by Tara Pammi
“What the hell do you two want?” he demanded, straightening.
“We came to check on you,” Massimo said. He took in Vincenzo’s disheveled state with a distinctly obvious grin. “I have to admit, Leo. I’d hoped to find him like this. This almost makes up for everything he did to us. Almost.”
Vincenzo let out another curse. “Get out! Get out of my house!”
Leonardo reached him, a sneer curling his mouth into a twist. And finally, Vincenzo could no longer deny the resemblance between himself and this man... This man who he had no doubt now would have made a spectacular older brother. A role model. A protector. “My wife is about to give birth any moment! To twins, you ungrateful bastard! And here I am in the middle of the night, checking up on you because she asked us to.”
Massimo laughed again, and both he and Leo cursed him soundly. “Our older brother, as you can tell, is quite nervous. Everything is out of his control with Neha and the babies and it’s driving him crazy. And he’s driving her crazy.” Leo growled. “Which is why she begged me to take him on this midnight run,” Massimo finished. “I left Natalie behind because if she’s here, she won’t let Leo beat some sense into you.”
Vincenzo rubbed his head, trying to figure out the puzzle of what they meant, who they were talking about. Even the threat of Leo’s fists couldn’t distract him from trying to figure it out. “Wait, who asked you to check up on me? You’re not talking about Neha, are you?”
“Your bloody wife, who else?” Leo roared. “The woman whose heart you so thoroughly broke. The woman you don’t deserve.”
“She walked out on me,” Vincenzo offered in a lame, pathetic voice. “And you’re right. I don’t deserve her. Still she gave me a chance to redeem myself. And I destroyed that chance. I...drove her away. I...killed whatever she felt for me with my own hands.”
Whatever he’d been about to say died on Massimo’s shocked lips.
His knees finally gave out, and Vincenzo slid to the floor. He buried his head in his hands. Cristo, what had he done? What was this cursed villa, the blasted company, even this world, to him, without her? He looked up, fear unlike anything he’d ever known clamping his belly tight. “I...I won everything and lost everything all in one fell swoop.”
Both men knelt on either side of him. And he felt shame and vulnerability and something else lodge in his throat, cutting off his breath. “Why are you here after I drove you out of your own home?”
“We can’t imagine what you’ve endured for so long. What it feels like to see your mother and not have her see you in return. But actions can be rectified, V,” Massimo said kindly, using the abbreviation only she used for him. “You can still prove that Alex’s faith in you was not misplaced.”
“And because we’ve each been here,” Leo added. “In this place of destruction. Standing on a pile of ashes that we created with our own actions. Not our father’s actions, Vincenzo.” It was the first time Leo had said his name. “Not Greta’s. Ours. You’re the one who’s letting the woman who loves you go.”
Vincenzo pushed himself off the floor.
“Go to her, but only if you think you can do right by her. Only if...” Leo’s tone edged into that warning zone again.
“Alex deserves the best a man can give,” Vincenzo added, and both men nodded.
“We have to want to be saved. The only hope is that someone we love, who loves us, will stand by us while we do it.”
She’d been right. So right. Vincenzo hoped with every cell in him that she would still stand by him. That he was worthy of that.
“Now, I would suggest a grand gesture of some sort,” Massimo added, clapping him on the back.
Vincenzo rubbed his eyes and stared at the two men whose forgiveness he still needed to beg. But not yet. Not now. “Cristo, if this is the kind of psychobabble that Alessandra thinks I miss out on by not being one of you, then I shall gladly tell her how wrong she is. I...don’t need a couple of Brunetti bastards to tell me I messed up. Royally.”
“Ha! We came to tell you that you chose a woman who will forgive you almost anything. If you grovel hard enough, V.”
Leo stood up. “Massimo has enough experience with that if you want some guidance.”
Vincenzo looked at them. “This is not easy for me. I’ve never asked anyone for anything in my entire life. I have never—” He stopped and swallowed. “Whatever I have to say, she deserves to hear it first.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS PANIC.
It was sheer, unadulterated panic that sat like a boulder in his chest, that crawled up his throat like nausea at regular intervals, which had made him lose his head. Which had made him chase her halfway around the world—the wrong way.
Of course, she hadn’t been in New York. Nor in Milan. Nor in Beijing sourcing fabric.
She was at the place where it had all started. Where, by some stroke of fate, he’d tangled with the woman who would end up becoming his saving grace.
The lush greenery surrounding the small village of Ubud hit Vincenzo with an onslaught of memories as he walked through the villa they had stayed in the last time to the private beach area behind it.
He found her sitting on the massive deck, a glass of water on the table next to her and a paperback on her stomach.
She was sleeping. But not peacefully. Even from the length of the deck, he could see her eyelids fluttering. Her body tensing up.
Guilt raked its fingers through him.
He made his way to her softly, loath to disturb her rest. He was about to sit down when she startled awake.
Her golden-brown eyes found him, only half-awake.
“Hello, Princess.”
“V...?”
She rubbed her eyes, an innocent action that made his chest ache. When she realized he wasn’t a figment of her imagination, she sat up. And her mouth took on the stiff slant he hated.
