‘Not really.’ She attempted a smile. ‘I know they met when my mother was on holiday in Italy.’
Agnes returned the smile. ‘They did. It was love at first sight for them both. They were smitten with each other. I had never seen Hilde so happy.’
‘I’m sensing a “but” coming.’
Her aunt grimaced. ‘Your father is a very possessive man. He couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight. He hated her talking to other men.’
‘He didn’t...?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
‘Hit her?’ Agnes supplied. ‘No. Never. But he never thought twice about beating up any man who disrespected her or who your father felt was getting too close to her. Hilde was a very gentle woman—it upset her very much.’
Elena couldn’t think of anything to say to that. This was a side to her father she had never seen.
‘I am telling you this so you can understand how your father became the man he is now,’ Agnes said gently. ‘They were happy. They loved each other very much. When your mother died...’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘I don’t think he ever got over it. He threw a protective cloak around his children and hardened himself to the rest of the world. He loved his boys but you were always the apple of his eye. He doted on you. You were a fighting tomboy but you have your mother’s gentle heart. I don’t think your father could bear for you to see him as less than perfect.’
Elena put her hand to her throat and closed her eyes.
Trying to forget thoughts of disloyalty, and trying to think dispassionately about Gabriele when all she wanted to do was spend the rest of her life crying, she took a deep breath and mentally counted off some indisputable facts.
She ran the European division. It was the division where nothing creative happened. It was an outpost for selling stock. Nothing more. All the meat and bones of her father’s company was conducted in Asia and South America. She had never travelled to either continent. She was kept ignorant of whatever happened there.
Alfredo Mantegna had been her father’s best friend. When Alfredo had emigrated with his family to open his car empire to the North American market, her father had used Alfredo’s new contacts to expand his own empire.
Her father no longer had any business dealings in North America.
A decade ago, her father and Alfredo had merged the overlapping parts of their two business entities into a new business that they owned fifty-fifty. The headquarters were based in Brazil, where her own father had plenty of businesses and where Alfredo had none. That business was proven to have been used as a front for fraud and money laundering. The trail had led to the Mantegnas.
Even through her loathing of Gabriele she could not believe he would be involved in something like that. Gabriele’s mother...
Is he in prison yet?
Elena clamped a hand over her mouth and swallowed back the rising nausea.
‘It is natural to want to see only the best in the people we love,’ Agnes said in a quiet, sympathetic voice. ‘You and your father have always been exceptionally close. If your father was behind it I am certain he would do everything in his power to protect you from it.’
‘I need to talk to him, don’t I?’ Elena whispered.
Agnes nodded and reached across the table to take her hand. ‘I suspect you’re the only person who could ever get the truth from him.’
Elena blew out a long breath of air.
She’d buried her head in the sand for long enough.
She needed to speak to him face to face, now, before Gabriele and Carlos went to the FBI. If they hadn’t already.
* * *
Her father answered his phone after the first ring and, while he hesitated at first, agreed to her request to meet her in Sweden.
He arrived at Agnes’s cabin the very next day.
That he was still at liberty soothed her. It meant Gabriele knew his evidence wasn’t strong enough, or the FBI had discounted it, or Carlos had changed his mind about being a turncoat.
She greeted him at the door and was immediately engulfed in a huge embrace.
‘It’s been many years since I’ve been in this house,’ he said as she led him to the kitchen, where Agnes had laid out lunch for them. Clearly ill at ease, he craned his neck at every turn, looking at everything. ‘What brought you here?’
‘I wanted to see Aunt Agnes,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry—they’ve gone out. It’s just you and me.’
‘Mantegna’s not with you?’
She shook her head, taking a seat. ‘I’ve left him.’
He paused, staring hard at her, then a smile spread across the tension-strewn face. ‘If I had known that I would have brought champagne.’
She didn’t respond, taking the lid off the casserole dish. Even if he’d magically produced a bottle of champagne she felt too heartsick to drink.
She didn’t think her heart would ever beat normally again.
Why couldn’t she forget him? Why was it that every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was Gabriele? After everything he’d done, why did she ache so much for him?
You would have done the same if you were in his shoes. If someone had destroyed your family the way Gabriele believes your father destroyed his, you would have stopped at nothing for revenge.
She would never have hurt an innocent though.
He didn’t know you were innocent.
‘So you have seen the light,’ her father said, nodding his approval. ‘I told your brothers, I said, “Don’t worry about Elena, she’s a good girl, she knows where her loyalty lies.”’
She ladled some casserole into a bowl, holding it tightly to stop her shaking hands from spilling the hot liquid onto the table.
‘Gabriele’s loyalty is to his father,’ she said, choosing her words with care.
Something flickered on her father’s face.
And in that moment all her doubts crystallised and the truth came crashing down on her.
