning icy and numb. Lifeless.

‘He had nothing to lose,’ Emilia continued with dangerous softness. ‘He was a rake, a reprobate, his family had practically disowned him for the things he’d done, the shame he’d brought to them. In a moment of violent jealousy …’ She shrugged delicately. ‘Who knows what could have happened?’

Meghan sank unsteadily into a chair. Could Alessandro have been so desperate, so unhappy, so murderous, he’d tried to kill both himself and his brother?

Could he have been so vile?

‘I want you to go,’ she said in a thin voice. ‘Now.’

Emilia chuckled softly. ‘I’ve given you enough to think about, have I? Good. At least now you know what he’s capable of. Alessandro was a desperate, dangerous man, Meghan. He still is. I’ll leave the clippings here … just in case you want to look through them again. Ciao.’

The front door clicked softly shut behind her.

Meghan let out a shuddering breath and glanced down at the newspaper photograph of the smoking ruin of a convertible. He didn’t drive those any more. Now she knew why.

She picked up the sheaf of clippings with numb fingers, a numb heart. She sifted through them, steeled herself against the images, glaring, garish, painful.

Alessandro with his arms wrapped around a blonde who was poured into a dress. Alessandro kissing another woman, one eye on the camera, giving a lascivious wink. Alessandro with a woman on each arm and a sardonic smile twisting his features, making him someone she could hate.

It was horrible.

It was wrong.

It was the truth.

She stared at the photographs until her eyes were gritty, forcing herself not to close them against the onslaught of images, realisations, shattered dreams.

This was Alessandro. This was the man he had been, the man he insisted he still was. As much as she’d suspected and feared what he’d done, this was worse. This was so much worse.

She believed he’d changed, but could a man actually change that much?

Was Alessandro even trying to change?

Her heart cried yes, he was; her mind ruthlessly reminded her of every cruel thing he’d said, every harsh warning he’d given.

He’d told her not to trust him, not to love him. He’d told her not to try to understand, to know.

Now she knew, and her ignorance—and innocence—were gone for ever.

How could he be at times so tender, so kind, so understanding, so loving? her heart cried out, and her mind replied dispassionately, You always knew men abused power.

Meghan stared at the photograph of the car, half-wrapped around a tree on a deserted road. It was charred, a wreck of a car, wrecking a life.

Two lives.

Three.

What had happened that night? Could Emilia possibly be right?

Meghan desperately wanted to believe she couldn’t be, yet doubt had created a treacherous crack in her heart she couldn’t ignore.

She was faced with the bleak reality that despite what her heart said her mind told her the truth.

She didn’t know what kind of man Alessandro was.

She couldn’t fathom what he was capable of.

So intent was Meghan on the clippings that she didn’t register the click of the front door, the sound of soft footsteps. She didn’t even notice the shadow that fell over her as Alessandro came into the room, didn’t realise he was there until he spoke, ice coating every word.

‘Ah. I see you’ve discovered my past.’

‘Alessandro!’ Meghan’s stomach plunged with nerves; the clippings fell from her lap onto the floor.

His lips curving in a sardonic smile, Alessandro stooped to pick them up. ‘Enjoying yourself?’ he asked softly. ‘Indulging in some vicarious pleasure? I have Emilia to thank for this, no doubt. Or did you manage to dig these up all on your own?’ Menace turned his eyes dangerously indigo, his mouth a hard, thin line.

‘It was Emilia,’ Meghan whispered.

‘Ah. She always liked to cause trouble.’

He riffled through the clippings with an uninterested air. ‘Ah, yes. I think I remember this one. She was quite good in bed, if I recall. Daring.’

Meghan closed her eyes.

‘And this one … Hmm, memory’s a bit fuzzy there. Probably had too much to drink. I often did.’

‘Don’t do this.’ She felt faint, dizzy, sick.

Alessandro glanced at her over the top of the clippings and smiled coolly. ‘But why not, Meghan? Isn’t this what you want to know? Isn’t this why I found you here, staring at these photos?’

‘I was trying,’ Meghan replied as levelly as she could, ‘to find out why you are the way you are.’

‘Do not!’ His voice came out sharp. ‘Do not psychoanalyse me. I know who I am. These clippings prove it. And if you fell in love with me, Meghan, then you fell in love with a false image. What you wanted me to be, not what I am.’

It was what her own mind had been telling her, and it hurt. It hurt more than she’d ever thought it would to hear him say it, admit it.

