‘You must have known he’d taken over Di Agnio Enterprises,’ Meghan pointed out in what she hoped was a reasonable tone, though she felt like clawing the other woman’s eyes out. ‘It seems you are not such good friends with my husband as you thought.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Emilia acknowledged with an icy smile. ‘I never would have imagined him latching on to a woman like you.’ She turned to Alessandro, touched her fingers to her lips and boldly pressed them to Alessandro’s mouth. ‘Ciao, bello.’
He stood still, a muscle ticking in his jaw, his eyes both blazing and cold.
Then she left.
Meghan stared down at her virtually untouched souvlaki. The silence stretched between them, thin and taut as a wire, oppressive as a leaden weight.
‘I guess she’s not too happy you’re married,’ she finally managed, trying to keep her voice light and amused and failing miserably.
Alessandro’s eyes and voice were flat, cold. ‘She wouldn’t be. Emilia and I used to be lovers.’
Icy shock drenched her, left her near to trembling. It didn’t surprise her—of course she’d guessed as much—but it still hurt.
And Alessandro’s cold, calculating delivery of such a fact hurt even more.
‘Used to be,’ she finally repeated, lifting her chin. ‘That’s what’s important now.’
Alessandro’s mouth turned up in a mocking smile. ‘How fortunate I am to have such an understanding wife,’ he remarked lightly. ‘And such sensitivity will surely come in useful, considering I’d slept with at least half the women at the cocktail party the other night.’
Meghan’s vision blurred, whether from tears or shock she didn’t know.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ she whispered, though it felt as if it mattered very much.
‘Oh, good,’ Alessandro said musingly. ‘Because it’s probably more like two-thirds.’
‘I know you were a playboy, a womaniser, Alessandro,’ Meghan said through gritted teeth. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I know you’ll be faithful.’
‘Do you?’ he mocked, and she gripped the edge of the table, struggling to hold onto her composure, her calm.
She wanted to break down completely.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she finally asked in a low voice. ‘You’re deliberately trying to provoke me. To hurt me.’
Alessandro leaned forward, his eyes glittering with malicious intent. ‘But gattina,’ he said softly, ‘I’m showing you so you know not to be hurt. This is who I was—who I am. You can’t change me. You can’t save me.’
Right then Meghan didn’t even want to try.
She barely remembered the rest of the meal. She must have eaten and drunk, because their plates were cleared away, her glass refilled. She lived in a shocked daze, wondering why Alessandro hurt her so much, why she let him.
Surely enough was enough?
She couldn’t keep doing this.
It wasn’t worth it.
But I love him.
Meghan had wanted power for herself this time, had married for it, but she’d become its victim instead. Again.
Alessandro’s victim.
The pain of that realisaton sliced her soul in two—was worse than anything she’d known before.
And she didn’t know what to do.
They walked back to their villa in silence, the air wrapping them in a warm, sultry blanket, so different from the shattered atmosphere that lay between them like a thousand splinters of hurt emotion, devastated feeling.
Back in the villa, Meghan walked on wooden legs to the bedroom. She undressed, slipped into her nightgown—another silky confection that made nonsense of what was between them now.
She lay still in bed, her eyes hot and dry.
She was past tears.
It was too late for them, anyway.
Alessandro came in after a little while. He peeled off his clothes and slipped between the cool sheets, his back, an expanse of indifference, towards her.
She wouldn’t let it end this way tonight, Meghan thought.
She wouldn’t be a victim.
She wouldn’t run away.
She would take control. She would demand it.
She reached for him, found herself grabbing his shoulders, pulling him over to her. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him hard, in demand.
A brand.
He didn’t respond. She sensed rather than felt his surprise, and after a moment he rolled away from her.
‘No, Meghan. Not like this.’
His rejection, on top of everything else, was too much.
She’d had enough.
‘Yes, like this.’ She pushed him onto his back, smiling as his eyes widened in surprise. She straddled him, her thighs pressed against his manhood, her own eyes blazing.
