The Flaw In His Marriage Plan (Once Upon a Temptation, Book 7)

by Tara Pammi

He let it go. “Antonio saw my talent and nurtured it. When I started playing the market, these people trusted me with their savings. When I started my investment firm, they were my first clients. They trusted me to do right by them. Now that I have a million times more, I try to remember them. I try to give it back.”

  “I’m glad you were not all alone. But it’s still not family.”

  He shrugged.

  “She’s in love with you, you know.”

  His head jerked to her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself, her wide mouth pinched. “Your assistant, Anna. It’s obvious. She thinks...they all think I’m a backstabbing witch who doesn’t deserve you.”

  “What?”

  “Were the two of you ever together?”

  Vincenzo blew out a breath, looking out at Alessandra and then back toward a small group where Anna stood talking.

  Antonio’s remark had suddenly made him see Anna’s frosty reception toward Alessandra clearly. “A long time ago. Years before I met you. And it was only ever a brief fling that I put a stop to as soon as we started working together.”

  “And yet she had hopes that it would eventually be rekindled.”

  He didn’t discount the truth of it now he understood. “Then it is my fault for not making myself clear to her. I never even realized until... Alessandra, I never led Anna on.”

  “I believe you.” Said with such simplicity that he stared at her, stunned. “She told me that you have had an architect draw up plans for the Brunetti Villa. That you intend to pull it down and build something else in its place. That you mean to take over BFI by the bicentennial celebrations.”

  Shock pounded through him. “Anna would never be so unprofessional as to betray my plans.”

  “How else do you think I know about them? She hates my guts, because she thinks I stole her man, and she wants me to leave you. They couldn’t be more shocked if you had suddenly taken up farming, V.” Her gaze turned thoughtful. “Apparently, you went full on rogue in this operation by marrying me.”

  “My life is not a democracy for them to vote on.”

  A frown tied her brows. “It sure sounds like it is.”

  “You’re my wife, Alessandra. If Anna can’t realize how important that is, she will have to be let go. I’m sorry she made you uncomfortable tonight.”

  “How about you’re sorry for all the things you hide from me? How about you’re sorry that you ever conceived those plans in the first place?”

  “Again, they were in place long before I met you. These people have been in my life for many years while you...”

  “While I what, V?”

  “While you flit in and out of it. While you run away from me the moment the fantasy falls apart.”

  “And if I do stay in this marriage? When you take over BFI and break it down into parts, when you raze that villa to the ground and build a new one in its stead, is that where you expect me to live?

  “Is that where we’re supposed to start our new family? Our new life?”

  “Si.”

  “Leo and Massimo will never give up their home.”

  “We shall see about that.”

  “Love cannot grow where there’s so much hate, V.”

  “But I’ve never asked you for love,” he bit out, and she flinched. A wet sheen coated her eyes and Vincenzo wanted to believe it was caused by the suddenly cold breeze. “Is that why you married me, bella? Because you fancied yourself in love with me?” Neither could he take the bitter edge out of his words.

  It was high time they discussed their expectations. High time he set the record straight that he wasn’t going to change his mind about his course of action just because she was in his life. “Was it love that made you run at the first hurdle? That made you abandon our marriage when it had barely started?

  “That makes you imagine I should give up things I’ve set into motion years before I met you?”

  He reached for her and set his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened but didn’t push him away, those gorgeous brown eyes of hers drilling into him. “Love is for fools who don’t realize how it can turn to poison in a minute. It pushed Anna into jeopardizing her position with me.

  “It drove my mother into believing falsely sweet promises from a monster and breaking the heart of a simple man who respected her and admired her.”

  “Antonio?”

  “Si. And when he demanded Silvio Brunetti do right by her, when he dared take him on, Brunetti crushed Antonio, as if he were an ant. He came for his business, for his family. He ruined everything Antonio had and anyone who dared helped him.”

  She looked around the empty terrace, her eyes widening. Comprehension twisted her features into horror. “All these people you’ve collected, you’ve surrounded yourself with...they are all—”

  “They’ve all been harmed one way or the other by the mighty Brunetti family, si.”

  “By Silvio Brunetti,” she amended. “Not by Leo and Massimo.” She stepped back from him, her mouth compressed. He’d never seen her look more defeated. “They’re all equally invested in the path of destruction they want you to take. Even if you wanted to walk away from it now, they won’t let you. That explains their chilly attitude toward me. They think I will turn your head.”

  “You won’t,” he reiterated so forcefully that she flinched.

  “Well, that’s put me in my place,” she added with an empty laugh. “But in the end, you’ll be the only one who pays the price, V. Not them. You’ll be the one who stands on the ashes of your family’s happiness, ruining any chance of a relationship with them.”

  “My family? If you think even for a moment that I will ever consider Leo and Massimo to be my family at the end of all this, that somehow we will become brothers in truth...then you’re even more naive than I’d ever thought.

  “They are not my family. They were not there for me when I struggled to fill my belly. When I saw Mama become a shadow of herself. When I had no money to pay for treatment for her.”