“You ran away again, bella,” he said, finding that his voice was scratchy. As if he hadn’t used it in months.
“But I told you I was leaving this time,” she said in a low voice. Her chin lifted. “What are you doing here, V? I already told you the hearing for Charlie’s custody is in New York in two weeks.”
“I thought I would accompany you there.”
“I appreciate the consideration but I don’t need it.” The silence bore down upon them. He saw her swallow, as if she was bracing herself. “This polite courtesy needn’t be extended when it’s just the two of us. Hopefully, it will all be over soon. I’ll get custody of Charlie and we don’t need to see each other again.”
“Cristo, Alex! Don’t talk to me as if I’m a stranger.”
“I’m not. I just... I need to be strong. I can’t keep seeing you and stay sane.”
He nodded, that strange fear swallowing away the one thing he needed to say. Instead he said, “How are you feeling?”
“Good. I...I have morning sickness, except it’s all the time. Like morning, noon and night. I...but apparently, it’s normal. For some people.”
“Alessandra—”
“But I’m lonely, you know.” She rubbed her chest as if she could dislodge that ache. “I miss Greta and Leo and Massimo. And Natalie. And Neha and the babies. Did you know she had the babies?”
“Si,” he said, smiling despite the pain in his throat. “They are...healthy and thriving. They are naming them Maya and Matteo. The girl child is especially beautiful, just like her mother—”
“Wait, you went to see them?”
“Si. I...I asked Leo if I could and he said yes.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh.” She looked away, but not before he saw the flash of hope. But when she looked back at him, her eyes were full of a wariness that was like a knife to his chest. “Why?”
He considered answers and discarded them, incredibly nervous for the first time in his life. “I went b
ecause I...I knew you would appreciate hearing firsthand how they’re doing. But I also went—” he swallowed “—because that bastard Massimo told me he was going to be the fun uncle they adored and I couldn’t have that.” The words kept coming like a torrent, unchecked. Unabashed. “But then I also thought of what you said. How they’re my niece and nephew and how they’d be our child’s cousins and I realized that I wanted all that for our child.
“I don’t want our child to grow up all alone. Like I did.
“I want him or her to be part of a big family. A clan. A dynasty.”
Tears poured out of his beautiful wife’s eyes. A sound, like the combination of a sob and a moan, came hurtling out of her mouth. Vincenzo went to his knees in front of her. And buried his face in her belly. “Ti amo, Alessandra. With all my heart. Without you, there’s nothing in my world, cara.”
“V, if this is a game again—”
“It is not, bella. I don’t think it ever was a game to me. You felled me from the first moment I met you, Princess. I just didn’t realize exactly what that meant to me all this time.”
He raised his head, his breath suspended at the love he saw blazing in her eyes. It was almost unbearable, the strength and depth of emotion she clearly felt for him. It shook him to his core that there might come a day when she wouldn’t look at him like that. That she might leave again, another day.
But he couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t doubt her love or his. He couldn’t keep looking at his past actions and ruin his future.
“If I tell you something, will you believe me?”
She nodded warily.
“I never used Greta’s vote against Leo at the last board meeting.” He pressed his palm against her mouth. “I know that that’s not much solace. I’d already threatened to use her love for you, your happiness against them, and that itself was unforgivable.
“But that same day, I also talked to Antonio, and something he said made me realize it was he who leaked my relationship to the Brunettis to the press all those months ago. He made a calculated risk that I would be able to recover any lost ground, but his primary goal was for me to leave you and carry on with my plans for vengeance, regardless of how much it would hurt me.
“And I realized how much hatred he has in him. In him, I saw my future, bella, the companionship of loneliness and hatred instead of family and love. I had already begun questioning everything I had done against my own brothers.
“But to turn away from my path completely, it terrified me. It meant I had to face what sort of a man I had become. It meant...facing the fact that I’m not worthy of you.”
“But I never wanted some perfect man, V. I wanted you. I loved you despite everything you’d done.”
“Forgive me, bella, for not seeing that before. Do you know, I wake up in the middle of the night with the most horrible nightmare now?”
She frowned. “What do you dream of?”
“That I didn’t follow you here that first time. That for some reason or the other, I changed my mind about coming to Bali. That I never met you until I had already ruined everything. My own future with both my hands. That I never got the chance for you to love me.
“And I wake up, thrashing, the sheets cold around me. My chest the coldest of all.
“I reach for you and you’re not there.
“You saved me, bella. From myself.
“And I will love you all my life for it.”
She was sobbing again, as if her heart was breaking, and Vincenzo folded her into his arms. He settled into the lounger with her in his lap, crooning to her, kissing her temple. Rocking her. Cursing himself for causing her this much pain.
“Every night I went to bed, hoping that you’d come the next day. Walking away from you was like ripping out my own heart and I couldn’t do it again, V.”
“Shh...tesoro. You will never have to leave me again. Never, bella. Never will I doubt your love for me. Never will I make you doubt mine for you.”
