She started to zip her case but Christian wrenched it from her, whipping it away and hurtling it to the floor with a slam. She didn’t think she had ever seen him so angry. Not that anger was the correct word for the wildness surrounding him.
She could hardly blame him. She was destroying the future they had planned. But that had been a future before she’d fallen in love with him.
He gripped her shoulders. ‘We made a promise to each other and our child to be a family. You’re breaking that promise. I will not agree to any divorce.’
‘Why are you being so unreasonable?’ she demanded, her own temper rising back up. ‘You’re still going to get what you want. You’re still going to be a father.’
His hands slid off her shoulders and balled into fists. ‘Why are you doing this?’
Because I love you. And I know you will never fall in love with me. And to continue living with you knowing I will never have your love will eventually destroy me just as it destroyed your mother and my father. But not to their extent. Never to their extent. Our child will never suffer for it, I swear.
But the words went unsaid. If she thought for a second there was a chance that in the future his feelings could develop as hers had, she would say them.
What kind of idiot fell in love with a man incapable of returning it?
Had she been fool enough to hope his feelings would change as hers had? No, she hadn’t been stupid enough to think that. But still she’d fallen for him.
‘What do you think the press are going to say when they learn our marriage barely lasted two months?’ he asked, his voice cold and terse.
‘Let them think and write what they like. I have finally grown an immunity to them.’ Three months ago, the thought of them crucifying her for the whole of Italy’s delectation had made her want to vomit. Now...let them write what they liked. The fear she had felt of the press since she’d been seventeen had gone. She didn’t know when it had happened, only that it had.
She was an adult. She controlled her life, not the press.
‘And what about when our child grows up and reads about it?’ he snarled.
‘Then we will tell our child the truth. There’s been enough lies.’
Every feature on his face was taut but his eyes were hard. ‘If you’re so determined to go, then go. Take the time to think. When you get back we can discuss this like rational adults and find a way to thrash out a marriage that suits us both.’
‘There’s no way thrashing anything out will change my mind. We’re over.’
He got back to his feet and strolled past her and into the spare room. His room. He’d never wanted to share hers. He shut the door behind him with a slam.
Blinking back tears which served no useful purpose other than to blind her, Alessandra scraped her hair into a tight ponytail, carried her suitcase into the living area and quickly gathered her work stuff together.
Dio, Dio, Dio, get me out of here before he comes back out. Please, before my strength deserts me and I throw myself at his feet and beg for his love.
She left the building and walked straight into a media scrum.
Dozens of paparazzi swarmed her, closing in, leaving her trapped between them and the door she had already closed.
‘Alessandra, when is the baby due?’
‘Alessandra, how do you feel about becoming a mother?’
‘Alessandra, was the baby planned?’
She never got the chance even to think of a response or a way to escape. The door behind her flew open with such force she lost her footing. Were it not for the strong arms there to catch her, she would surely have fallen. As it was, Christian gathered her to him, protecting her with his strength, and marched her and her luggage deftly through the mob and into the back of the waiting cab.
Her last glimpse of him was when he tapped the top of the car to indicate the driver should leave, turned on his heel and marched back through the swarm, parting it as if he were Moses and they were the Red Sea.
* * *
Christian poured himself another bourbon.
He should check himself into a hotel and out of Alessandra’s apartment. She’d spelt out in no uncertain terms that this was her home. Not theirs. His homes weren’t enough for her.
He wasn’t enough.
Did it really matter if they divorced? He’d still have his legal rights with regard to their baby. He would still be a father. Alessandra would never deny him access; that he knew with as deep a certainty as he knew anything. She would do the right thing by all of them.
So why did it feel as if his world had toppled upside down?
And why did he feel so full and nauseous?
He finished his drink and poured another. The bottle was now empty.
Yes. Time to leave.
The freedom and space he’d always cherished so much but had gladly sacrificed for his unborn baby was his again to do with as he pleased.
Under normal circumstances he would hunt down Rocco, Stefan or Zayed and talk them into a night out. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Not for any of them. Rocco would sooner spit on him than see him. Stefan had recently shocked them all by marrying Clio—he hadn’t seen that coming—while Zayed was spending increasing time in Gazbiyaa, preparing to take over the throne.
All their lives were changing.
He went to grab his briefcase, which he’d left by Alessandra’s corner office. Instead of picking it up and leaving, he found himself sitting at her desk, flipping through the portfolios of her work.
As much as he admired all her work, it was their wedding album he spent the most time looking through. These were the unofficial ones taken by Alessandra, a timeline from the start of their wedding week, when their first guests had arrived, right up to the moment they’d got on the dance floor for the Kalamatianos. His lips quirked to see a picture of a particularly beautiful but notoriously moody actress smiling for the camera with something black in her teeth.
