A muscle jerked in the base of his jaw and he didn’t answer for a beat. Then, ‘It’s what we agreed.’
Her throat thickened with the threat of tears—tears she refused to let fall. ‘And you’ll take Prim’Aqua to devastate Carlo? You’ll take it and you’ll use me to hurt him. Yes?’
He didn’t answer and, quite demented by her grief, she stood and shoved at his chest, her hair whipping her cheeks as she pushed him. And he stayed where he was, impenetrable and strong, and then finally he tilted his head, just a tiny movement.
‘Yes.’
Silence fell, condemnatory and grief-laced.
‘And you can’t even see how wrong that is, can you?’
* * *
Antonio gripped her wrists, holding her hands still against his chest. Her words were like blades in his side. ‘I want Prim’Aqua,’ he said, as though it were simple. He didn’t need to be looking at his wife to know she was close to tears. He heard it in her voice, when she spoke next.
‘More than you want me?’
‘I want you both,’ he said finally. ‘I want you, I want this baby. And, yes, I want Prim’Aqua. That was our agreement.’
‘I know that.’ Her voice sounded husky, scored by sadness. ‘But we were different people six months ago. I thought we were going to try to make this marriage real—’
‘In what way is it not?’ he interrupted, wishing he hadn’t turned to look at her when he was confronted with such obvious despair on her features.
‘There’s no love here,’ she said simply. ‘Not from you.’
Her words filtered through his brain and something like an alarm bell sounded. ‘Are you saying you’ve fallen in love with me?’ he asked, incredulous, surprised, and not sure what else.
‘Yes.’ It was a simple answer, one that made his heart jump and panic all at once. ‘I love you,’ she said, and there was a part of him that rejoiced at that, and a larger part that wanted her to take the words back because they were undeserved and unasked for. Because they complicated a situation that should have been straightforward—an agreement between two parties, just like he was used to. ‘But I can’t do this.’
‘Do what?’
‘You can’t actually think this marriage will work, with you hating my brother like this? With you intent on destroying him, determined to hold onto your revenge and your anger and your hatred. Not if there’s a chance you’re going to poison my child against him.’
The bottom was falling out of Antonio’s world. Her words might as well have been spoken in Swahili for all the sense they made. There were very few facts in life he knew for certain, and one of those was that the diSalvo and Herrera families were enemies, to the death. He had no compassion for Carlo, no room for forgiveness for Giacomo. They deserved whatever fate he could conspire to give them.
And Amelia? What of her pain and hurt?
He faced the prospect of Amelia walking away from him and he wanted to assume super-human form, to build a wall as high as the sun to keep her in his home. To trap her? Dios, had he not already done that with this marriage?
Apparently not, if she was threatening to leave him. ‘Your reasons for being married to me haven’t changed,’ he pointed out, falling back on his skills as a negotiator to silence the panicked drumming of his heart. ‘We want the same things for our child—’
‘No, we don’t.’ She fixed him with a level stare, icy determination in her own eyes now. ‘I want my kids to have what I never did. I don’t want them to live with uncertainty and insecurity, doubt, and a lack of love. And I’m sure as heck not prepared to bring my child into a war zone.’
Her words cut him to the core. ‘You and I aren’t a war zone! Look at how well things work between us!’
She sucked in a shallow breath. ‘Because we haven’t been tested! We work because we’ve existed as an island, totally separate from the reality of our situation. But we can’t raise our child in a void! I won’t deny them their heritage, and the love they can know from my family. You have no one left—no parents, no siblings, nothing you can offer them by way of an extended family. Carlo and Giacomo are it.’
‘Better to have no family than those two bastardos—’
Her eyes fluttered shut, her lashes two dark fans against her pale cheeks. ‘I can’t accept that.’
‘You have already accepted it,’ he pointed out softly. ‘You married me and you knew how I felt, and what I wanted. Carlo was bound to find out about us at some point, so now he knows. This is not the end of the world.’
She made a scoffing noise. ‘He’s devastated. He thinks you’re using me to avenge your father. He thinks our marriage is just the next step in your revenge plan.’ Her skin paled visibly. ‘And the worst thing is, he’s right.’
‘Madre de Dios, you cannot actually believe this is all about revenge.’
‘Not all of it, no,’ she conceded softly. ‘But it’s a part of our marriage, and it shouldn’t be.’
He ignored the compulsion to point out that their marriage had been born out of a desire for revenge—the words were lodged inside him, yet he couldn’t speak them.
‘Our marriage is immune from this.’
Scepticism showed in her expression. ‘So you’re telling me I can walk away from you without consequence? That you’ll let me go and not set out to destroy Carlo?’
He ground his teeth as he processed her request and finally shook his head. ‘No. The only thing stopping me from eviscerating him is you.’
‘No, not me,’ she said flatly. ‘The fact I’m willing to go along with this charade.’
‘You just said you love me,’ he responded tautly, ignoring the throbbing deep in his chest. ‘How can you then call our marriage a charade?’
‘Because love doesn’t exist in a black hole. My love means nothing without yours in return.’
