by Dani Collins
Pia sat up with alarm, fingers searching for the edge of a sheet as she scanned to the glass doors leading onto the private beach of their luxury villa.
“Keep it as quiet as you can, but prosecute to the full extent of the law,” Angelo ordered. “Not an ounce of leniency. Add whatever security my staff requires to feel safe while they clean up.”
Any lingering warmth from their lovemaking was gone. His tone was hard and sharp as jagged glass, shearing off her buzz of gratification.
“Now we find out,” he said gruffly as he ended the call and tossed his phone onto the mattress between them as though throwing down a gauntlet.
“Find out what?”
“How you’ll react. I’ll release my side ahead of any lies they try to concoct.” Her lover was gone and here was the brute who gave no quarter to those who had wronged him. Who stared unwaveringly into her eyes and dared her to try to talk him out of the action he intended to take.
Her heart stuttered in her chest and she tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. She wanted to stop him to spare him whatever suffering was coming, but stopping him was futile, she could tell. The only other thing she could do was wall up her own emotions to allow room for his.
She nodded jerkily. “I’ll call Rico. He needs to know first.”
* * *
They went straight back to Spain, rather than going to California.
Pia had a very difficult conversation with her brother while Angelo was barking orders into his own phone.
“You should have told me the minute you knew he’d been here uninvited. Do you know how they behaved toward Poppy?” Rico had never spoken to her so harshly.
“Angelo is not one of them.” She would not allow that comparison. Ever. “Look,” she tried in a more conciliatory tone. “I understand why you’re angry, but it wasn’t my story to tell.”
“Now it is? When everything is going to hell in a handcart? He didn’t even have the mettle to tell me himself?”
“I wanted to do it—”
Rico hung up on her before she could explain.
She didn’t mention Rico’s reaction to Angelo. He was moving beyond damage control into aggressor. His press release dropped while they were in the air and he had a news conference scheduled immediately after they landed. He not only didn’t ask her to stand at his side for it, he sent her to her mother’s.
“I want to be with you,” she argued.
“No, you don’t.”
She caught her breath, hearing it as an accusation until he added, “I want to know you’re insulated from any further acts of aggression. Darius is in custody, but that doesn’t mean Tomas won’t try something.”
Now she would be worried sick about him, standing at a podium like a target, but he was in crisis mode. She didn’t add to his concerns by arguing. She did what she had always done when there were bigger problems to solve. She stepped out of the way.
Going to her parents’ house was no picnic. Her father was in Madrid, which made little difference aside from the fact her mother commented, “I suppose he’ll have to hold a press conference of his own.”
Pia felt rather helpless. “Angelo didn’t mean for this to happen, Mother.”
“Didn’t he?” La Reina asked with a blithe look. “He seems to have been seeking blood this whole time. Why on earth did he insist on that pageant of a wedding otherwise?”
Pia never talked back to her mother, not in an outburst of emotion, but she cried, “That was for our baby! You were on board with a big wedding, too.”
“Pia.” Her mother’s tone dripped with condescension. “That was not the wedding I envisioned for you. This is not the marriage. Especially now.”
“Well, he’s the husband I wanted,” she spat back, shaking at the confrontation while her mother only gave her a faint frown.
“Are you able to take hold of your emotions and discuss damage control?” La Reina stirred cream into her tea, the clatter of her spoon jangling Pia’s nerves.
The man she loved, really, truly, deeply loved, was going through hell. Pia wanted to cry and rage and throw a tantrum, she was so upset for him, but the one thing her mother had taught her was to shove aside that sort of reaction and think logically about what could be done on a practical level.
Dragging in a deep breath, she found her composure and firmly pressed it over her shredded control. “Of course,” she insisted.
“Do you have any influence over him at all?”
She almost lost it again, but managed to hang on to a civil tone. “He is entitled to his outrage, Mother. Were you aware of what his mother was going through when it happened?”
“I barely knew them,” she dismissed. “There was a rumor the stepdaughter had been with the gardener’s son and that’s why she wasn’t out in society. Until this press release, I believed the news reports that she had died after a brief illness.”
“Doesn’t it sicken you that the truth has been covered up? Or are you only upset that we’ve been attached to it?”
“Why are we attached to it, Pia? You’ve never been promiscuous. Have you heard any of the statements he’s made? He loathes what we represent. He is not Poppy or Sorcha, coming into our lives through honest fallibility and with an earnest desire to be one of us. He targeted you. All of this has been orchestrated for maximum damage to more than his brothers. He’s trying to take down the aristocracy.”
“That’s not true.” She didn’t explain that Angelo hadn’t known who she was that first night. Her family still thought they’d been dating in private before the masquerade ball. “His mother was treated horribly,” Pia continued fervently. “If he married me to champion her, I can live with that.” Mostly. Of course she wanted her marriage to be more than that, but at least it was an altruistic motive, not the calculating one her mother was suggesting.