His heart jolted when he turned the page over to find a montage of photos of the same face. All different angles, all different moods: some smiling, others distant, a couple frowning... One in particular held his attention. The face was staring directly into the camera, a wide, relaxed grin on the face, a soft yet suggestive look in the eyes, as if the person wanted nothing more than to take the photographer to a private room and make love to them.
Not have sex.
Make love.
The subject of the photographs was him.
* * *
Christian pulled up outside Villa Mondelli. Turning off the engine, he stared at it in the same way he had stared at it as a poor eighteen-year-old boy on the cusp of becoming a man. He’d seen lavish splendour before, had walked past the mansions in the most affluent parts of Athens vowing that, one day, he too would live in a home like these. Villa Mondelli was the first of that particular type he’d actually been invited into. Not only invited to cross the threshold but to stay there for a week—and many more weeks later on throughout his life, but of course at the time he wasn’t to know that. The Mondellis had welcomed him, Stefan and Zayed into their home and treated him as if he were their equal, as if he were more than a dirt-poor gutter rat raised by a single woman with callused hands.
Now, fourteen years later, with homes every bit as opulent as the villa and wealth beyond his dreams, he still felt that same tug in his heart. But this tug was for Alessandra.
When he’d first visited he’d been full of envy for the people who lived there, brought up with such easy wealth. Or so it had seemed to his eyes.
Alessandra had lived in this house almost her whole life, brought here when her father had lost his own house and abdicated responsibility for his children onto his own father. Alessandra had been a baby. She’d grown up feeling responsible for her mother’s death, shunned
by her father and raised by an often austere man who’d thought his child-rearing days long finished with. Her only source of love had been her older brother whom, despite all her grumbles at his interfering, she worshipped. For much of Alessandra’s life in this home, that same brother had been absent, away in the US studying, graduating to become a workaholic.
More often than not, her only company in this vast house were the staff, people sharing a roof with her because they were paid to.
All the envy he’d felt fourteen years ago had gone, replaced with the sad knowledge that even the richest of people could lead the poorest of lives.
Look at him. He, Christian Markos, was now regarded as one of the richest men in the world. He had all the wealth and all the trappings such wealth brought, but in his heart he was still poor.
It was only now, at the age of thirty-two, that he’d discovered the path to true richness.
He hadn’t even placed a foot on the bottom step when Rocco answered the door.
Christian looked up at him. ‘I’m here to see Alessandra.’ He hadn’t seen her in a fortnight. They’d exchanged a couple of text messages. She’d agreed to meet him in Milan for her next obstetrician appointment, but until then she wanted some space.
He’d needed space too, to get his head together. To get his heart together.
Rocco looked him up and down. ‘And what if she doesn’t want to see you?’
‘Has she said that?’ A puff of relief escaped from him. His hunch had been right. For all Alessandra’s proclamations that she’d rather live in a convent than stay with her brother, this was the first place Christian had looked when she’d failed to return to her apartment after her Tokyo trip.
He’d been there waiting for her.
A long pause. ‘No. She doesn’t need to.’ Rocco made no effort to move.
‘Either let me in or I let myself in.’
Now Rocco’s face did show some animation, a snarl flitting over it. ‘You enter my home when I say you do.’
Christian had had enough. He was there to see his wife, not debase himself by getting into a fight with his brother-in-law. Raising himself to his full height, he climbed the steps and stood eye to eye with him. ‘I know Alessandra is your sister but she is my wife and the baby she is carrying in her womb is mine—mine—and I will fight with every breath in my body to protect them. I am going to see her whether you like it or not, so, are you going to let me the easy way or the hard way?’
He couldn’t believe it had come to this, two old friends squaring up to each other. If he wasn’t so heartsick about his wife there would be some room in his heart to mourn the death of a friendship he’d valued so highly and had hoped, until this precise moment, could one day be mended.
To his surprise, Rocco’s stance relaxed a fraction. He looked him over, nodding slowly, his eyes thawing. ‘She’s in the summer room.’
Christian waited for the catch. When no catch seemed forthcoming, he headed off in the direction he remembered.
‘Memento vivere,’ Rocco called out.
The words made him pause in his tracks. He turned his head and supplied, ‘Remember to live.’
Finally a smile attached itself to Rocco’s face. ‘The best life to live is with the woman you love, si?’
He agreed with a nod. ‘Living without the woman you love is no life.’
Rocco laughed. ‘My sister is going to run rings around you.’
‘She already is.’ As quickly as Christian’s cheeks raised up into a quick grin, he felt a fragmented piece of him reattach itself.
Now to find his wife and see if all the other broken pieces could be fixed too.
He found her curled up on the daybed, a cross between a chaise longue and a sofa, reading a glossy magazine. Beneath the simple black dress she wore, he could see the definite rounding of her belly, safely protecting their baby in its confines.