His eyes sparked with hers but he didn’t give her what she needed—and his words would have been meaningless, in any event. Meaningless when he was showing her with his actions how little he cared for her.
Sadness for the path he was set upon curdled her blood. ‘Can’t you see that you’re pursuing revenge even when it’s destroying your life? You are letting this feud become the whale to your Ahab.’
His eyes locked to hers and his chest felt as though a slab of bricks had been laid over it. ‘I am doing what is needed.’
She hissed like a cat in an alley. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! To what? Avenge your father? I’m sorry, Antonio, but he’s dead.’ She winced apologetically. ‘And I don’t think he’d want you to use his death as an excuse to ruin your life. I don’t think he’d want you to destroy your marriage in his name.’
He straightened his shoulders, staring at her down the bridge of his nose, nostrils flaring with his attempt to stay calm. She was his wife, but now she was taking it too far. ‘You do not know anything about him.’
‘I know that he was a man who took you to the park on weekends. Who cleared his schedule to read you books, to play with you. I know that he was a man who loved you and wanted you to be happy. Don’t you owe it to him to try to move on from this?’
A beat of silence passed, heavy with her words, her hopes, his darkness. And then he spoke clearly, coldly and with finality. ‘I am doing this for my father. I promised myself I would make Carlo pay for what he did and now I have the means of doing so. Do you think this won’t make me happy?’
She took a step back, her expression like a wounded animal.
‘Even when that means I’ll leave?’
He stared at her, his eyes roaming her face, and then he shrugged—he appeared so cold, so measured, when his insides were shredding. ‘If you truly love me, then you will understand what motivates me. You will accept this anger is a part of me, and you won’t seek to change me.’
‘I want to help you!’ she denied hotly. ‘No one should
live their life with so much hatred. This is so pointless! So futile! I’m not saying you and Carlo should become best friends, heaven forbid, but can’t you at least try to put the past in the past?’
‘It is a part of who I am,’ he said simply. ‘As sure as I have two arms and legs, hating him is in my soul.’
‘And loving him is in mine. I won’t have my child be torn between us—feeling as though he’s betraying you because he adores his uncle.’
‘I’ve told you, I have no intention of letting our child be caught up in this.’
‘How can you possibly prevent it?’ She didn’t wait for an answer . ‘And what of me? You said last night you’d never do anything that would upset me. Can’t you see how this is pulling me apart?’
A muscle spasmed low in his jaw. ‘Have I spoken to you of your brother since we married? Have I brought up our feud, even once?’
She blinked, her expression one of bafflement. ‘You haven’t needed to! It’s been in every conversation with us, every day! Why do you think I never speak of them?’
‘Because they are nothing to us!’
She ground her teeth together. ‘It’s my father. He took me in when I was completely alone—’
‘And you were miserable with him! That’s why you hid away in that tiny village...’
‘Yes, I wanted a different life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love them!’ She closed her eyes for a moment, sucked in a breath, hoping it would breathe strength into her. ‘It doesn’t mean I’ll let you destroy them.’
His eyes narrowed and the threat she was making struck something in his chest, like a match to petrol. ‘I don’t need your permission.’
‘You need my shares,’ she pointed out.
‘No. I have enough to ruin him, remember? To make him crumble into nothingness. Prim’Aqua is my first preference, but without it I will still succeed, querida.’
‘Don’t you dare call me that,’ she spat. ‘Not when you can be so ruthless and vile.’
His face flashed with surprise at her insults, and when she pressed her palm to her stomach, his eyes dropped to the gesture.
‘I can’t do this.’ She reached for her wedding band and slid it off her finger, then her engagement ring—that had belonged to his grandmother. She held them out to him but he refused to take them, so she placed them on the table instead.
‘I can’t be your wife, I can’t raise this baby with you, and I can’t give you Prim’Aqua.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Our deal’s off, Antonio. Destroy him if you will, but know that I will never, ever be able to forgive you if you do. Know that you will turn my love to hatred. It’s your decision.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HE SWORE UNDER his breath, watching as she disappeared into the wardrobe of their room. The last few minutes seemed like a dream—he could barely believe she was threatening to end their marriage.
She was upset, her shoulders shifting with silent tears, and his gut twisted with the knowledge that he’d done that to her. He’d hurt her, he’d brought her into something she hadn’t even known existed.
But why? Why had this feud torn him apart, fuelled Carlo’s actions, and yet Amelia had known nothing of it? Was it simply that she’d shown no interest in the business side of her family? Or was there something more to it? How could she fail to see how deep these wounds ran?
Her face, when she’d told him she was leaving, had been so full of certainty, resignation, as though that was the end of it. As though he wouldn’t be able to change her mind.
That thought alone galvanised him into action—he couldn’t accept the finality of that. He pushed his legs forward, carrying himself towards her, pushing into the large dressing room to find her taking clothes from drawers and laying them in a duffel bag.
And he groaned because, no matter what he felt for her family, he didn’t want to lose her.
‘Don’t go,’ he said simply, moving towards her and wrapping his arms around her waist. She swallowed a sob then, and it was a sound that tore him apart.
