The Italian's Mistress (HQR Presents)

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  He knew she still felt something for Carlo; he’d seen it in her eyes as they continually sought his brother. She had probably been checking for his likeness to Sammy. How ironic that it was he, Lucio, who carried the most likeness!

  It had been painful to watch Carlo squirming uncomfortably in his seat, his guilt over the past almost palpable. Lucio wondered if Anna would break her word and inform Carlo that the son he thought was his older brother’s was actually his.

  Could he trust her to keep quiet?

  Anna opened her eyes to find Lucio’s dark, brooding gaze on her, his expression characteristically indecipherable.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  Something flickered briefly in his eyes before he lowered them to the soft bow of her mouth. ‘It is never wise to ask a man that, cara,’ he chided her gently. ‘For you might be disappointed in his answer.’

  ‘Try me.’

  His eyes returned to hers, the line of his mouth taut. ‘Believe me, Anna, you would not want to know what is going on in my head right now. What you should be more concerned with is what is going on in my body.’

  She opened her mouth to ask him what he meant but before she could frame the words he pressed her back down on the mattress and his hardened body told her in no uncertain terms exactly what he was referring to.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DURING the afternoon of the next day Jovanna offered to take Sammy to the zoo so Anna and Lucio could spend some time together.

  Anna was in no doubt of Jovanna’s motivations; she had personally witnessed the speculative looks cast her way for most of the morning. However, once his mother had left with Sammy, Lucio informed her he had some work to attend to which could no longer be ignored.

  She fought back her disappointment, unwilling to show him how much his rejection hurt. She had hoped after last night that he would let down his guard and allow himself to feel something deeper for her, but her hopes were continually crushed by the cool demeanour of his face whenever she caught him looking at her.

  She sighed as the door closed on his exit, the huge house seeming empty without his intimidating presence. She wandered from room to room, smiling politely at the household staff, who hovered about offering her drinks and food in their faltering English.

  She eventually retreated to her room, lying on her bed with the hope of sleeping away the boredom of the afternoon. She leafed through a book but her eyes refused to close and she lay there, fighting back tears of regret at how complicated her life had become.

  She heard someone knocking at the door, and thinking it was one of the staff intent on feeding her yet again, got to her feet and opened it with a conciliatory smile.

  Her smile instantly faded when Carlo stepped into her room and shut the door behind him. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked through a strangled throat.

  He leant back against the door as if to block her exit. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Her hands fluttered to her neck in a nervous gesture. ‘I don’t think this is such a good idea. What if Lucio were to find you here?’

  ‘What I have to say won’t take long. I have agonised over this for four years so please hear me out.’

  Anna swallowed her unease as she witnessed the tortured expression on his face. His normally tanned features were pale, his mouth turned down at the corners, his eyes shadowed with remorse. He dragged a hand through his hair in a gesture so like his brother she found it almost painful to watch.

  ‘I have something to tell you which I should have told you a long time ago,’ he said.

  Anna stood silently watching him, her expression guarded.

  He moved away from the door to pace the floor, the sound of his feet on the carpet echoing in her head with sickening dull throbs.

  ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, Anna.’ He turned his distressed expression towards her.

  ‘Tell me…what?’ Her throat tightened as she took an unsteady breath.

  His dark eyes filled with pain. ‘I didn’t sleep with you that night.’

  His words fell into the silence like a nuclear explosion, the aftershocks of his statement rocketing through her, making her head swim and her thoughts collide against one another painfully.

  She opened and closed her mouth but no sound came out.

  Carlo took a shuddering breath and continued. ‘I laced your drink with a drug. I was insanely jealous of Lucio’s engagement to you. I had gone from one disastrous relationship to another and when he met you and presented you to the family as his future bride I decided to put a stop to it.’

  ‘Oh, dear God.’ She finally found her voice and sank to the bed behind her. ‘Oh, my dear God.’

  He gave her a pained look. ‘You drank the champagne and once it sedated you I…I removed your clothes and took the pictures.’

