Meghan sank unsteadily into a chair. Could Alessandro have been so desperate, so unhappy, so murderous, he’d tried to kill both himself and his brother?
Could he have been so vile?
‘I want you to go,’ she said in a thin voice. ‘Now.’
Emilia chuckled softly. ‘I’ve given you enough to think about, have I? Good. At least now you know what he’s capable of. Alessandro was a desperate, dangerous man, Meghan. He still is. I’ll leave the clippings here … just in case you want to look through them again. Ciao.’
The front door clicked softly shut behind her.
Meghan let out a shuddering breath and glanced down at the newspaper photograph of the smoking ruin of a convertible. He didn’t drive those any more. Now she knew why.
She picked up the sheaf of clippings with numb fingers, a numb heart. She sifted through them, steeled herself against the images, glaring, garish, painful.
Alessandro with his arms wrapped around a blonde who was poured into a dress. Alessandro kissing another woman, one eye on the camera, giving a lascivious wink. Alessandro with a woman on each arm and a sardonic smile twisting his features, making him someone she could hate.
It was horrible.
It was wrong.
It was the truth.
She stared at the photographs until her eyes were gritty, forcing herself not to close them against the onslaught of images, realisations, shattered dreams.
This was Alessandro. This was the man he had been, the man he insisted he still was. As much as she’d suspected and feared what he’d done, this was worse. This was so much worse.
She believed he’d changed, but could a man actually change that much?
Was Alessandro even trying to change?
Her heart cried yes, he was; her mind ruthlessly reminded her of every cruel thing he’d said, every harsh warning he’d given.
He’d told her not to trust him, not to love him. He’d told her not to try to understand, to know.
Now she knew, and her ignorance—and innocence—were gone for ever.
How could he be at times so tender, so kind, so understanding, so loving? her heart cried out, and her mind replied dispassionately, You always knew men abused power.
Meghan stared at the photograph of the car, half-wrapped around a tree on a deserted road. It was charred, a wreck of a car, wrecking a life.
Two lives.
Three.
What had happened that night? Could Emilia possibly be right?
Meghan desperately wanted to believe she couldn’t be, yet doubt had created a treacherous crack in her heart she couldn’t ignore.
She was faced with the bleak reality that despite what her heart said her mind told her the truth.
She didn’t know what kind of man Alessandro was.
She couldn’t fathom what he was capable of.
So intent was Meghan on the clippings that she didn’t register the click of the front door, the sound of soft footsteps. She didn’t even notice the shadow that fell over her as Alessandro came into the room, didn’t realise he was there until he spoke, ice coating every word.
‘Ah. I see you’ve discovered my past.’
‘Alessandro!’ Meghan’s stomach plunged with nerves; the clippings fell from her lap onto the floor.
His lips curving in a sardonic smile, Alessandro stooped to pick them up. ‘Enjoying yourself?’ he asked softly. ‘Indulging in some vicarious pleasure? I have Emilia to thank for this, no doubt. Or did you manage to dig these up all on your own?’ Menace turned his eyes dangerously indigo, his mouth a hard, thin line.
‘It was Emilia,’ Meghan whispered.
‘Ah. She always liked to cause trouble.’
He riffled through the clippings with an uninterested air. ‘Ah, yes. I think I remember this one. She was quite good in bed, if I recall. Daring.’
Meghan closed her eyes.
‘And this one … Hmm, memory’s a bit fuzzy there. Probably had too much to drink. I often did.’
‘Don’t do this.’ She felt faint, dizzy, sick.
Alessandro glanced at her over the top of the clippings and smiled coolly. ‘But why not, Meghan? Isn’t this what you want to know? Isn’t this why I found you here, staring at these photos?’
‘I was trying,’ Meghan replied as levelly as she could, ‘to find out why you are the way you are.’
‘Do not!’ His voice came out sharp. ‘Do not psychoanalyse me. I know who I am. These clippings prove it. And if you fell in love with me, Meghan, then you fell in love with a false image. What you wanted me to be, not what I am.’