‘You were kind to me,’ Meghan whispered, her eyes starting to pool with tears. The room, the clippings, Alessandro, were all a blur. ‘You told me you would never hurt me.’

‘Da tutti i san, by now you should’ve realised that wasn’t true!’

Her vision swam; she clutched the arm of her chair like an anchor. ‘Are you telling me you lied?’

‘I got what I wanted,’ Alessandro replied dispassionately. ‘You.’

‘I don’t believe it.’ She clung to one last hope that even now he would relent. Change. ‘This isn’t you.’

‘Yes, it is. I warned you, Meghan.’

Alessandro’s face was a mask, terrible in its blankness. It was as if the life had drained out of him, and Meghan didn’t know if she could get it back. She dragged breath into her lungs. ‘What about the car accident?’

He stilled, and for a tense moment Meghan wasn’t sure what he would do next. What he was capable of. She stiffened, forced herself to remain still.

‘Are you asking me if I killed my brother?’ he asked, his voice indifferent. ‘You saw the headlines. Omicidio. Assassino. They speak the truth.’

‘It was an accident.’

‘Was it?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I read the tabloid gossip, every word. Maybe I picked that stretch of road—crashed the car in a way that would only injure the passenger. Who knows?’ He smiled mockingly, and Meghan shook her head, desperate now.

‘Alessandro, that can’t be true. Even if you were capable of such a thing, it would be an insane risk.’

He walked up to her, tilted her chin with cool fingers so Meghan was looking with anguish into his own blank eyes.

‘But don’t you know by now that I like to take risks? It’s what makes me good at business. You were a risk, weren’t you, gattina? Too bad that one hasn’t worked out.’

She shook her head. ‘No, it can’t …’ Her voice trailed off into desperate silence.

His fingers tightened on her chin. ‘Tell me, Meghan,’ he said softly, ‘when you look at those clippings, what do you feel, think? What do you believe?’

Her mind spun, whirred hopelessly like a stalled engine. She thought of what she’d felt: the horror, the repulsion, the fear, and knew they were reflected in her eyes, her face. She tried to think of a word, an explanation, but nothing came out.

Something flickered to life in Alessandro’s eyes and then deadened. Like ash, dust, ice. ‘You see?’ he said softly. ‘You do believe it, don’t you? I warned you before. I won’t change.’ He paused, his voice turning ragged. ‘I can’t.’

She stared. Her mind blanked. She couldn’t speak.

He dropped his hand from her face and glanced down at the clippings; the photograph of the ruined car was on top. ‘Damned by silence,’ he mocked.

‘Alessandro, don’t …’ she began, her voice a thread, but he ignored her.

‘Never mind. It’s just as well, you know. I was starting to get bored.’

‘Bored?’ she repeated faintly, and he smiled, a bitter twisting of his lips.

‘Surely you saw in those papers that I’m a man of many tastes, pleasures? I’ll get a few things,’ he continued tonelessly, ‘and move to my flat. You can continue to live here. I don’t mind.’

Meghan felt as if she were plummeting through a cold, dark tunnel. She gazed at him in shock, her mind finally catching up, making sense of what was happening. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying,’ Alessandro replied in clear, cutting tones, ‘that I don’t want to live with you any more. This marriage was a mistake, a bad risk, but unfortunately neither of us can undo it now. I won’t bring shame to the di Agnio name again.’ He held up one hand to still the wave of protests rising within her, unspoken. ‘You’ll still get what you want. I’ll come with you to that godforsaken town in Iowa you once called home. I’ll give you security. You, on the other hand, need give me nothing.’

‘Alessandro …’ Meghan was on her knees on the chair, tears streaking silently down her face. She felt as if her world had been torn apart in a matter of minutes and lay around her in bloody shreds. And she hadn’t lifted a finger to stop it. She hadn’t had the strength. ‘This isn’t what I want.’

He looked at her as if he didn’t care. As if he’d already moved on, forgotten. ‘Pity,’ he remarked, ‘because this is what you’re going to get.’

Meghan remained half kneeling on the chair as Alessandro moved through the house. She knew he was gathering his things, preparing to leave her for ever.

And she didn’t know what to do.

She hadn’t expected this utter rejection—the man she loved turned into a stranger she couldn’t even understand.

She should have spoken sooner—done something, thought something, acted. Shown him … But what? She’d still been reeling with shock, with disappointment, with sorrow.

