by Abby Green
‘You can’t even begin to imagine what that world was like. The constant noise, the calls from block to block that were code for rival gangs—a murder, a drug-drop. All day and all night. They used me as a lookout for rival gangs.’
His mouth twisted.
‘We didn’t have a call for the police. They never came. They were as corrupt as we were. There was no social services for us. I hated the brute force of that life, the lack of intellect over chaos and destruction. My mother lurched from one passionate crisis to another. I craved a more ordered world—without that constant drama and uncertainty, the ever-present danger.’
Gracie could feel shivers of shock going through her body. ‘What happened to your mother?’
Rocco went very still. ‘I found her dead with a needle sticking out of her leg when I was seventeen.’
Gracie put a hand on his arm. Her voice was choked. ‘Oh, Rocco….’
He shook her hand off and speared her with that black gaze. ‘I’m not telling you this for sympathy. I don’t need sympathy. I never have. She didn’t love me. She was too in love with getting her next fix or a wealthy patron.’
Gracie swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘I’m sorry.’
He looked away again, and Gracie cradled her hand against her belly.
‘I confronted my father one day outside his city palazzo. I knew where he lived. My mother had pointed it out to me enough times. It was just after she’d died. When I confronted him he spat at me and pushed me down and stepped over me. My two half-sisters were with him and didn’t even look my way, even though they’d heard me call him Father. I watched them step into a chauffeur-driven car. I watched how they could just walk away from the unsavoury truth. I envied them their ease and protection. I envied their wealth, which gave them that protection.’
He smiled then, and it made fear inch up Gracie’s spine.
‘My father obviously had a word with one of his men. As soon as the car pulled away I was dragged into a nearby lane and beaten so senseless that I ended up in hospital. It was an effective warning. I never attempted to see him again. I left Italy and I vowed that one day I would look into my father’s eyes and know that I had earned my place in his world, despite his rejection.’
Gracie looked at the hard jaw and the bunched up shoulders. She saw the faint scar running from his temple to his jaw and the smaller scars. She could well imagine that meeting between father and son, and could almost feel sorry for his father. She longed to reach out and touch Rocco now, to soothe his pain. But he was like a wild animal. He was raw.
She remembered something and said, ‘That scar … on your shoulder. It was a tattoo, wasn’t it?’
Rocco nodded. ‘It meant I belonged to a certain part of the slum.’ His mouth twisted. ‘A certain faction. I got it removed when I came to England.’
‘That’s why you never speak Italian. You hate any reminders.’
Rocco dropped his head between his shoulders and said, in a deceptively soft voice, ‘Just go, Gracie … leave me alone.’
Gracie took a step back, hurt blooming out from her heart all over her body. She was terrified she’d start crying. She ached to comfort him. She started to step away, but got to the door and looked back. She saw Rocco standing there, head down, and realised that he’d always been a lone figure. Fighting the world around him while simultaneously longing to be part of it.
Resolution fired her blood, and she kicked off her shoes and walked back over to him. She slipped under one of his arms and came up so that his body formed a cage around her.
She looked up, straight into Rocco’s face and his dark eyes. ‘No, I won’t leave. Because I don’t think you really do want to be alone.’ She reached up and placed her small palm on his rigid jaw. Her eyes caressed his mouth. ‘I want you, Rocco. So much.’
The tension was thick enough to touch, and then suddenly it snapped. Rocco issued a guttural, ‘Damn you!’ and hauled Gracie up into his body so tightly she thought her back might break, but she bit her lip. She would not say a word. She could sense the violence in him, the untamed wildness that needed release, and she wanted desperately to be there for him in the only way he would allow her to be.
Rocco demanded and Gracie gave—over and over again. His kisses were brutal and electrifying. Their clothes were shed as they moved through the apartment, ripped and torn from their bodies in desperate haste.