“You continue to possess an unfortunate streak of compassion.” Her mother sighed. “If he wanted help with his battle over his mother, he should have gone about it differently, not seduced you into his scandal. He manipulated you into helping him achieve influence. Now he’s swinging a scythe with the Montero name on it.”
She shook her head, but her mother was sowing a seed of doubt.
“This isn’t justice he’s seeking, it’s vengeance,” her mother continued. “You understand he’s been buying up his brothers’ debts? Placing liens on their properties? Buying stocks in a hostile takeover to force them out? His aim is to ruin them, Pia.”
“So?” Maybe it was a vigilante move, but she didn’t blame him for his ruthless tactics.
“You’re too smart to allow yourself to be used.”
Pia wished she could claim Angelo had married her because he loved her, not that her mother would see any value in such a declaration, but Pia would. No such words had passed their lips, however. And now, all kinds of doubts were prickling to life inside her.
“Do you insist on staying married to him?” her mother asked stiffly.
“Yes.” She wished her voice had come out stronger.
Her mother’s mouth pinched. “Very well. Let’s find our best path forward.”
* * *
Utterly drained, Pia was trying to recover with the cool weight of a lavender eye pillow across her brow. A chamomile tea steeped on the table beside her, but she’d chosen to rest in the front parlor so she would greet Angelo the moment he turned up.
She was snapped out of her doze by the chirp of brakes. Raised voices caused a commotion in the courtyard. It sounded like Angelo and Rico.
She stood up too quickly and had to grasp at the back of the sofa to catch her balance as her head swam. As soon as she was steady, she hurried out the front doors.
Angelo had arrived in a car she didn’t recognize, and Rico had parked behind him on the circular drive. They were standing between the bumpers, car doors open, locked in a
heated exchange.
“It’s my house,” Rico spat. “My wife spent the last year turning it into a home. How dare you jeopardize that?”
“Rico!” Pia trotted down the steps, afraid they would come to blows. “What’s wrong? What happened?” She inserted herself between them.
“His brothers are trying to renege on their sale of the estate,” Rico barked. “Because he’s making a claim on their proceeds from it. And because he stole property they left there. Thanks to you,” Rico added in a sideswipe at her.
“I took what belonged to my mother. Her share of the family fortune, bequeathed to me.” Angelo took Pia’s shoulders to set her aside as he tried to step forward into combat.
Pia slapped her hand onto his chest, keeping him from advancing, but the ire in him nearly bowled her over.
“Make them a settlement for it. Make this go away,” Rico demanded, gaze locked with Angelo’s.
“I don’t want it to go away. I want them to rot in hell. If you don’t think they should, you can rot there with them.”
“At the expense of my wife and children?” Rico was outraged.
“Angelo, please,” Pia begged, as caught between them emotionally as she was physically. “Please calm down and let’s discuss this rationally.”
“Oh, there’s a surprise, coming from you.” He brushed her off him, taking a step back so the verbal and physical rejection was equally devastating. “Let’s be rational then,” he said to Rico with scathing sarcasm. “You bought that estate at a bargain price in a backroom deal. You pay the settlement they want.”
“Angelo.”
She was genuinely shocked and appalled at the vindictiveness spewing out of him. Distantly she understood that he must have been through a lot today, but her mother’s comments seemed to hold more water as she saw how much thirst for punishment was in him.
“That’s not fair. Listen, I’m not saying your brothers are innocent, but don’t confuse their crimes with your father’s. Should they be held to account for his actions? Do you want our child judged on the way you’re behaving? That means you have to pay for your father’s crimes, too. Don’t be like them,” she pleaded. “Stop this cycle of hatred.”
“Why? Because it’s inconvenient for you? So you can go on living in your damned ivory tower, ignoring what my mother went through? You’re all the damned same! Of all the women on all the rooftops, I had to get the one who thinks preserving this—” he flung a hand toward the villa “—is more important than common decency.”
“Who the hell are you to talk about decency after the way you targeted her to pursue a vendetta?” Rico demanded.
Angelo choked out a humorless laugh, his gaze careening into her own.
As their gazes caught and clashed, his stare hardened. He seemed to search into her soul, seeing all the insecurities and doubts her mother had planted inside her. Now Rico was making the same accusation and Pia knew she shouldn’t give those charges any weight, but she was looking for reassurance in Angelo’s expression and seeing only a flinch of angry contempt.
And a flash of hurt that was so profound it speared her like a paralyzing poisoned dart.
“Angelo.” Her lips were numb as she moved jerkily forward to set a hand on his arm.
He pulled away, his profile cast in iron.
“Angelo, I love you,” she whispered, voice faint because she had never said the words before. Her throat was nothing but sandpaper, her chest a broken shell. She didn’t know how to offer her heart when it was such a tender, thin-skinned little thing. It was new and delicate as butterfly wings, beating in her cupped hands.
“Don’t.” His head went back in recoil. “Even if it were true, how long would it last?”
Even if it were true? His rejection of her feelings was so shockingly typical, it knocked the breath clean out of her.