And now it was too late.

It’s never too late, her heart cried out, and Meghan forced herself to listen. Alessandro was her second chance at life, at love; she was his. She wouldn’t let go of it lightly.

She couldn’t let him leave.

Not like this. Never like this.

On weak, wobbling legs she walked up the stairs, her mind buzzing but blank. She wished she knew what to say, what to think. She only knew she had to act.

She turned the corner, came to the bedroom door. And saw him.

Alessandro sat on the bed, his head bowed, his hands fisted in his hair. Meghan’s heart contracted, ached with a desperate longing that nearly made her stagger.

She recognised that stance, the bleak despair in every agonised line of his body. She’d felt it herself.

It was the look of a person who believed his own soul was damned because everyone had told him it was, even when his heart had cried out for belief, for love.

For salvation.

She’d felt it when one man had condemned her; Alessandro had suffered the judgement of an entire country.

This is the man I love.

This was the man. No matter what he’d thought, what he’d felt, what he’d done.

She loved Alessandro.

And she knew, had to believe, that he was the man she thought he was, knew he was.

The man he meant to be.

She must have made some sound, for he looked up, his face hardening into a mask once more.

‘I’ll be out of here in a few minutes,’ he said coldly. ‘Can’t you wait?’

‘No, I can’t,’ Meghan said. Her voice was a scratchy breath of sound but she forced it to come out stronger. ‘And you won’t.’

‘I won’t?’ he repeated in a mocking tone. ‘You should know by now there’s little I won’t do, gattina.’ He stood up, grabbed the half-filled bag at his feet and slung it over one shoulder.

Meghan stood in the doorway, her arms flung out, blocking him. Alessandro walked towards her, one eyebrow raised in incredulous disdain.

‘Get out of my way, Meghan.’ He spoke softly, quietly, yet she still knew it was a threat.

‘No.’

He paused, his eyes sweeping, assessing her, burning her, just as they had when he’d looked at her that first time in the restaurant.

Even then her body, her heart, had known this was the man— the man she needed.

And she wasn’t going to let him walk away now.

‘Haven’t you had enough, Meghan? Or did you lose all of your self-respect when that man abused you?’ He shook his head. ‘Save us the shame of such a scene and let me walk out of here with head held high.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s head is high right now,’ Meghan replied in a low voice. ‘Yours wasn’t a moment ago, and mine isn’t now. I’m ashamed—’ her breath hitched ‘—that I didn’t answer you downstairs. That I didn’t tell you I believed.’

‘But you did believe. You believed the truth. Now, enough of this!'His hand slashed through the air. ‘Leave me alone. Let me go.’

Meghan’s throat ached with unshed tears. She held them back, forced herself to be strong, if only for a moment. Trembling, she put one hand flat on Alessandro’s chest, felt his sucked-in breath at the contact. The caress. ‘But I can’t let you go, Alessandro. I love you.’

He shrugged, determinedly unmoved. ‘You love the man I pretended to be to make you marry me.’

‘Why would you do that? You didn’t have to marry me. I told you that myself. It could have been an affair.’

‘You hold yourself rather cheaply,’ he said coldly, his mouth twisting.

Meghan’s eyes blazed for a second. She might be dying inside—her dreams, her hopes, her heart, all on their last breath, their last chance—but she was still going to fight. Fight for her own shattered hopes, for Alessandro’s.

‘You hold yourself cheaply, it seems,’ she responded levelly. ‘I don’t know your secrets, Alessandro. I don’t know all the things you did. I don’t want to. But I know—I know—that you’ve been trying to overcome your past. To not be the man the tabloids painted you—the man you and everyone else believed you to be. I’ve seen you struggle with it. I’ve seen you lose, and I’ve seen you win. It’s not an act.’ Her voice broke into fragments of pain and sorrow, of hope too painful to bear, too precious to lose. ‘I believe in you. I love you.’

Alessandro was silent, still. She could feel the energy thrumming through him, a raw, angry pulse.

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not real.’

‘It is real,’ Meghan flashed. ‘You can’t keep denying what I know! I don’t care what you do, how many times you try to push me away. I know who you are and I love you!’

‘No, you don’t!’ His voice came out in a savage roar, ripped from his body, his lungs, and Meghan jerked back, startled. His face twisted into a grimacing sneer as he dropped his bag on the floor, grabbed her arms. ‘What do you want from me? What do I have to do to show you I’m not the man you think I am?’ His fingers dug into her arms and Meghan forced herself to submit, to stare into his face, a beautiful face no longer blank, but tormented by pain and misery.