Afterwards, Gracie couldn’t even remember how they’d got to the bedroom—only that what had happened there had shown her how restrained Rocco had become to tame the natural wildness in him. And the long-simmering anger. Her body ached all over, but pleasurably. She knew her pale skin would be bruised. Rocco had nipped her with his teeth, and she shivered now to think of how she’d wanted him to bite her harder. He’d taken her from behind, with her hands wrapped around the bedposts, and it had been the most erotic thing she’d ever felt. The heavy weight of his body on hers as he’d crushed her to the bed and thrust into her over and over again.
She lifted her head now and looked at him. The innate tension in his body told her that he wasn’t asleep. ‘Rocco …?’
To her surprise he put an arm over his face and wouldn’t look at her. She tried to pull it down and he said roughly, ‘I can’t look at you. I … I took you like an animal.’
Gently but firmly Gracie pulled his arm down and then moved over Rocco’s body so she was lying on his chest with her legs either side of his hips. She put her hands to his face.
‘Rocco de Marco. Look at me.’ He opened his eyes, and she could have wept at the shame she saw. She swallowed back her own emotion. ‘I am fine. I liked it.’
She pressed kisses to his jaw and mouth and down his neck. He put his hands around her upper arms and forcibly moved her back, coming up so that she had to lie on her back again.
‘No. I can’t do this.’
His expression was unreadable in the gloom. Gracie’s heart stuttered as she watched Rocco get out of the bed, his tall, naked form magnificent in the dim light.
He said, without looking her way, ‘Get some sleep, Gracie. We leave tomorrow at lunchtime.’
It was the hardest thing Rocco had ever done, to walk away from Gracie in that bed. He headed straight for the pool and dived in. He’d been aching to plunge into her body all over again as she’d straddled him. ‘I am fine. I liked it.’ Her fervent words had scored his insides like a serrated knife.
She’d seen too much. Got too close. He’d never told about his past. He’d been so careful not to. Yet with the smallest amount of encouragement he’d spilled it all out to Gracie. And she’d accepted it unconditionally. Embraced it.
He’d taken her brutally, and she’d welcomed him every step of the way—had encouraged him. And in the process he had assuaged his pain so that his intense anger had faded and been replaced with a kind of strange peace. Even the shame he’d felt initially was fading.
As Rocco powered up and down the pool he hoped that the physical numbness he craved would somehow numb the feelings inside him. Because these were new feelings, not dark and twisted like the old ones, and somehow they were far more frightening than anything else he’d ever known.
At lunchtime the following day Gracie still felt a little shattered. It was as if an earthquake had happened last night, and she wasn’t sure where anything stood any more. She’d woken late, after tossing and turning once Rocco had walked out so suddenly, and Consuela had informed her that Rocco had gone to his office.
She heard a noise and looked up from the TV. She hadn’t been able to concentrate on the rolling news channel. Rocco stood in the doorway, looking incredibly austere and stern. Her stomach fell. She didn’t need to wonder how things stood after last night. It was written all over him: rejection.
Gracie told herself she shouldn’t be surprised. She’d pushed Rocco too far. He’d never forgive her for making him spill his guts. He was too proud.
She stood up slowly and tried to match his cool reserve, even though she shook on the insi
de. ‘I’m ready to go.’
Rocco held up a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Do you want to explain this to me?’
Gracie frowned and glanced at the paper. ‘What are you talking about?’
Rocco held it up and read aloud in flat tones. ‘“Steven, where are you? Are you okay? Please contact me, I have so much to tell you. I need to know you’re all right. Please, just let me know where you are. Send me a number so I can call you. We need to talk—I can help you.”‘
Gracie blanched. ‘How did you get that?’
Rocco’s eyes were black, and he bit out, ‘It’s his work e-mail address. I have someone checking Steven’s inbox around the clock.’
Gracie’s belly cramped. She felt guilty even though she had no reason to. ‘I didn’t tell you yesterday because you seemed so angry when you came back to the apartment. But I would have told you that I’d tried to contact him.’