  “But you—”

  “This is not your fight, cara. Let it go.”

  “And if this fight ends up hurting us, V? If it ruins any chance of happiness that we might have had?”

  He stared into her eyes, the answer jolting out of him. Somehow, somewhere along the way, Alessandra had gotten under his skin. Had begun to matter to him more and more.

  But only so much. It could only ever be so much that he could give her. Only so much he could feel. He didn’t know how to be vulnerable. To remove the very defenses he’d put up for sheer survival.

  He couldn’t give voice to that yes that whispered in his chest. Couldn’t let himself become so caught up in her that he forgot all the years of loneliness and fear and pain. Forgot what he’d set out to do. To prove.

  To the world. And to himself.

  “Whether my actions hurt you is not in my hands, Alessandra. It’s in yours. In the end, we all have to make choices.

  “Whether you want this marriage only for Charlie’s sake or for yourself, you have to decide. You need to decide how much of this is just a deal and how much is real.

  “Because for me, nothing has changed. Not since I slipped that ring on your finger.”

  The stricken look in her eyes told him she more than got the message. And as much as it bothered him to leave her like that, he walked away.

  A strange tension gripped him but he refused to give it a name. He could have used the attraction between them, the constant tug of awareness to nudge her over into acceptance. But Vincenzo needed her to come to him. Needed her to choose him.

  Like he wanted nothing else in his life.

  He didn’t examine the urge, didn’t rationalize it. It was just there.

  And yet as he joined Antonio and the others—people who had always been on
his side, people who looked at him with respect and admiration, people who had looked to him to solve the injustices done them—for the first time in his life he felt as though he didn’t fit in with them either.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT WAS THE last scene Alex had ever imagined she’d come home to when she returned to the Brunetti villa the following Friday evening after an exhausting, weeklong trip to New York to visit Charlie.

  Leo, Massimo and Greta were dining al fresco on the terrace, making the most of a beautiful late September evening. But the magnificent view couldn’t hold Alex’s attention.

  Seated by Massimo, his arrogant head jerking up at her as she walked up the last step, was Vincenzo.

  His gaze held hers over the length of the terrace, awareness stretching between them, holding her captive. For a few seconds, Alessandra forgot her exhaustion, the fresh grief that had been raked up the past week, the uncertainty of where all this would end.

  When she looked at Vincenzo, she forgot everything but him.

  “How is your brother, Alessandra?” His question, in a dry tone, pulled Alex out of her reverie.

  Alex blinked, feeing heat climb up her cheeks. “He’s okay. I wish he cried a little more though, or screamed or something. He’s far too self-contained for a seven-year-old boy.”

  “But then boys are often taught that it’s a weakness to cry,” Massimo added with a bitterness that made her heart ache.

  Alex saw the disbelief in Vincenzo’s eyes.

  “Our father verbally abused Massimo, unchallenged, for years.” This little nugget was supplied by Leonardo.

  His jaw tight, Vincenzo stared at both men. Alex held her breath, waiting for him to rip into these men who had enough courage to own up to their torturous childhoods with the man Vincenzo thought had abandoned him.

  But Vincenzo remained silent and with it didn’t invalidate the pain of the brothers he considered his enemies.

  “Charlie told me one of the boys at school has been bullying him,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “I reported it to his teacher and she’s looking into it. However, I also taught him how to sucker punch the bully if he ever bothered him again.”

  All three men simultaneously cheered on that suggestion, and the tension broke.

  “Come, sit down, bella. Unless you’re planning on leaving again,” Vincenzo drawled, an edge of censure in his tone. He looked up at her, and she had that feeling of being consumed by his gaze. Only it wasn’t just desire. It was more. “Soon, you’re going to run out of places to hide.”

  Heat washed over her face, but Alex took the chair he pulled out for her. “I had my mother’s affairs to take care of in New York. Her husband’s estate is huge. Not to mention the fact that Charlie was missing me. I did text you that I was leaving.”

  “Ah, yes, so you did. Five minutes before takeoff.”

  She refused to let him put her in the wrong this time. “What would you have done if I had told you any earlier? You’re so busy spinning your webs around people. It’s hard enough that I can’t even give Charlie a specific date yet as to when he can join me.”

  “Maybe I would have joined you in going to New York, Alessandra. Did you think of that?”

  Alex jerked her gaze to his. “Why?”

  “For the simple fact that you’re going through a lot in your life right now and I wanted to be there to support you? For the logical fact that it would have been sensible to present a united front to Charlie’s extended family and the lawyers?

  “To reassure Charlie himself that I’m just as invested in his well-being as you are? I’m a stranger to him, after all.”

  Shame streaked bright color across Alex’s face, and she struggled to hold his gaze. He was right. It was the whole point of their deal, after all. And yet, all she’d wanted was a reprieve.

  From the emotional turmoil he plunged her into with one look, one touch, one kiss.

  From the trust he demanded she give him without having earned it.

  The more she learned about him, the more complex he turned out to be. This whole thing had never been simply about revenge, or ambition, or wanting power for himself. Not the man who’d helped so many, who had such a strong moral compass.