He felt. The mask had dropped, and she was glad.

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ she said quietly. Her voice shook only a little. ‘You’ve already shown me, Alessandro. You’ve shown me with compassion, love and tenderness what kind of man you are. The man I love.’

He let out a low, rasping sound; Meghan thought it was a laugh. Then he pulled her to him, her breasts flattening against his chest, and kissed her with a hard desperation that felt like a bruise.

Meghan’s hands crept up his chest, wound around his neck. She pulled him closer and gentled the kiss, turning it into something loving and warm.

He refused, breaking it off, coming up for air with a choked laugh of disbelief. ‘Have you no self-respect?’ he demanded, and though pain was slicing cleanly through her, Meghan answered steadily.

‘I didn’t. But you gave it back to me. You can’t take it away again.’

‘Can’t I?’ he jeered, and, pulling on her wrists, led her to the bed, tossing her carelessly down on it. Meghan lay there, her heart pounding so loudly it seemed to fill the room with its desperate beat. She was on her back, splayed, helpless.

She thought of the first time he’d touched her, what he’d said. I’m not going to touch you. I’m not that kind of man.

No, he wasn’t. She still believed. Even now, when he was determined to show her differently, to prove her love was worthless.

Especially now.

The final test.

He looked down at her, his hands on his hips, his expression coldly mocking. ‘Scared, Meghan?’

‘No.’ Her voice wavered, but she kept looking at him. Forced herself to meet the icy steel of his eyes.

‘You should be.’

‘What are you going to do, Alessandro? Try to make me stop loving you? Is that what this is about?’

‘What this is about?’ he mused, his smile a taunt. He dropped his hand down to her ankle, ran it slowly, temptingly up her bare leg—a deliberate, calculated caress. Meghan didn’t move even when his hand travelled further upwards, under her skirt, teased her at the joining of her thighs, his eyes still on hers, still cold.

Even now she felt the flickerings of desire, unbearably sweet, piercing the anger.

‘Do you want me,’ he said in disbelief, ‘even now?’

Unashamed, Meghan raised her head, looked at him. Offered herself to him. ‘Yes. I love you.’

He jerked back his hand, scalded by her honesty. ‘This isn’t about love!’

‘Yes, it is. I love you. And you love me.’ She met his gaze, let her eyes blaze into his.

He shook his head, hunched his shoulders. After a moment of tense silence, he said, ‘Meghan, I’ve never wanted to hurt you.’

‘Then don’t.’

‘ You don’t know me!’ He bit the words out, raking a frustrated hand through his hair.

‘I don’t know who you were,’ Meghan corrected. ‘But I know you now.’

He shook his head, his eyes blanking again. The mask was slipping down once more, and Meghan knew she couldn’t let it return.

‘Alessandro, don’t.’ She struggled up from the bed, pulled her skirt back down. ‘Don’t shut me out.’ She stood before him, begging. ‘What will it take to prove to you that you can’t turn me away? That I won’t desert you?’

‘You’ve proved that to me, Meghan,’ he snapped savagely. ‘You’re like a little beaten dog, accepting every careless kick. I can’t get you to leave!’

Meghan blinked. She wanted to be strong. She wanted to be able to do this. She just didn’t know if she had the strength.

‘I was honest with you,’ she said, after a long, taut moment, her voice barely audible. ‘I told you my secrets. My shadows. I took the risk.’

‘What risk?’

‘The risk of having you not believe me. Of having you disgusted by me, by my past. Believing of me what Stephen did. It was a big risk.’

He was silent, arrested, his eyes narrowed. Meghan dragged a breath into her lungs, willed herself to continue.

‘You told me you liked taking risks. I was a risk, you said. Well, sorry, Alessandro, but I don’t see that from here. All I see is a man haunted by his past. A man afraid to tell the truth. A coward.’

‘I am not a coward!’ His eyes flashed flint and his hands balled into fists. Meghan lifted her chin.

‘No? Then tell me the truth.’

‘I told you the truth.’

‘You told me the tabloid truth. I want to know what really happened the night of the car accident.’