Rocco arched a brow in a way Gracie hadn’t seen him do for days. She wanted to hit him.
‘You had a whole evening to tell me. This e-mail reeks of collusion. You were trying to warn him to stay away, or to arrange a meeting somewhere.’
Gracie swallowed. She could see how, in a certain frame of mind, it might read like that. If you mistrusted the person who wrote it—which Rocco patently did. She straightened her back and tried to ignore the feeling of her heart aching.
‘That’s how it might read to you. It’s not how I meant it. I meant exactly what I said—I’m worried about him and want to know where he is. When I said I could help him I meant just that—if he gives himself up I intend to help him through whatever repercussions emerge from his actions.’
Rocco lowered the paper and smiled harshly. ‘So noble—and such lies. I think you were going to tell him you’d inveigled your way into his boss’s bed and fed him stories designed to gain sympathy. Perhaps you wanted to be sure to corroborate each other’s stories before he came forward like some penitent?’
Inveigled your way into his boss’s bed. Stories. The words dropped into Gracie’s head like poison-tipped arrows. He thought she’d set out to seduce him? The idea was laughable. She thought of the private things she’d shared with him. The fact that he saw them now as mere stories to gain sympathy nearly made her double over with pain.
She shook her head. It whirled dizzily. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘No,’ Rocco said harshly. ‘What’s ridiculous is that I’ve seriously underestimated you for so long. You’re a conniving thief, just like your brother, and the lengths you’ll go to to protect him are truly unbelievable.’
Gracie was shaking in earnest now. ‘Need I remind you that you seduced me?’
Rocco’s face was drawn from granite, the lines harsh. It was as if he couldn’t hear her. ‘From the moment we met at that function in London you’ve been playing me. You and your brother. He messed up and you’re cleaning up his mess.’
Gracie looked at him. A numbness was spreading through her body. Rocco was immovable. A million miles from the raw, emotional man of last night. She wanted to accuse him of lashing out at her because she’d gone too deep and too far and exposed him. But she’d already exposed herself enough. If she displayed the emotion she was feeling it would show him that she felt something for him, and right now she would rather die than let him see that.
So she drew inwards, deep inside, to the place she’d always retreated to for years. Whenever things got really bad. When her mother had left, and later when her nan had handed them over to Social Services. When her first lover had stood there and called her a slut for giving him her virginity. And when Steven had been taken to jail and she’d been alone.
She drew into the place where Rocco’s words couldn’t touch her any more and said woodenly, ‘You seem to have it all figured out. What more is there to say?’
She looked at him but didn’t see him. She only saw pain and anger at her own folly for thinking for a second that last night meant anything. For thinking that any of this meant anything.
His voice was clipped, harsh. ‘There’s nothing more to say. It’s time to go.’
The journey back to London was a blur. Gracie had slept in the bedroom on the plane alone, tortured by vivid dreams of looking for Steven only to find Rocco waiting around corners with a savage expression on his face.
As Rocco’s car pulled up outside his building in the cool dark night Gracie acknowledged that the effort to keep up her icy control was fading fast, and was being replaced by a flat, empty ache all through her body. She resolutely ignored Rocco when he joined her to step into the building.
For a split second she looked longingly at the empty street, and then felt her arm taken in a harsh grip. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
Gracie wrenched her arm away and glared up at him, her fire returning. ‘Don’t touch me. I’m not going to leave my brother to your mercy now.’
They were silent in the lift going up to the apartment, but to Gracie’s chagrin, with the dissipation of the icy control she’d wielded all day, emotion was creeping back, and she had to consciously stop herself from remembering Rocco’s tangible pain the night before, and the awful picture he’d painted of his life in Italy. He didn’t deserve her sympathy. Not for one second. Especially not now.
When they got to the apartment George was there to greet them. Gracie felt like running into his huge barrel chest and blubbing all over him, but she didn’t.
He handed some newspapers to Rocco and said, in a serious voice, ‘There’s a picture of you and Gracie in the tabloids.’