She kissed him, and Vincenzo felt as if he was born again. He became a different man in her kiss, in her embrace. “When you’re ready, we will fly to New York and see Charlie. And then we’ll take him back to the villa, to meet the rest of our family.”
“Really?” she said, looking at him like he was a hero.
And for the first time in his life, Vincenzo felt as if he was, if not exactly a hero, at least not a villain.
“I have tried to return the villa to Leo and Massimo. In fact, I begged them to take it back, to come back home, and I think Massimo in particular enjoyed it. He kept urging Leo to torment me a little more, and Natalie kept yelling at him to leave me alone.
“After all these years, she still has faith in me. She threw herself behind me without a moment’s thought.” He looked away.
Fingers in his hair, Alex tugged his head back around until he looked into her eyes. “Because she loves you, V. Don’t you get it? She’s already seen you at your worst and she still loves you. That kind of love...it doesn’t go away overnight.”
He kissed her deep and hard. “I’m finally beginning to understand that, Princess.”
“What happened then?”
“Leonardo won’t take it back. He’s having another villa built to his own design and he wants to live there with Neha and the babies and her mother. And Massimo and Natalie said the Brunetti villa is too big for them.”
“What about BFI?”
He swallowed, shame filling up his throat. “Leo...doesn’t want the CEO chair back either. He said that he’s carried the mantle of the Brunetti legacy, of BFI’s weight, for too many years. He’ll still work for the company, with me, but not as the CEO. I asked Massimo if he wanted it, and he backed away as if it was the very devil. He said he was happier running BCS, that the bureaucratic nonsense wasn’t for him and keeping the jackals on the board happy should be punishment enough for me.”
“Are you okay with that?” she asked him perceptively.
Vincenzo shrugged. “Only if you are, bella. I never want you to think that BFI or the villa or anything else is more important to me than you are.”
“I won’t, V. I never thought you were power hungry even before, and I don’t now.”
“So the villa is ours, but only if you want it. Only if you’ll be happy living there.”
“And Greta? Can I ask her to live with us, V?”
“Is this another test, bella? Have I crushed your faith in me so badly?”
She cupped his cheek. “No, not at all. You know when I pushed her to tell me what you’d threatened to do, she...she broke down into tears. She...said she’d hated having to tell me what you did. She said, for all the wrongs you’d done me, she was sure you did love me. In your own Brunetti way, she added. As if that pigheaded stubbornness was something to be proud of.”
He smiled as Alex pulled him close and kissed him. “You both need time to heal, V. And it’s a damn big villa. We can even have your mother and her nurses live with us. In fact, I insist on it.”
Vincenzo swallowed the tears that clogged his throat and looked into the eyes of the woman who’d given him everything. “It’s not always easy to have her around.”
She shrugged. “But family is never easy, right? I have always wanted a big family, and you and me and Charlie and this baby and Greta and your mother...this is our big family, V. This is everything I always wanted.”
“You’re my heart and soul, Princess, and my happiness lies wherever you are. With this baby. With Charlie. So, yes to everything, bella. To a life full of laughter and joy.”
“Yes, please,” she whispered against his mouth, and he felt as if his heart would burst out of his chest. For there was a strange giddy quality to it he had never known before. Love.
EPILOGUE
Eight months later
ALEX PRESSED HERSELF back with a deep moan as strong ha
nds descended on her hips. As rock-hard thighs cradled hers. As the hardness she ached for nestled enticingly into her buttocks.
Vincenzo nuzzled into her neck, and she happily threw her head back, more than greedy for her husband’s caresses after a busy three months.
“I’ve missed you, Princess,” he murmured, his lips and teeth and tongue wreaking havoc on the sensitive spot on her neck, sending live wires of sensation straight to her sex.
“I’ve missed you too,” Alex whispered, pressing her fingers onto his. And then pulling them up until his hands cradled her breasts. He immediately obliged, rolling her already tightening nipples into harder peaks with his clever fingers.
“Think we have a few minutes before we have to rescue Greta from down there?”
Alex looked down at the front lawn, where Charlie was running around in circles, Vincenzo’s mother kept darting looks at the little baby boy in the stroller, calling him Vincenzo, and Greta was very efficiently keeping an eye on the whole lot of them. “Greta doesn’t need to be rescued at all. She soothes your fractious son, Luca, and your mother all at the same time with one magic word uttered in that commanding voice of hers. They both respond to her so well, V. It’s really something to watch.”
He didn’t say it, but Alex felt the slight tension in his body when his mother ventured closer to their son’s stroller. And his exhale of relief when she simply bent to pick up the pacifier their son had spat out and plonked it back into his mouth with a tenderness that made Alex’s throat ache.
She turned around, determined to distract him. The kiss she took from him—a heated tangle of teeth and tongues—was nowhere near enough. The last eight months had been laughter and joy and pain and sometimes plain awkwardness as her reticent husband learned to embrace all the things that came with being part of a large family.
But not a day went by when he didn’t let her know how much he loved her. Not a day went by when he didn’t show how much their sons, Luca and Charlie, and Leo and Massimo meant to him.