It was all true. All of it. Everything Gabriele had said. All true.
‘Elena?’
She looked into her father’s concerned face, the room swimming, darkness seeping into her pores, infecting her blood.
The truth was what her heart had been telling her for weeks but she had been too wilfully blind to see.
* * *
Gabriele tied a cufflink to his sleeve and smiled at his reflection.
It made no difference.
He still looked shot.
He tried again. This time his mouth wouldn’t co-operate.
His driver was waiting outside for him. At Mantegna HQ, over two dozen media journalists were congregating for the launch of the new Alfredo car, along with over a hundred of the staff members who had worked most closely on it. Caterers had delivered enough canapés to feed an army and enough champagne to get a battalion drunk.
This was the culmination of the past year’s hard work, a car made to honour his father, and he could no longer bring himself to care.
How could he ever care about anything when the best part of him wouldn’t be by his side?
She would never be by his side again.
Having got increasingly frantic that Elena had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth, he’d hired a bunch of private detectives on all continents to find her. Just to satisfy him that she was well. Four hours ago he’d got the message that she’d landed in Rome.
The relief had been indescribable.
After five days of silence he at least had confirmation that she was alive.
She wouldn’t see him. He knew that. She refused to answer his calls or his messages. His emails bounced back as undeliverable.
How could he stand up in front of one hundred and fifty people and make a speech when he couldn’t think of a single thing to
say that wasn’t a plea for Elena to come back to him?
Why had he attempted to defend himself?
There was no defence for what he’d done and the more he tortured himself by thinking about it, the more he accepted how blinded and despicably wrong he’d been.
He could hear his housekeeper hovering behind his bedroom door, knew she wanted to remind him of the time and how late he was going to make the launch.
Instead of getting into gear, he slipped into Elena’s dressing room.
All her clothes were still neatly hung up or folded away, as if waiting for her to return to claim them.
He knew she would never reclaim them.
He spotted the silver top she’d worn on their first night out together and pulled it off the hanger, burying his nose in it, hoping to catch her scent before it faded completely.
It had already gone.
A sharp burn at the backs of his eyes caught him. He blinked it away as a commotion outside caught his attention. Swaying slightly, he went back into his room and opened the door.
Anna Maria stood there, looking flushed.
‘Have you seen the news?’
* * *
Elena’s house was in a quiet, affluent street in Rome’s Parioli district. Soft lights glowed behind the shuttered windows When Gabriele found the red door he was searching for, he put his hands to his knees and allowed himself to breathe.
It had been two hours since Anna Maria had shown him the coverage dominating the Italian news channels and, he suspected, the US ones too. In that time he’d commandeered a helicopter to fly him from Florence and taken the cab ride from hell across Rome’s streets, which were only marginally better to drive through than Florence’s. Ten minutes ago he’d thrown a hundred-euro bill at the driver and got out, figuring it had to be quicker walking.
Taking one last apprehensive breath, he climbed the steps and pressed the doorbell. He banged on the door for good measure too.
When there was no answer, he rang and banged again. He would ring and bang on the door all night if he had to.
After what was probably only a minute but felt much, much longer, he heard a clicking noise followed by the slow turning of the door handle.
The door opened a fraction and a green eye appeared in the gap.
‘Elena...’ He couldn’t say anything more. His throat had closed up.
She didn’t say anything, her mostly concealed face staring at him blankly as if a stranger were on her doorstep.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked hoarsely.
Still not speaking, she shook her head.
‘Please? I will only take a minute of your time.’
Another shake of her head.
He bowed his head and exhaled heavily. ‘I understand.’
He raised his head to look back at her. She had almost entirely closed the door. Only the tiniest of gaps remained open.
‘I don’t expect you to believe me but I had nothing to do with your father’s arrest,’ he said quietly, certain she was listening. ‘I destroyed the evidence I had. I just wanted you to know that and to tell you that I’m sorrier than words can say for what I’ve done to you.’
He bowed his head again and swallowed.
He expected no response and none followed.
But she was still there, still listening.
Gabriele sank to the floor and pressed his cheek to the door. ‘My father would be heartbroken if he knew what I’d done in his name. I forced you into a marriage you didn’t want. I made you dress in clothes you didn’t want. I made you sign a contract stating the only way you could leave was if my baby was in your belly. I took your virginity.’ He sucked in a breath and gazed up at the starry night sky. ‘I did all that for revenge against your father, not against you. But you were my pawn and I was going to play you—I did play you. I told myself that you had to be in league with your father, as if that could excuse what I was doing. But you were nothing like my prejudices expected. You were everything. You are everything. My everything. I fell in love with you, Elena, but I was so blinded by revenge I couldn’t see it.’
Placing a palm against the door, he prayed she was still there, still listening to him.