It was what her own mind had been telling her, and it hurt. It hurt more than she’d ever thought it would to hear him say it, admit it.
‘You were kind to me,’ Meghan whispered, her eyes starting to pool with tears. The room, the clippings, Alessandro, were all a blur. ‘You told me you would never hurt me.’
‘Da tutti i san, by now you should’ve realised that wasn’t true!’
Her vision swam; she clutched the arm of her chair like an anchor. ‘Are you telling me you lied?’
‘I got what I wanted,’ Alessandro replied dispassionately. ‘You.’
‘I don’t believe it.’ She clung to one last hope that even now he would relent. Change. ‘This isn’t you.’
‘Yes, it is. I warned you, Meghan.’
Alessandro’s face was a mask, terrible in its blankness. It was as if the life had drained out of him, and Meghan didn’t know if she could get it back. She dragged breath into her lungs. ‘What about the car accident?’
He stilled, and for a tense moment Meghan wasn’t sure what he would do next. What he was capable of. She stiffened, forced herself to remain still.
‘Are you asking me if I killed my brother?’ he asked, his voice indifferent. ‘You saw the headlines. Omicidio. Assassino. They speak the truth.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘Was it?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I read the tabloid gossip, every word. Maybe I picked that stretch of road—crashed the car in a way that would only injure the passenger. Who knows?’ He smiled mockingly, and Meghan shook her head, desperate now.
‘Alessandro, that can’t be true. Even if you were capable of such a thing, it would be an insane risk.’
He walked up to her, tilted her chin with cool fingers so Meghan was looking with anguish into his own blank eyes.
‘But don’t you know by now that I like to take risks? It’s what makes me good at business. You were a risk, weren’t you, gattina? Too bad that one hasn’t worked out.’
She shook her head. ‘No, it can’t …’ Her voice trailed off into desperate silence.
His fingers tightened on her chin. ‘Tell me, Meghan,’ he said softly, ‘when you look at those clippings, what do you feel, think? What do you believe?’
Her mind spun, whirred hopelessly like a stalled engine. She thought of what she’d felt: the horror, the repulsion, the fear, and knew they were reflected in her eyes, her face. She tried to think of a word, an explanation, but nothing came out.
Something flickered to life in Alessandro’s eyes and then deadened. Like ash, dust, ice. ‘You see?’ he said softly. ‘You do believe it, don’t you? I warned you before. I won’t change.’ He paused, his voice turning ragged. ‘I can’t.’
She stared. Her mind blanked. She couldn’t speak.
He dropped his hand from her face and glanced down at the clippings; the photograph of the ruined car was on top. ‘Damned by silence,’ he mocked.
‘Alessandro, don’t …’ she began, her voice a thread, but he ignored her.
‘Never mind. It’s just as well, you know. I was starting to get bored.’
‘Bored?’ she repeated faintly, and he smiled, a bitter twisting of his lips.
‘Surely you saw in those papers that I’m a man of many tastes, pleasures? I’ll get a few things,’ he continued tonelessly, ‘and move to my flat. You can continue to live here. I don’t mind.’
<
br /> Meghan felt as if she were plummeting through a cold, dark tunnel. She gazed at him in shock, her mind finally catching up, making sense of what was happening. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying,’ Alessandro replied in clear, cutting tones, ‘that I don’t want to live with you any more. This marriage was a mistake, a bad risk, but unfortunately neither of us can undo it now. I won’t bring shame to the di Agnio name again.’ He held up one hand to still the wave of protests rising within her, unspoken. ‘You’ll still get what you want. I’ll come with you to that godforsaken town in Iowa you once called home. I’ll give you security. You, on the other hand, need give me nothing.’
‘Alessandro …’ Meghan was on her knees on the chair, tears streaking silently down her face. She felt as if her world had been torn apart in a matter of minutes and lay around her in bloody shreds. And she hadn’t lifted a finger to stop it. She hadn’t had the strength. ‘This isn’t what I want.’