  She made a choked sound in her throat.

  ‘I’m ashamed to say I did not feel any real guilt over what I did until I met my wife, Milana. For the very first time I realised what my brother must have gone through in losing you.’ His hand went back to his hair again. ‘Then when I heard you’d had a child…’

  Anna’s mouth fell open as the truth finally dawned. ‘Sammy is…’ She gulped. ‘Sammy is Lucio’s…’

  ‘He is certainly not mine for I did not have sex with you, Anna. You must believe me. I was bad, but not that bad.’

  She was completely lost for words. For years she had tortured herself over her behaviour, even though she had no recollection of it, her guilt over the affair ruining her life and, even worse, Lucio’s as well.

  ‘Lucio must be told.’ She got to her feet in agitation. ‘He must be told.’

  ‘No.’ Carlo’s one word stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘No?’ She stared at him in consternation.

  ‘Please…’ His tone was pleading. ‘Lucio doesn’t need to know. What I did was unforgivable but if it were to come out now who knows what damage it would cause?’

  ‘It already has caused untold damage!’ she protested. ‘Do you have any idea of what I have been through? I thought Sammy was your son! For years I have flayed myself for something I didn’t even do! How could you do it, Carlo? You didn’t just wreck my life but Lucio’s as well.’

  He swallowed convulsively and his colour faded even more. ‘Lucio believes Sammy to be his child, so what is the problem?’

  She sank back to the bed and put her head in her hands, unable to speak for emotion.

  ‘He married you, Anna. You have your chance at happiness back. Please don’t take away mine by revealing what I did, I beg you.’

  She lifted her tortured gaze to his. ‘You have no idea of what you’re asking, Carlo. No idea at all.’

  ‘I think I do,’ he said. ‘I love Milana with everything that is in me. I know Lucio feels the same way about you. It is somewhat of a legend in our family—the Ventressi males love for a lifetime.’

  ‘He doesn’t love me.’ Her voice came out on a whisper of sound.

  ‘He loves you, Anna. Why else would he have come for you? He has never stopped loving you.’

  ‘He thinks Sammy is yours,’ she said brokenly. ‘We used…protection so he assumed, as I did, that Sammy was conceived that night.’

  ‘What sort of protection?’ he asked.

  She told him and he grimaced. ‘I have had three near misses with condoms myself. The failure rate is often underestimated—especially if you’re not careful. Sammy is very definitely Lucio’s son; you have only to look at him to see that.’

  She felt her stomach cave in. Sammy was Lucio’s son! But how could she tell him if Carlo insisted she keep quiet?

  ‘I don’t know what to do…’ She twisted her hands in her lap. ‘It doesn’t seem right not to tell him. He thinks such terrible things of me…’

  ‘Anna, please. Milana is a few short weeks away from giving birth to my child. I beg of you not to reveal my wicked past. It would destroy her.’

  ‘But what about me?’ Tears
sprouted in her eyes. ‘Am I to live with this shame for ever?’

  ‘You did nothing wrong.’

  ‘Lucio believes I did.’

  ‘Anna…I was so wrong to do what I did. I know it’s impossible for you to forgive me but maybe in time you will come to see it as a youthful prank that went horribly wrong.’

  ‘It went horribly wrong for me, not you.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that? I know it and it grieves me but we cannot change the past. Lucio has taken you back and you can build your life again.’

  ‘He plans to end our marriage as soon as we return to Australia.’

  Carlo stiffened in shock. ‘He won’t go through with it. He loves you too much.’

  ‘How can you be so blind?’ she cried. ‘Haven’t you seen the way he looks at me? He despises the space I take up; anyone can see it.’

  ‘Please, Anna, let me have these few weeks,’ he pleaded. ‘Once Milana has our baby, things might be different.’

  ‘Oh, Carlo, how can you ask this of me?’ She brushed away the falling tears. ‘After what you’ve done, how can you simply walk away from this as if nothing happened four years ago?’