She felt the answering stir of his own desire, saw the flicker of admiration in his eyes as she sat above him, naked and bold.
She had him in her thrall, in her power. He was splayed beneath her, waiting, wanting.
Then Meghan smiled sadly.
‘I’m not a whore,’ she said softly. ‘And I won’t use a whore’s tricks to bind you to me. I love you. I know you don’t love me. You can run away from that, you can try to make me run, but you can’t change the truth.’
He looked glorious, his chest bare and smooth and brown, his dark hair rumpled against the white linen pillow. His eyes were dark, fathomless, searching.
Then slowly he reached up, held her face in his hands, and brought her lips down to his.
Surrender.
‘Make love to me, Meghan.’ He smiled against her mouth, his hips rocking hers. ‘Make love to me.’
With a small cry of acceptance, she did, letting him fill her, letting herself be filled to overflowing. Letting the physical joy and pleasure be enough—because right now it was all they had.
It was too much to bear. Alessandro lay on his side and watched Meghan sleep, curled up like a child, next to him.
It hurt too much.
He hadn’t asked for her love, hadn’t wanted it.
Hadn’t ever expected it.
Yet now it was his.
Precious, rare, beautiful.
He rolled on his back and closed his eyes. What could he do with such a gift? He couldn’t even begin to know its value, to understand its worth.
He only knew that it was a gift he would lose, utterly, hopelessly, when she discovered the truth.
Had he actually imagined that he could keep it from her? That the denizens of Milan, eager for his blood, his shame, would keep it from her? The few comments she’d heard so far, the innuendoes she’d figured out, were nothing, nothing, to the secrets that remained.
And when she discovered them he knew he’d see disgust instead of tenderness, revulsion instead of compassion. Then she would leave. Even if she didn’t, even if some brand of honour kept her from going, she would leave in the ways that mattered.
Heart, mind, soul.
He couldn’t bear that. It hurt as much as her love did, innocent and ignorant as it was.
So he kept hurting her. He couldn’t help it; it was the only way he knew to protect her from more pain. To protect himself.
And he hated himself for it more than ever.
He hated himself more now than when he’d seen his photograph plastered on a thousand tasteless tabloids, than when he’d joked and drunk and slept his way through a worthless life, than when he’d killed his brother.
And he didn’t see how it could ever get any better.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘MAY I come in?’
Emilia Bentano stood at the doorway of the Milan town house, a heavy designer bag over one shoulder.
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Meghan managed through stiff lips, after the shock of seeing this woman again—at her door—had eased.
‘I know I didn’t come off well in Greece,’ Emilia said. ‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘Are you?’ Meghan doubted it. So why was the wo
man here? To sow more discord between her and Alessandro?
That, she thought grimly, could hardly be done. In the week since they’d returned from Amorphos he’d been aloof, removed. The mask firmly in place. It happened every time their bodies— their souls, their hearts—joined, no matter how briefly.
He drew away; he grew cold. His charm was interspersed with careless mocking comments, a calculated indifference meant to drive her away.
Sometimes Meghan wondered if it would be enough to make her go.
She was so tired of the strain, the pretence. She wanted something real and warm and safe.
This was not part of our bargain.
Leaving him would tear her apart, heart and soul, mind and body. She would never be the same again. She would never be whole.
She didn’t know what else to do.
This slow torture was accomplishing the same thing, only more slowly, more painfully.
And yet at night Alessandro reached for her. Their bodies merged with a desperate yearning that seemed at odds with the strained pleasantries exchanged each day.
They didn’t speak, yet his eyes burned into hers as if memorising her features, as if sending forth a plea.
She just didn’t know if she had the strength to believe any more. To fight for it.
‘I wanted to talk to you,’ Emilia said quietly, sensing Meghan’s indecision, offering sincerity. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Alessandro … perhaps explain why he is the way he is.’
Meghan’s hand tightened on the door handle. A warm breeze caressed her face; she could smell the begonias that tumbled in a riot from their pots onto the steps.