He looked at her as if he didn’t care. As if he’d already moved on, forgotten. ‘Pity,’ he remarked, ‘because this is what you’re going to get.’
Meghan remained half kneeling on the chair as Alessandro moved through the house. She knew he was gathering his things, preparing to leave her for ever.
And she didn’t know what to do.
She hadn’t expected this utter rejection—the man she loved turned into a stranger she couldn’t even understand.
She should have spoken sooner—done something, thought something, acted. Shown him … But what? She’d still been reeling with shock, with disappointment, with sorrow.
And now it was too late.
It’s never too late, her heart cried out, and Meghan forced herself to listen. Alessandro was her second chance at life, at love; she was his. She wouldn’t let go of it lightly.
She couldn’t let him leave.
Not like this. Never like this.
On weak, wobbling legs she walked up the stairs, her mind buzzing but blank. She wished she knew what to say, what to think. She only knew she had to act.
She turned the corner, came to the bedroom door. And saw him.
Alessandro sat on the bed, his head bowed, his hands fisted in his hair. Meghan’s heart contracted, ached with a desperate longing that nearly made her stagger.
She recognised that stance, the bleak despair in every agonised line of his body. She’d felt it herself.
It was the look of a person who believed his own soul was damned because everyone had told him it was, even when his heart had cried out for belief, for love.
For salvation.
She’d felt it when one man had condemned her; Alessandro had suffered the judgement of an entire country.
This is the man I love.
This was the man. No matter what he’d thought, what he’d felt, what he’d done.
She loved Alessandro.
And she knew, had to believe, that he was the man she thought he was, knew he was.
The man he meant to be.
She must have made some sound, for he looked up, his face hardening into a mask once more.
‘I’ll be out of here in a few minutes,’ he said coldly. ‘Can’t you wait?’
‘No, I can’t,’ Meghan said. Her voice was a scratchy breath of sound but she forced it to come out stronger. ‘And you won’t.’
‘I won’t?’ he repeated in a mocking tone. ‘You should know by now there’s little I won’t do, gattina.’ He stood up, grabbed the half-filled bag at his feet and slung it over one shoulder.
Meghan stood in the doorway, her arms flung out, blocking him. Alessandro walked towards her, one eyebrow raised in incredulous disdain.
‘Get out of my way, Meghan.’ He spoke softly, quietly, yet she still knew it was a threat.
‘No.’
He paused, his eyes sweeping, assessing her, burning her, just as they had when he’d looked at her that first time in the restaurant.
Even then her body, her heart, had known this was the man— the man she needed.
And she wasn’t going to let him walk away now.
‘Haven’t you had enough, Meghan? Or did you lose all of your self-respect when that man abused you?’ He shook his head. ‘Save us the shame of such a scene and let me walk out of here with head held high.’
‘I don’t think anyone’s head is high right now,’ Meghan replied in a low voice. ‘Yours wasn’t a moment ago, and mine isn’t now. I’m ashamed—’ her breath hitched ‘—that I didn’t answer you downstairs. That I didn’t tell you I believed.’
‘But you did believe. You believed the truth. Now, enough of this!'His hand slashed through the air. ‘Leave me alone. Let me go.’
Meghan’s throat ached with unshed tears. She held them back, forced herself to be strong, if only for a moment. Trembling, she put one hand flat on Alessandro’s chest, felt his sucked-in breath at the contact. The caress. ‘But I can’t let you go, Alessandro. I love you.’
He shrugged, determinedly unmoved. ‘You love the man I pretended to be to make you marry me.’
‘Why would you do that? You didn’t have to marry me. I told you that myself. It could have been an affair.’
‘You hold yourself rather cheaply,’ he said coldly, his mouth twisting.
Meghan’s eyes blazed for a second. She might be dying inside—her dreams, her hopes, her heart, all on their last breath, their last chance—but she was still going to fight. Fight for her own shattered hopes, for Alessandro’s.