“I’m never going to be one of you. I don’t want to be.”
“I’m not one of them, either. You know I’m not,” she choked, stricken that he would lump her in with those horrid people who’d failed to ask questions and had turned a blind eye, leaving his mother to her suffering.
“No, you’re special, Pia. You are. Far better than I deserve.” His gaze came back, resolute. “You know it. Your family knows it. I’ve always known my illegitimate hands shouldn’t be handling the fine china. You deserve better than me, Pia. You genuinely do.” His voice became agonizingly gentle even as he dismissed every tender moment that had bound them together. “I can’t bring you down with me. It’s only going to get worse. Turns out money does not buy respectability.” His eyes were shadowed with futility. “Best to end it here and now, before I do any more damage.”
When he turned away, she lifted a hand, feet rooted with shock. She didn’t realize he was getting into the car and leaving until the engine started and he pulled away.
Then her breastbone fractured and her throat strangled on a tormented, “No—” but he was already shooting through the gate and gone.
“He’s right. You’re better off without him,” Rico said, grasping her arm, trying to hug her. “We’ll look after you. And the baby.”
Ice formed around her, stiffening her joints, making her brother’s attempt to comfort her an awkward, unwelcome embrace. She wanted Angelo to hold her and look after her and their baby. She couldn’t breathe. She had laid herself bare to the man she loved and he’d left.
No one would ever love her. Ever.
“I’ll take you inside,” Rico said.
“No.” Pia withdrew into her protective casing the way one of her beloved hermit crabs cringed back into its borrowed shell. She would need a bigger one to hold this amount of heartbreak. She didn’t know how she would carry the weight of it, but that was another day’s job.
“Go home to Poppy,” she managed to say. “She’ll be worried. I’ll sell my house to pay your legal bills. You won’t lose your home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It makes perfect sense,” she said with one of her well-practiced expressions of cool reason. The profound loneliness washing over her was as familiar as returning to a big, empty house. “This was my error in judgment. Let me make amends.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FROM THE MOMENT Angelo had been forced to release his mother’s story, he’d been in agony. All his helpless, furious guilt at being unable to help her, or prevent her early death, had risen up to turn him on a spit of fire.
He hadn’t wanted Pia anywhere near the ugliness of his news conference. The fresh accusations and blatant lies Tomas had told, trying to absolve Darius from his crime along with their father, had made him sick.
And ashamed. He was so damned ashamed to have one single drop of their blood in him. Even more chagrined that he wanted his wife by his side while he was standing knee-deep in family closet filth.
He’d had the strength to insulate her from the brunt of negative attention they’d been forced to endure, but after weathering that first blast, he had wanted only one thing. To get back to Pia. To crawl into the bubble of calm she always provided—not that he believed all his problems would disappear, but they would be bearable, he’d thought, if he could only hold her.
Rico had caught up to him in the courtyard before he’d even climbed from his car. Of course Tomas was going after the house, claiming some sort of conspiracy between them to defraud him of the jewelry. Angelo’s brothers were grasping at any straw within reach.
Angelo hadn’t been at his rational best. Nothing in him had wanted to give an inch to anyone. When Pia had tried to reason with him, he hadn’t been able to see through his haze. What he had glimpsed, however, had been a harrowing doubt in her eyes. Justified qualms over why he had married her.
Her lack of faith in him had nearly cut him in half, but what did he expect? That she would take the side of someone his brothers were calling an “abomination
”?
When she had then claimed to love him, he hadn’t been able to take it in. Hadn’t been able to accept it, given the ugliness he had brought into her life by forcing their marriage. There had been a part of him that had seized the chance to marry her because of her name. He had wanted vengeance above anything else.
He didn’t deserve to be loved for any of that.
Stop the cycle of hatred, she had said, and he had realized how twisted he had become. If he kept it up, he would be no better than the darkness he had come from.
Angelo reached the airfield in a daze, feeling as though he was bleeding out and had to do something, anything, to stanch the flow. He called his lawyer as he climbed aboard his jet.
“Tell Tomas to stop going after Rico’s house. I’ll put the proceeds from the sale of the jewelry into a trust until ownership is established.” Tomas would accept the deal since his attempt to rewrite the estate sale would be expensive and he had even less chance of winning that than he did in proving the jewelry was his.
“The señora isn’t traveling with us?” the attendant asked.
“No.” He was going back to view the damage at the house. “Double,” he ordered as his customary scotch was poured.
He brooded and drank until he landed. Then he walked through a house with a corner blown out where he and Pia had sat for their engagement photo. Plastic sheets hung over the space. The open plan interior had been stripped down to subfloor and studs, but there were still scorch marks on the ceiling.
The rest of the house was intact. Angelo went up to the room where Pia had joined him for only a few short days, but the whole villa felt imbued with her presence. He instantly knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep in that bed without her. Wouldn’t be able to live here without thinking of her every minute of every day.
He would think of her regardless, no matter where he ended up.