‘Why should I stay?’ she asked after a moment, pulling away and looking at him with a challenge. She reached behind her for another stack of shirts and pushed them into the bag.
‘Because you’re my wife,’ he said, as though it were simple.
‘Yes. And I love you.’ She nodded, but it was clear she didn’t welcome that fact. ‘But I have a track record of loving people when they can’t love me back. And it destroys me—just like it did with my mother. If I stay, and pour all of myself into this marriage and our family, knowing you will never be able to give me what I need, then I’ll be broken. And I won’t be broken again.’
Her words landed against him like bricks. He stared at her, with no idea what he could say to change her mind.
‘Tell me you love me,’ she said softly, her eyes challenging him. ‘Tell me you love me enough to forget your hatred for Carlo. Tell me you love me enough to leave the past alone and concentrate on our future instead.’
Silence. Her words were foreign, dipped in arsenic. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, soften in his resolve to destroy her brother. Never. Not even with his dying breath.
There had to be another way to get through to her. He reached for her gently, bringing her to him, and kissed her, intending to seduce her into seeing sense—or at least dependence. But he tasted her salty tears in his mouth and wrenched himself away, spinning on his heel and stalking across the dressing room.
That wasn’t right either.
‘I want you to stay,’ he said simply, the words torn from him.
‘Not enough.’ She slid her feet into shoes and looked around for her handbag. She was tired—she wore no make-up and her skin was so pale, her eyes red from the sting of tears. ‘And I won’t stay for what you’re offering.’ She looked so incredibly haunted, so miserable yet so brave as she glared at him with every appearance of strength and determination, that the heart in his chest splintered apart, shattering into thousands of pieces.
‘Stay because you want to,’ he said softly.
She recoiled as though he’d physically hit her and his chest heaved.
‘Please, stay.’
But she shook her head, and bit down on her lip. Her hands pressed to her stomach, and she moved towards the door. ‘I’ll let you know, when... I’ll message you.’
The idea of hearing about the birth of his child through a text message sliced through his soul. How could he possibly bear to be distant from such an event? How could he be on the outside—not knowing how her delivery was going, not knowing that she was okay, that she was well?
He shook his head, opened his mouth to tell her that wasn’t good enough, but she was gone, and he couldn’t find any words.
What could he possibly say that would change her mind? Nothing.
And so he let her go, when it was the very last thing he wanted.
When it felt as though he were being beaten over the head. He let her go because he knew it would be best for her. And she deserved that.
* * *
Three days later and he hadn’t acted. He held the shares in his portfolio and the ability to crush Carlo, and yet he still hadn’t dropped the axe. Renowned for his ruthless instincts, he was hesitating at the final hurdle of a plan that he’d formed long ago. Long before he’d even met Amelia and seen her smile.
And the reason was simple.
Every time he imagined the crushing destruction of diSalvo Industries, instead of the rush of jubilation he’d expected, he felt only pain. Pain at how Amelia would respond, at how she’d judge him. Pain at how it would be the death knell to any future with her and their child.
And so he waited, and he wondered about her.
He didn’t go to work. He had no interest in his office. Instead, he stalked through his home, seeing her in every room, the memories—though happy—slicing through him with thei
r perfection. She had been everywhere, taken over everything, so that after such a short time he felt her absence completely.
The fresh flowers she had arranged in every room were beginning to wilt—that never happened while she was in the house. She always changed them before they could grow limp.
Antonio was a man who had rebuilt his crumbling family empire from the ground up; he didn’t take defeat easily. But this pain was unlike any he had ever encountered.
He had failed in the one thing that mattered to him almost as much as destroying the diSalvos. He had wanted to be a good father, a great husband, yet he’d driven his wife away.
He closed his eyes and tried to picture her in Bumblebee Cottage, imagined her with all those fairy lights and her pregnant stomach, and he cursed loud and clear into the emptiness of their home. Outside, a bleak winter’s day threatened rain, just like that first night he’d gone to Amelia, back in England. Only then he’d been so sure of himself, sure of his plan of attack.
Now? He knew only one thing with certainty: he couldn’t let this be the end of it. He couldn’t accept that their marriage was over.
* * *
Amelia would have liked to stay in bed all day, every day. She would have liked to ignore the demands of her body, to refuse to eat, to sob until her broken heart finally grieved and became light again.
Were it not for the baby inside her hugely rounded stomach, she would have indulged every single maudlin fantasy and abandoned herself completely to the grief that had saturated her soul.
She would have wept until her tear ducts dried up and her throat was red raw.
Only for her baby did she give up on self-indulgent mourning. For their baby, on a cold yet sunny winter’s day, she forced herself to eat a piece of toast and a banana, to sip a cup of tea and then to dress warmly so she could go for a walk.
A small walk, she promised herself, and then she could go back to bed. Curl up as though the day weren’t happening, and ignore the fact that in a matter of weeks she would have a baby, and would have to face the rest of her life without Antonio.
Spaniard's Baby of Revenge Page 16