‘That has nothing—’

‘Yes, it does,’ she cut him off. She pressed her hands flat against his chest. He shrugged away, but she kept on holding him. Touching him. ‘I think I’m smart enough to realise that even being the world’s biggest playboy wouldn’t drive you like this. Torture you like this. It has to be something else. So what else is there? It must be the car accident. Something happened that night—something that is consuming you with guilt. I know what guilt feels like, Alessandro. I know what it tastes like. It tastes like cold metal. It rides you, wakes you up in the night, drenched in sweat, in icy terror. I know. You said I had shadows, but you have them too, and I don’t want them here any more.’

He looked down at her, curled his fingers around her hands as if to remove them, then stopped. His eyes weren’t blank; they were shadowed with pain, darkened with sorrow.

‘It’s not that simple.’

Meghan felt the first tremulous thrill of victory. She leaned in, kissed the rapid pulse of his throat. ‘It is.’

Alessandro shook his head, the barest of movements, his eyes closed, his face working into hard lines, harsh angles.

‘What happened that night?’ Meghan asked softly. ‘You argued—you said something to Roberto and he didn’t like it. He was shaken, frightened. What did you tell him?’

Alessandro was silent for a long moment. Meghan could hear the ragged rasp of their breathing; the pounding of their hearts. Outside a child laughed, a muted sound of joy from another world.

‘I told him the truth.’ Alessandro spoke through stiff lips, his eyes focused on a distant place, a remembered time. His voice was little more than a whisper.

‘What was the truth?’

His hands curled tightly around hers; he was holding onto her now, Meghan realised. He didn’t want her to let go.

She wouldn’t. She never would.

‘He’d made a mistake.’ Alessandro stopped, and Meghan held her breath. She knew it would take time, and it would take pain, to bring the truth from him. She could wait. ‘He had no head for business, Roberto,’ he continued after a moment, his voice turning toneless. Meghan understood the need to distance himself from the telling. ‘He was an artist, burdened by my parents’ expectations. He never should have …’ He let out a low breath, shook his head, then continued. ‘After my father died, the company was Roberto’s alone. He made all the decisions, and he couldn’t handle the responsibility. He never should have been given it.’

It should have been you, Meghan thought. Alessandro was the one with the head for business; he’d designed the most stunning piece of jewellery she’d ever seen. Yet he’d been passed over since he was a child—perhaps a bit too high-spirited, his mischievous pranks turning wilder as he was continually overlooked. It was so easy to imagine. To understand.

‘He made some bad business deals,’ Alessandro finally said. ‘Ran into debt, terrible debt, and he couldn’t get out. He became desperate, but he was also stupid. He wanted to pay back the loan sharks without anyone noticing, so he started embezzling from the company. Our company.’

He looked down at her, regret etched on every line of his face. ‘I found out. I wish I hadn’t. Roberto would be alive today …’

Meghan doubted that, but she held her tongue. Alessandro’s honesty—his confession—was too precious.

‘I used to check the company’s finances,’ he explained, expressionless once more. ‘I … I always had an interest. When I realised what was going on I was angry.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I was very angry—unreasonably so, perhaps—and I went to find him immediately. He was at a party—Paula, his wife, was there. Everyone was there. I spoke to him—I tried to keep it private …’ Now his voice turned urgent, almost pleading. ‘But Roberto decided to brazen it out. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about, asked why I was checking up on him, so I stated figures. Facts. Then the life drained out of him. I saw him then, defeated, hopeless, and I was glad.’ He looked at her, his face twisted with torment. ‘What sort of man does that make me, to feel that way towards my own brother? My own brother, who never did me a moment’s harm?’

Meghan shrugged. She felt eerily calm. In control. At last. ‘A natural one, to have such a reaction in the heat of the moment.’

‘He left the party; I followed him.’ He was determined to finish it now, to have the reckoning. ‘We got in the car. Once we were alone Roberto became furious. I’d never seen him so angry, so … hateful. I knew he was afraid, but I didn’t let him off. I didn’t give him any mercy.’

‘Did he ask for it?’ Meghan asked.

‘He told me that I should turn a blind eye to his doings, that he’d always turned a blind eye to mine. I said … I said …’ Alessandro dragged in a shuddering breath. ‘I said I’d see him rot in hell first.’

Meghan’s fingers ached from where he was clenching them, clinging to her as his last hope for redemption. She held on.

‘And then?’

‘And then …’ He drew in another breath. ‘And then he said that’s just what I’d do.’

Alessandro was silent, his lips pressed tightly together, unable to say any more. To finish the story.