  ‘But that’s the point—nothing happened four years ago.’

  ‘Now you tell me, when it’s four years too late!’

  ‘I know what I have done and I am deeply sorry for it,’ he said. ‘But if you tell Lucio the truth it will tear our family apart. My mother would never cope with the shame of what I did; it would break her heart.’

  ‘You should have thought of that when you laced my drink,’ she bit out. ‘What did you use, by the way? I had no memory of that night so it must have been pretty powerful. You were taking an incredible risk—I could have had an allergic reaction and died—people do, you know.’

  ‘It was a recreational drug that causes short term memory loss. I only gave you a small dose.’

  ‘Thank you for being so considerate.’ Sarcasm filled her tone. ‘But, in case you haven’t already realised it, I was already pregnant when you gave me that drink. I didn’t know I was, of course, but that’s not the point. You weren’t just putting me at risk but my child as well.’

  Carlo’s face was grey with remorse. ‘I am so sorry, Anna.’

  ‘Sorry is such a useless word,’ she said heavily. ‘It’s so easy to say but it doesn’t change the past.’

  ‘I don’t know what else to do,’ he said. ‘I can’t risk Lucio finding out about this, not now. Too much is at stake.’

  ‘You know you are very like your brother,’ she said with a touch of disdain. ‘You have the tendency to only see your side of things. You’ve told me all about your concerns over the truth coming out but you don’t seem to be able to grasp the fact that I have a right for the cloud of shame to be lifted off me. I have lived with it too long, torturing myself with what I supposedly did, when all the time I was innocent.’

  ‘I realise this is difficult for you—’

  ‘Difficult?’ She leapt to her feet and stalked towards him, her voice rising in anger. ‘Do you know what you are, Carlo? You’re a coward. Why don’t you go right now and tell Lucio the truth? Be a man, for God’s sake! He needs to know; he has a right to know.’

  The bedroom door opened behind her and she swung around, her eyes widening in shock at the towering figure of Lucio standing there, his expression visibly taut with rage.

  ‘What is it I have the right to know, Anna?’ he asked in a voice of steel.

  She stood staring at him, totally unable to speak, wondering how much he’d heard or indeed if he’d heard anything.

  Lucio’s dark gaze swivelled to his brother, who was skulking near the dressing table. ‘Carlo?’ The dark eyes glittered challengingly. ‘Perhaps you would like to tell me why you are in my wife’s bedroom?’

  ‘I…I was just leaving.’ Carlo took a stumbling step towards the door.

  ‘Carlo!’ Anna croaked in desperation. ‘Don’t go!’

  Lucio’s hard gaze lasered hers. ‘How touching, cara. Your devotion to your lover is sweet after all this time, but have you forgotten he now has a wife?’

  ‘Anna, I’m sorry,’ Carlo choked from the door and before she could stop him he slipped out of the room and closed the door behind him.

  The silence was heavy with accusation.

  Anna ran her tongue over her dry lips and tried to sort through the scrambled disorder of her brain to frame the right words. As much as she wanted to tell Lucio the truth, she knew that unless it came from his brother he was unlikely to believe it anyway.

  ‘Why was Carlo here?’ he asked in a voice that insisted on a straight answer.

  ‘He wanted to talk to me about…something.’

  ‘What?’ His one word had the force of a bullet.

  ‘He wanted to apologise for…for taking the photographs.’ She was pleased with her answer; it was close to the truth, perhaps not close enough, but a vision of the heavily pregnant Milana just wouldn’t leave her mind.

  ‘What else did you talk about?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She lowered her eyes from his.

  ‘I heard you telling Carlo I had the right to know something,’ he said after an uncomfortable pause. ‘Would you care to enlighten me on exactly what it is I should know?’

  She compressed her lips, buying time as her brain tried to think of something plausible to offer him. ‘He said…’ she took a shaky breath ‘…Sammy is definitely your son.’

  She heard his indrawn hiss of disbelief. ‘How can he be my son?’