‘You told me once that there wouldn’t be a minute of the day when I didn’t regret what I’d done to you. Well, that day is here. I know you will never forgive me but I wanted you to know that I will never forgive myself either. You wanted to see me burn in hell and you have your wish; I’m there. Every day without you is agony.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked rapidly, then got to his feet. He’d said everything he wanted to say. Everything he could say.
Almost stumbling back down the steps on legs that felt filled with lead, he stood on the pavement not having a clue where to go.
Elena leaving him had left him rudderless.
‘I know it wasn’t you who had my father arrested.’
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
He turned slowly.
Elena stood clinging to the open doorway. Her face was pinched, her hair loose but lank around her shoulders. All she wore was a pair of leggings and a long-sleeved baggy top.
‘It was me.’
And then she was crying, her hand clasped over her mouth, her face a stream of tears, her whole body trembling with the force of her misery.
He flew back up the steps and took hold of her, pulling her to him.
When she wrapped her arms around him and sobbed into his chest, he held her tight, devastated to see the depths of her despair.
This was all his fault.
She tilted her head back to look at him with red-rimmed eyes, tears still pouring down her cheeks.
‘It was me,’ she repeated, biting into her lip.
He brushed her tears away and gazed into her distraught face. ‘What was you?’
‘My father.’ She hiccupped. ‘I made him confess. I told him if he didn’t he would never see me again.’ Her face crumpled. ‘Oh, Gabriele, I’m so sorry. He did frame your father and let you go to prison for it. He’s been laundering money for years. You were right all along but I couldn’t see it.’
Unable to bear her distress any longer, he pulled her back into his arms and stroked her hair. ‘My love, please, no, you have nothing to apologise for.’
‘I didn’t believe you.’
‘Of course you didn’t. He’s your father. We all want to believe the best of our parents.’ He burrowed his nose in her hair, breathing her in, hardly able to believe she was allowing him to hold her and that she held him in turn.
‘You should be at the launch,’ she suddenly wailed. ‘This was your big night for your father...’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he cut in. ‘You are all that matters. My father would understand.’
When she was finally still, he took her face in his hands and stared intently into her eyes. ‘Elena...why? Why did you make him confess?’
Incredulity came into her eyes. ‘Because what he did was despicable. What he did to you and your family...’ She shook her head, her chest shuddering. ‘I’m still struggling to believe he could do such a thing. The money laundering and fraud... I might have been able to accept that, but to set your family up like he did and watch you be imprisoned for it...’
Her entire body shook, fresh tears falling over his hands.
‘He was jealous of your father’s success. When my mother died his jealousy grew—he saw your father with a happy family and thriving business and it turned him. When he learned the FBI was monitoring him, he framed your father without any remorse. I’m trying to understand how he could do it but...’ She blew a breath of air out. ‘I can never forgive him for what he’s done to you.’
‘Listen to me,’ he said, speaking quietly. ‘Whatever h
e’s done, he’s still your father. You will always love him and he will always love you. Never forget that.’
‘I feel tainted,’ she whispered.
A dog barked from across the street, its walker staring at them with curiosity.
‘Can we go inside and talk before someone accuses me of bothering you?’ he asked.
She attempted a laugh. ‘You want to come inside a Ricci house?’
‘The Ricci blood can’t be all bad if it made you.’
She gazed at him, her brow furrowed.
‘Can’t you see how special you are that your father would willingly go to prison rather than lose you?’ He kissed her forehead. ‘And you’re so special to me that I ripped up the documents and sent Carlos on his way rather than have your father arrested because your happiness and peace of mind mean more to me than anything. More than revenge. More than clearing my name. I had lost all faith in humanity and you gave it back to me—you, the woman with Ricci blood in her veins. I love you more than I knew was possible and I will never, ever forgive myself for what I’ve done to you.’
‘Your name will be cleared now,’ she said softly.
‘That means a lot to me,’ he admitted. ‘I’m just sorry it comes with such a heavy price for you.’
‘I’ll survive.’ She swallowed and gazed into his eyes. ‘I’ll survive if you’re with me.’
Speech suddenly became impossible.
Elena stared at the man she loved, wishing he could see into her heart and read what was there. ‘You saved me.’
His eyes didn’t leave her face.
‘You saved me from those men and then you saved me from myself. You opened my eyes to who I really am. You taught me there’s nothing to be ashamed of in being a woman; in being me.’ She looked up at the starry sky. ‘Without you in my life, it feels like all the stars have gone out.’
When she gazed back at him, stark, silent hope and disbelief were etched on his face.
Now it was her turn to touch him. She pressed her palm to his cheek, a shiver racing through her to feel the smooth skin she’d dreamed of every night since she’d left him.
‘I love you, Gabriele, and I forgive you.’
Wedded, Bedded, Betrayed Page 17