‘What do you mean?’
Emilia shrugged, smiled. ‘Don’t you have questions? Haven’t you wondered? Everyone has seen what a transformation Alessandro has made in these last months … wondered if it will last. If it’s real.’
‘I know it’s real,’ Meghan said coldly, but her heart was hammering and there was a hollow ring to her words that even she heard.
Emilia raised her eyebrows, cool and knowing. ‘Do you? Do you really, Meghan? Because if I were you in your place I’d wonder. I’d wonder very much.’
‘But you’re not in my place,’ Meghan observed with a detachment she was far from feeling. ‘As much as you may have once wanted to be.’
Emilia was unfazed. ‘Did Alessandro tell you that? Yes, we were lovers. I once thought we might marry … After all, a man like Alessandro would expect to marry eventually, and we’re very much alike.’
The thought that Alessandro was similar to this walking piranha made Meghan taste bile in her throat. Alessandro was nothing like this … not the Alessandro she knew.
The man she wanted him to be … the man she thought he wanted to be.
Yet was that really him? Or a façade?
A fake.
‘I think,’ Meghan said slowly, ‘you’re just trying to cause trouble. But I know you’ll bother me until I let you have your say, so you might as well come in.’
Emilia’s mouth curved up into a triumphant smile. Meghan stepped reluctantly aside, and the other woman sashayed into the house with such sultry confidence that Meghan wished she hadn’t given in.
Yet she wanted to know.
No matter what the truth meant, what it revealed.
She wanted to know.
Then there would be no more secrets.
‘What a quaint little home,’ Emilia said with a gurgle of laughter. ‘Does Alessandro spend much time here?’
Meghan heard the disbelief in her tone, as if she couldn’t imagine Alessandro relaxing in such a boring, bourgeois place.
Maybe he was bored, she thought numbly. Maybe it was all getting too old, too familiar. And it had only been a few weeks.
She led the way into the friendly square lounge, with its squashy red sofas, its long windows spilling sunshine onto the wide pine boards of the floor.
Emilia looked around with an expression of mild distaste, wrinkling her nose as if she were too polite to mention how awful she found it all.
Meghan gritted her teeth. ‘Sit down.’
‘Thank you.’ She perched elegantly on the edge of a sofa, her bag on her lap. She wore, Meghan saw, a tightly fitting red leather jacket and matching skirt, her legs long and bare, her toenails in open sandals painted scarlet.
Meghan sat across from her in an armchair.
‘Now, what is it you want to say?’
‘Ah, yes. Well … in fact …’ Emilia smiled the smile of a sly cat, a cat with a mouse’s tail dangling from its sleek jaws, and opened her bag. ‘I thought these might tell the tale better than I ever could.’ She took out a sheaf of newspaper clippings. Meghan’s stomach dipped.
She held out her hand and took them silently, grateful that her hand didn’t tremble. She leafed through them, one eye-brow raised, making her uninterest known though her mouth was dry.
Meghan handed them back, heart pounding, for the meaning was obvious enough. The clippings were plastered with photographs of Alessandro at parties, his arms around various scantily clad women, his expression somewhere between a rake’s smile and a drunken leer.
He looked, Meghan thought with a sinking feeling, like someone she never wanted to know.
Emilia smiled and said sweetly, ‘Look at this one.’ She took the clippings, sifting through them until she came to the one she wanted and handed it back to Meghan, tapping the photo with one scarlet nail.
Meghan glanced down, recoiled slightly from the photograph of a smoking ruin of a car left on the side of the motorway. The one word in big block letters stood out in bold relief: OMICIDIO?
Murder.
She stared unseeingly, unthinkingly, down at the newspaper. She heard Emilia purr, ‘Now do you want to know?’
‘I think,’ Meghan replied, barely keeping her voice above a whisper, ‘that you’re going to tell me.’ She looked up, her eyes still dry, her heart weighing heavy like a stone. ‘And then you’re going to leave.’