  She bit her lip. ‘He is absolutely certain Sammy couldn’t possibly be his.’

  ‘The only way he could be mine would be if…’

  ‘Condoms have a considerable failure rate,’ she said. ‘I know for a fact Sammy is yours, even if you don’t want to admit it.’

  ‘Even if I were to have a paternity test it doesn’t change the fact that you slept with my brother.’

  ‘I was in your brother’s bed, yes, but I did not sleep with him.’

  ‘Let me clarify my statement,’ he said with a malevolent sneer. ‘You had sex with my brother.’

  ‘Not to my knowledge I didn’t.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the repressed memory thing. Such a convenient way of absolving guilt by pretending it never happened.’

  She tightened her hands into fists by her sides. ‘Why don’t you ask your brother for an account of that night? Why don’t you insist on him telling you exactly what happened, starting from when he handed me that first glass of champagne.’

  ‘I have already heard Carlo’s account of that night.’

  ‘Ask him again.’

  ‘I don’t need to. Your guilt is written all over your face and has been since I opened the door on your little assignation.’

  ‘Carlo came to me!’ she cried. ‘I didn’t ask to meet him. I don’t want anything to do with him. He’s a pathetic coward who thinks he can wipe away the past with a stupid apology that lets him off the hook while I continue to suffer the consequences of his…’

  ‘His what?’ He frowned.

  ‘Nothing.’ She turned away. ‘I don’t want to discuss this any further.’

  ‘Anna.’ He approached her and placed a hand on her arm to swing her to face him. ‘I know you are keeping something from me. I can see it in your eyes. Tell me what is going on.’

  She drew in a ragged breath and met his determined gaze. ‘Nothing is going on, Lucio. That’s the whole point. Nothing has ever been going on.’

  She pulled out of his grasp and left the room, the sound of her hurried footsteps echoing down the upper hall and then further on as she clambered down the stairs. Lucio stood and listened until they faded, his brows drawn together in a frown, his heart feeling as if it had been clamped in his chest.

  She’d said Sammy was his child but, if so, why wait until now to tell him? Like him she’d assumed Sammy was the result of her fling with Carlo, her guilt over his conception clearly obvious from the moment he’d run into her in
the café.

  But now she was insisting Sammy was his son. Even Carlo was convinced of it, as were his mother and the rest of his family. Why hadn’t he seen it? And, more to the point, what else wasn’t he seeing that he should have seen well before this?

  He reached for the phone extension on the bedside table and punched in his brother’s mobile number and waited for him to pick up, his breath burning in his restricted throat and his hands around the receiver so tight he was sure it was going to break in two.

  But if what he suspected was true, the telephone’s injuries would be nothing to what he was about to do to his brother’s neck…

  Lucio rose from his desk as Carlo entered his office two hours later.

  ‘You are late,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’ Carlo avoided his eyes as he sat down on the chair opposite the large desk.

  ‘What’s going on, Carlo?’ he asked.

  Carlo’s shoulders slumped as he leant forward in his chair.

  ‘I asked you a question.’ Lucio’s tone was unyielding.

  Carlo lifted his troubled gaze to the piercing one of his older brother. ‘I didn’t sleep with Anna.’

  The thick silence drummed in Lucio’s ears.

  ‘I…I spiked her drink…I wanted to…to stop you from marrying before me. All our lives I’ve had to wait second in line for everything. As the eldest you have been preferred in everything. Our father gave you the chairmanship and the responsibility of hiring and firing staff, but what did I get? A second-in-command position which meant nothing other than I must always answer to you. I was sick of it, Lucio. I wanted to do something that would change everything. I thought if I got rid of Anna I would then be the first to have a son to secure the Corporation.’

  Lucio swallowed deeply and his fingers around the pen he was holding tightened.

  ‘She was sound asleep when I…took the photos. I concocted the story about us sleeping together; it was a bit of fun. I didn’t realise the implications of it until I heard she’d had a child—your child.’