He would give his life to keep Alessandra and their baby safe from harm.
She glanced up, her eyes widening to see him there. ‘Christian.’ Her voice sounded hoarse. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to bring you home.’
She raised a brow. ‘Home?’
‘Home. With me. Where you belong.’
Sighing, she put the magazine down and swung her legs round, dipping her head. ‘I told you I wanted some space.’ Her words were muffled behind the sheath of her hair that had fallen in front of her face.
‘You’ve had enough space from me to last you forever.’
‘Nothing’s changed...’
‘Everything’s changed.’ Crouching down on his haunches before her, he gently swiped her hair away and placed a finger under her chin.
Her gaze met his for a brief moment, honeyed eyes wide with pain.
‘Answer me one question. Do you love me?’
‘Are you trying to humiliate me? Is that why you’ve come here?’
‘I found the pictures you took of me.’
Her mouth curled in bitterness. ‘Then you already know the answer.’
‘I want to hear it from your lips.’
‘Why? Let me have some dignity, please.’
‘Because I’ve never heard the words before.’
A glimmer of shock passed over her. She sat up straight and looked at him—really looked at him. ‘Never?’
‘Never.’ Not from his mother. Not from any of the scores of women he’d had throughout the years, which wasn’t surprising, considering he would leave before the beds had cooled. ‘Please, agapi mou, if the words are true then say them.’
She’d lost so much colour he feared she would faint. But that was not Alessandra’s style. This was not a woman who wilted under pressure. Her lips clamped together, her eyes brimming with tears, he watched her fight to stop from falling.
‘Shall I make it easy for you?’ he said quietly. ‘How about if I were to tell you that I love you? Would that make it easier for you to say the words?’
Her chest hitched as she gave a sharp nod, still not speaking.
‘I love you.’
One solitary tear did break free, trickling down her cheek. He wiped it with his thumb.
‘I’ve spent many hours these past couple of weeks looking at those photos you took of me. You see something in me no one else can. The thing I never wanted you or anyone to see.’
‘What thing?’ she whispered.
‘The man inside. The gutter rat who grew up feeling dirty and unworthy and unlovable.’
‘You’re not...’
He placed a finger to her lips, though the sound of her outrage warmed the coldness inside him. ‘I’ve been fighting to stop you getting too close since before our wedding night because I knew you were so near to seeing what’s inside me. I thought it would repel you as it does my mother. I knew when you spoke of love in our apartment what you were trying to tell me, but I refused to listen. I didn’t think I deserved your love. I was scared that to fall in love with you would be to destroy you—and you, Alessandra Mondelli, whom I so wish would be Alessandra Markos, are the most precious person in the world to me. Without you, I am nothing. I accept that I’m not good enough for you...’
‘Will you stop saying that?’ She dug her nails into his skin. ‘You are not a gutter rat. You are...everything. Everything you’ve achieved with your life, everything you’ve done... If anyone’s undeserving, it’s me.’
‘To me, you are a princess. You deserve all the richness this world can bring, agapi mou, and I will do everything in my power to give it to you—if you’ll let me. I love you and I don’t want to live another day without you.’
Alessandra felt a whoosh of air leave her body. He loved her?
He loved her?
He loved her!
He placed her hands to
his chest. She could feel his heartbeat thrumming wildly beneath his shirt. ‘I thought I could compartmentalise our marriage in the same way I compartmentalise my relationship with my mother. She lives in a corner of my life, safely hidden away from everyone so she cannot hurt me or anyone else. I told myself I would marry you to become a father and not a husband but I was wrong—I wanted you as much as the baby and was desperate to make you mine. I tried to compartmentalise you, not because I was scared of hurting you, but because deep down I knew you had the power to hurt me.’
‘I have the power to hurt you?’ she whispered, gazing at the man she loved so much.
‘More than you could ever know. Throughout my childhood I wanted nothing more than to make my mother proud and for her to love me. The power she had over me, the power to hurt me... I swore no one else would ever have that power. But then you came into my life and nestled straight into my heart and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I used to fear that falling in love with someone would curse them, make them turn into her. But you could never be like her. She took her heartbreak and bitterness out on me. You would never do that to our child. There hasn’t been anyone else since that first night we had and I know there never will be. Only you.’
He brushed a thumb over her lips. ‘I was desperate for you to sell your apartment, not because I thought it made sense in any way but because I felt excluded from it.’ He allowed himself a crooked smile. ‘I was jealous of an apartment.’
She leaned forward and rubbed the tip of her nose to his, unable to believe this was really happening.
From feeling as if she would never feel the sun on her face again she could feel its beams spread through her.
He loved her!
‘I was also afraid that if you had a bolt hole to escape to you would be more tempted to use it,’ he continued. ‘I should have guessed you would use this place as your bolt hole.’
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