Realisation dawned slowly, achingly. ‘He was driving the car, wasn’t he?’ Meghan said softly. ‘He tried to kill you both.’

Alessandro didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Tenderly Meghan reached up and stroked his face, let her fingers trail along his cheek.

‘You took the blame,’ she surmised. It all made sense now. It was all so horrifyingly clear. ‘You didn’t want to sully his perfect reputation, did you? His wife … Your mother …’

‘He tried—’

‘What did you do? Trade places in the car? Emilia said you walked away without a scratch, but you must have had some injuries.’

‘A concussion,’ Alessandro said tonelessly. ‘I dragged him across to the passenger seat, managed to get myself behind the wheel before I blacked out. It was the only way,’ he told her, urgency roughening his tone into a demand. ‘Roberto was the kindest, gentlest person … He had a moment of terrible weakness, but one that would be remembered for ever. I knew they’d believe I was driving the car—maybe they’d even think I meant to do it. They’d believe anything of me. It hardly mattered. But Roberto never hurt anyone.’

Except you, she thought. He hurt you.

Meghan shook her head slowly; love swelled within her, hurting her with its beauty and joy. This was the man she loved. ‘And for this you feel guilt? Shame?’

‘I killed him,’ Alessandro whispered. ‘If I hadn’t confronted him … if I hadn’t said that …’ His voice turned angry, savage in its recrimination. ‘I knew he was weak. That he didn’t have a head for business. I’d always known it. It didn’t help matters that I was partying every night, acting the playboy to thumb my nose at my parents and the world. I was stupid and reckless, and no more so than the night I got into that car. If only I’d taken the keys …’

‘He would have done it another day,’ Meghan said calmly. ‘Another way. He was desperate, Alessandro, forced into a corner. It’s not your fault.’

‘It is.’ He spoke with such certainty that her heart plummeted; then she felt angry.

‘You can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions! Didn’t you show me that when I told you what happened to me? Was I responsible for Stephen’s actions? For what he did to me?’

His face twisted in horror. ‘Meghan, don’t.’

‘No—you don’t,’ Meghan snapped back. He looked startled, and she almost smiled. ‘I see who you really are. The world even sees it—sees what you’ve done with Di Agnio Enterprises. Alessandro, you must forgive yourself. If not for your own sake, then for mine.’ She paused, her voice turning into an ache as she repeated the words he’d once said to her, the words with which he’d healed her. ‘I know, and I accept you. I believe you.’ She paused, tears filling her eyes as her fingers skimmed his cheek. ‘I love you.’

Alessandro was silent; his eyes were closed. Meghan’s heart beat a steady, desperate staccato as she wondered what was going on in his tormented mind, what would happen now.

Then a single tear slipped down his cheek; it dampened her fingers. Alessandro’s grief for his brother. Meghan’s breath caught in her chest; her heart expanded and she could breathe again. She could believe again.

Alessandro opened his eyes. ‘I love you.’

Meghan felt weak with relief, giddy with joy.

He shook his head, took her tear-dampened fingers and lifted them to his lips. ‘I don’t know why I have been so blessed to have a woman who believes in me enough to see me through this. To make me go through this.’ He smiled, the sorrow sifting from his eyes, revealing a flicker of hope. ‘You saved me, Meghan. You saved me.’

‘And you saved me.’

‘I need to ask you to forgive me,’ he continued in a low voice, ‘for hurting you so very much. I did it to drive you away. I thought it would be easier for both of us. Or at least for me. I couldn’t bear seeing you walk away from me, gattina. Seeing you disgusted by who I was, by who I am.’

‘No,’ Meghan whispered, ‘never that. I know who you are, Alessandro, and you are the man I love.’

He nodded in acceptance, in wonder. ‘You knew even before I did. How can you know me so well when I was blind to myself?’

‘We were both blind,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘And we needed each other to be healed. Forgiven.’ Loved.

He pulled her towards him, kissed her with a gentle passion that had her swaying into him completely, surrendering everything. Her heart, her soul, her mind, her body. His. All his.

‘I am a blessed, blessed man,’ he said, and there was a ragged edge of incredulous gratitude in his voice.

‘No more blessed than I am.’

He nodded, kissing her again, and as sunlight slanted through the windows, sifting patterns on the floor, Meghan realised the shadows were gone. All of them.

All that was left was her and Alessandro, and joy. Only joy.