  Her first instinct that he was a man worthy of knowing had been right.

  The more she wanted to remain detached, the more she felt lured in. Before, she’d been afraid of the harm he would cause Leo and Massimo and Greta, but now she was beginning to worry about him.

  About the bitterness she’d seen in his eyes when he spoke of his mother. About what would be left of him when all this was done. About the crushing emptiness that would come no matter his material success if there was no one to share it with.

  She rubbed the pads of her fingers over her tired eyes. “I’m sorry. You were right. I... I didn’t think of all those eminently sensible reasons.”

  He clutched her fingers on the table and squeezed. “You’re still fighting this, bella.”

  She nodded and pulled her fingers away. Three gazes watched them with varied levels of interest.

  “What finally convinced you to come here to the villa?” she asked him, reaching for a glass of wine.

  “I was getting bored of sleeping alone,” he said bluntly.

  Greta’s fork clattered onto the plate.

  “I invited him,” Leo said into the awkward silence. “Neha reminded me that in all this...you’re the one caught in the middle.

  “So I will tell you again, Alex, and in front of him, this time.

  “Neither Massimo nor I expect you to fight for us. But if you need an out from this marriage, if for any reason you want to be done with it, we’ll throw everything we have behind you.”

  The absolute fury in Vincenzo’s eyes in contrast to the stillness that came over him had Alex drawing in a sharp breath.

  “Telling my wife that you’ll help her walk away from me, in front of me, is surely a fool’s play, Leonardo.” The very smoothness of his words raised the hairs on her neck. “Like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Especially after all the work poor Alessandra has been putting in to persuade me to rethink your ruin.”

  Leo didn’t even bat an eyelid. “No threat of ruin will make me forget my priorities, Cavalli. You think you had it hard? You didn’t have our father filling your head with poison when you barely knew right and wrong. You didn’t have to unlearn toxic truths about why your own mother would desert you.

  “I had to protect my family, and myself, from him, when I was barely a man. And Alex has been a part of this family for a long time.”

  Again, Vincenzo stayed silent.

  Alex chewed her salad, feeling a spark of hope for the first time in weeks, while Leo and Massimo started casually chatting about the upcoming bicentennial celebrations of BFI. The preparations were already in full force.

  She had told neither Leo nor Massimo about Vincenzo’s plans for the villa or BFI. God, she hated being the bearer of bad news. Especially when there was nothing she could do to help them. Fortunately, both of them had been out of town when she’d returned that night, still reeling under the impact of all she’d learned.

  “Did you clear your calendar for the celebration, Alex?” Massimo asked. “There will be journalists, of course. But also, a photographer for the family’s photoshoot for the feature they’re doing on BFI’s history.”

  “I’ll sit that one out if you don’t mind,” she replied.

  Vincenzo covered her hand on the table, his gaze filled with a wicked humor. “Of course, she will come. We will both be here to celebrate the success of such a long-standing venerable institution as BFI. Especially on such a momentous day.”

  If Greta heard the resounding mockery in his words, she didn’t let it show. Slowly, she pushed her chair back, and stood. She pressed one hand into Alex’s shoulder and then walked away
. Without a word.

  The stoop of Greta’s proud shoulders made a lump settle in Alex’s throat. Greta’s past actions and Alex’s present sat like painful, snarly knots in their relationship. She hadn’t realized how much Greta’s implacable but quiet presence in her life meant to her. Until Alex had lost it.

  Massimo and Leo followed Greta.

  The moment it was just them, Alex turned on Vincenzo.

  To find him frowning, a thoughtful tilt to his mouth.

  “What are you doing here at the villa? What new game are you up to?” she demanded.

  “Following your dictates,” Vincenzo replied silkily, sitting back in his chair.

  Alex slammed her wineglass down, hard enough for it to slosh over her fingers. “Please, V. No more games.”

  “I hate living like a bachelor in hotels when I have a perfectly nice wife here at the villa. I realized you were right all along.”

  “You mean you realized you can torment Greta in her own home?”

  “Asking me to behave as if I finally found my long-lost grandmother is a bit much, even for you, bella.”

  Why had she thought bringing Vincenzo face-to-face with the Brunettis would be a good idea? Already, her head was pounding. “If you think you’re going to wear her down into regretting her actions, you’ll wait forever. To her, the past is done, V. She had to deal with the consequences of every selfish, vile act Silvio perpetrated, and that has turned her into stone.”

  “Consequences that became the crumbling foundation of my life.”

  “I’m not asking you to forgive her.”

  “Bene. Because I hate disappointing you.”

  “Do you really? Is this all anything other than a game to you?” she demanded.

  She’d had enough. It felt as if she was still dreaming, amidst the fitful sleep she’d caught on the flight back to Milan. Wondering if all the pieces would ever come together. Wondering if she would always feel ripped apart by conflicting loyalties.

  She pushed away her chair, every inch of her vibrating with an internal fight she couldn’t win. “I’m out of here.”

  “Alessandra—”