‘You hold yourself cheaply, it seems,’ she responded levelly. ‘I don’t know your secrets, Alessandro. I don’t know all the things you did. I don’t want to. But I know—I know—that you’ve been trying to overcome your past. To not be the man the tabloids painted you—the man you and everyone else believed you to be. I’ve seen you struggle with it. I’ve seen you lose, and I’ve seen you win. It’s not an act.’ Her voice broke into fragments of pain and sorrow, of hope too painful to bear, too precious to lose. ‘I believe in you. I love you.’
Alessandro was silent, still. She could feel the energy thrumming through him, a raw, angry pulse.
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not real.’
‘It is real,’ Meghan flashed. ‘You can’t keep denying what I know! I don’t care what you do, how many times you try to push me away. I know who you are and I love you!’
‘No, you don’t!’ His voice came out in a savage roar, ripped from his body, his lungs, and Meghan jerked back, startled. His face twisted into a grimacing sneer as he dropped his bag on the floor, grabbed her arms. ‘What do you want from me? What do I have to do to show you I’m not the man you think I am?’ His fingers dug into her arms and Meghan forced herself to submit, to stare into his face, a beautiful face no longer blank, but tormented by pain and misery.
He felt. The mask had dropped, and she was glad.
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ she said quietly. Her voice shook only a little. ‘You’ve already shown me, Alessandro. You’ve shown me with compassion, love and tenderness what kind of man you are. The man I love.’
He let out a low, rasping sound; Meghan thought it was a laugh. Then he pulled her to him, her breasts flattening against his chest, and kissed her with a hard desperation that felt like a bruise.
Meghan’s hands crept up his chest, wound around his neck. She pulled him closer and gentled the kiss, turning it into something loving and warm.
He refused, breaking it off, coming up for air with a choked laugh of disbelief. ‘Have you no self-respect?’ he demanded, and though pain was slicing cleanly through her, Meghan answered steadily.
‘I didn’t. But you gave it back to me. You can’t take it away again.’
‘Can’t I?’ he jeered, and, pulling on her wrists, led her to the bed, tossing her carelessly down on it. Meghan lay there, her heart pounding so loudly it seemed to fill the room with its desperate beat. She was on her back, splayed, helpless.
She thought of the first time he’d touched her, what
he’d said. I’m not going to touch you. I’m not that kind of man.
No, he wasn’t. She still believed. Even now, when he was determined to show her differently, to prove her love was worthless.
Especially now.
The final test.
He looked down at her, his hands on his hips, his expression coldly mocking. ‘Scared, Meghan?’
‘No.’ Her voice wavered, but she kept looking at him. Forced herself to meet the icy steel of his eyes.
‘You should be.’
‘What are you going to do, Alessandro? Try to make me stop loving you? Is that what this is about?’
‘What this is about?’ he mused, his smile a taunt. He dropped his hand down to her ankle, ran it slowly, temptingly up her bare leg—a deliberate, calculated caress. Meghan didn’t move even when his hand travelled further upwards, under her skirt, teased her at the joining of her thighs, his eyes still on hers, still cold.
Even now she felt the flickerings of desire, unbearably sweet, piercing the anger.
‘Do you want me,’ he said in disbelief, ‘even now?’
Unashamed, Meghan raised her head, looked at him. Offered herself to him. ‘Yes. I love you.’
He jerked back his hand, scalded by her honesty. ‘This isn’t about love!’
‘Yes, it is. I love you. And you love me.’ She met his gaze, let her eyes blaze into his.
He shook his head, hunched his shoulders. After a moment of tense silence, he said, ‘Meghan, I’ve never wanted to hurt you.’
‘Then don’t.’
‘ You don’t know me!’ He bit the words out, raking a frustrated hand through his hair.
‘I don’t know who you were,’ Meghan corrected. ‘But I know you now.’
He shook his head, his eyes blanking again. The mask was slipping down once more, and Meghan knew she couldn’t let it return.
‘Alessandro, don’t.’ She struggled up from the bed, pulled her skirt back down. ‘Don’t shut me out.’ She stood before him, begging. ‘What will it take to prove to you that you can’t turn me away? That I won’t desert you?’
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