Rocco came in behind Gracie and opened out the next day’s paper. She crept closer, forgetting her ire for a moment at the sight of a huge picture of her and Rocco at the party in New York and a caption underneath: ‘Who is de Marco’s latest flame-haired mistress?’
Gracie felt sick. Rocco closed the paper after a long moment and said, ‘Now we’ll see how protective your brother really is.’
Gracie looked at him stupidly, trying to figure out what he meant, and then it hit her. Her mouth opened. She was aware of pain, even more pain, lancing her insides. ‘You …’ she framed shakily, ‘you accused me of seducing you, but you set the whole thing up … taking me away with you so that my brother might see pictures of us and come out of hiding.’
Rocco’s face was unreadable. His mouth thinned. ‘It’ll be interesting to see if your bond is as strong as you say it is.’
Gracie looked up at Rocco and couldn’t see an inkling of the man she’d thought she was falling for. He’d never looked so cold and ruthless. ‘You’re a bastard.’
He smiled then, and it was cruel. ‘You’re absolutely right. I am.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ROCCO watched as Gracie finally turned around and walked away jerkily. He heard her door close and the lock turn. He cursed and threw the paper down, and went straight to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a whisky. His hands were shaking. He’d had a red mist over his vision all day, ever since his PA had handed him the printout of the e-mail when he’d been leaving his office to go and pick Gracie up.
He’d almost ignored it, thinking it was something irrelevant, but had then read it. At first he’d seen only the surface message. It had looked innocuous enough. But then, as he’d re-read it, he’d seen more and more—until by the time he’d got back to the apartment, where Gracie had been waiting so patiently, the words of the e-mail had become a gnarled black symbol of his humiliation at her hands the previous night. Lead had surrounded his heart.
All he’d been able to think about was how excruciatingly exposed he felt. How stupid he’d been to trust her so blindly, convincing himself all along that she was innocent. When he’d thought of the burgeoning sense of peace that had settled over him after his exhaustive swim, and how in the cold light of that morning he hadn’t regretted baring his soul to her, he’d wanted to punch something.
All that time she’d been trying to contact her brother because she believed she had Rocco right in the palm
of her hand. Rational thought had fled. There was no room for it in the state of paranoia that Rocco had been plunged into.
He’d said things to her that had made her pale and look sick and he’d felt nothing but numb. Even when she’d visibly retreated to somewhere he couldn’t reach and kept him at that icy distance he’d welcomed it. It was only when he’d spotted her wistful look towards freedom outside his building just now that something had pierced his fierce control. It had been a primal reflex not to let her go. To keep her by his side at all costs.
And now Rocco had to face the fact that he’d reacted from a place of deep, deep pain. A pain that could only be afflicting him because an equally deep emotion was involved. And he also had to face the fact that either every one of his cynical beliefs would be proved right, or he’d just made the most spectacular mistake of his life.
The following afternoon Rocco was pacing in his office by the window. Work was far from his mind. Gracie hadn’t emerged from her room, and she hadn’t answered when he’d knocked on her door. Only her hoarse, ‘Go away!’ had stopped him from breaking the door down. He’d just now rung up to Mrs Jones, who’d told him worriedly that she was still in her room.
He felt a curious prickling sensation on his neck and turned around to see a familiar figure walking towards his office. His heart sank like a stone. His employees had stopped to look too, because they knew what this meant. Rocco knew it meant something more, though—something infinitely more important than a million euros. His heart spasmed in his chest. As he watched Steven Murray walk into his office with a furious look on his face he knew it meant that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.
The only thing that roused Gracie from her catatonic state was a familiar voice. She was dimly aware that it was evening outside. She heard it again.
‘Gracie, come on. Open the door. It’s me.’
She sat up. It couldn’t be. She had to be dreaming. Feeling as if it really might be a dream, she finally moved her legs and got up and went to the door. She opened it, and saw her brother standing on the other side.