‘You know Alessandro was a bit of a playboy?’ Emilia began, clearly relishing the telling.
‘More than a bit, I believe,’ Meghan replied, and Emilia looked slightly discomfited that she took this news so calmly.
‘Did you know, then,’ she continued in a harder voice, ‘that he and his brother were involved in a car accident? A highly suspicious one, with Alessandro as the driver.’
‘Suspicious?’ Meghan repeated, trying to sound scornful and not quite succeeding. ‘What’s suspicious about a car accident?’
‘A lot of things. They’d just had a very public argument—at one of Milan’s fashionable parties. Alessandro was angry, and accused Roberto of something—no one heard exactly what this was, and no one would have believed him anyway, of course. Roberto was loved by everyone—kind, gentle, always turning a blind eye to Alessandro’s antics. But this time he got upset. I was there and I saw it.’ She leaned forward, eyes glittering, involved now in the story, the drama. Meghan, afraid now, could only watch and listen.
‘Roberto looked terrible,’ Emilia recalled. ‘Pale, shaken, like he was going to be sick. Alessandro kept on at him, accusing him, so Roberto tried to leave. Alessandro wouldn’t let him, though— he grabbed his arm and started shouting. They ended up leaving the party together—Alessandro threatening, Roberto looking terrified. The next thing we knew Alessandro had crashed the car, killing his brother while he walked away with barely a scratch.’
Meghan’s mind and heart reeled from this information. It could explain so much … if she were able to understand it. Still she shook her head, managed to give a disdainful little laugh. ‘Do you honestly expect me to believe that he engineered an accident where his brother was killed and he remained uninjured? That’s ludicrous.’
Emilia inclined her head in acknowledgement. ‘Perhaps. But the accident was on a stretch of smooth road—not a car in sight, no twists or turns. According to police reports, the car just veered off the road into a tree.’
&nb
sp; ‘It’s been known to happen before,’ Meghan said.
The bands around her chest, her heart, eased—if only a little. An accident couldn’t assign blame, no matter what the newspapers said.
‘What did Alessandro say about it?’ she asked now. ‘He must have given some explanation.’
Emilia shrugged. ‘Of course he was driving recklessly. But with the di Agnio name … The car had to have been going seventy miles an hour. It’s a miracle he wasn’t killed.’
‘And the press twisted this into a case of murder?’ Meghan shook her head.
‘You have to admit it makes a certain amount of sense,’ Emilia persisted in a silky purr. ‘Think what Alessandro stood to gain from his brother’s death—CEO of one of Italy’s most important companies, prestige, respect …’
‘Oh, has he got those?’ Meghan queried sharply. ‘Because it doesn’t seem to me he has.’
Emilia was silent for a moment, watching Meghan with a sneering pity. ‘You have no idea what he was like, do you? He may seem like a handsome knight in shining armour now, all set to rescue you, but in this country he was reviled. Pictures of him have been smeared across the tabloids for years, and I know from experience that rumours about him tend to be true.’ Her mouth curved in a lasciviously knowing smile that made Meghan bite down on her lip, taste the metallic tang of blood. ‘The public turned a blind eye to all his playboy antics, his women, but they couldn’t stand what he did to his brother. They blamed him. They wanted to blame him. He destroyed the beloved Roberto di Agnio, Italy’s golden boy.’
‘I’m sure the press had a field-day with it,’ Meghan said tightly, her control beginning to splinter. ‘It still doesn’t make it his fault.’
‘Unless,’ Emilia said, her voice little more than a whisper, a hiss, ‘he did mean to crash the car …’
Meghan felt the blood drain from her face, her body turning icy and numb. Lifeless.
‘He had nothing to lose,’ Emilia continued with dangerous softness. ‘He was a rake, a reprobate, his family had practically disowned him for the things he’d done, the shame he’d brought to them. In a moment of violent jealousy …’ She shrugged delicately. ‘Who knows what could have happened?’
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