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People were leaving—finally. From her immobile position she saw her mother and Lucia go through a poisonous little ritual of one up-manship about the evening’s success, then her mother was graciously inviting her sister-in-law and Vito to stay and take coffee with her, to hear all about Vito’s recent travels. Adding, portentously, that they really must settle the business of Guido’s shares...
Immediately, Vito tensed, Carla could see, and exchanged looks with his mother. Then promptly offered to escort his mother to her car, while he returned for coffee. The mention of Guido’s shares—half the family shareholding—was a bait Vito would not be able to refuse. How could he? His determination to acquire the shares, giving him total control of the hotel chain as the sole Viscari left, was paramount. The shares her mother had adamantly refused to sell.
Now, walking with punishing stiffness, Carla followed her mother into the drawing room, taking up a stance behind her mother’s chair. Vito strolled in, having said farewell to his mother—doubtless sympathising with her for the ordeal they’d both endured, with Marlene queening it over them as Guido’s widow.
Well, she didn’t care. Didn’t care about Lucia’s irritation, or Vito’s frustration over the shares, or her mother’s endless manoeuvrings. She cared only about one thing.
It burned inside her like hell’s furnace. Her hand tightened, spasmed over the back of her mother’s chair. Her mother was talking, but Carla wasn’t listening. Vito was answering, but she wasn’t listening to him either. The barbed exchange went on, but she paid it no attention.
Not until the moment came. The moment her mother had planned for, schemed for, hoped for, for so long now. The moment Carla had never in a thousand years thought she would collude with.
As she did now.
She heard her mother talking to Vito, her tone saccharine. ‘What could be better than uniting the two Viscari shareholdings by uniting the two halves of our family? You two young people together!’
Silently, she watched Vito’s reaction. Saw angry disbelief lash across his face. Didn’t care. Didn’t care at all. Saw his furious gaze snap to her, demand she answer—demand she shoot down immediately what her mother had just said. Refuse, outright, the preposterous notion Marlene had put forward.
She refused to think of the devastating, demolishing impact on her step-cousin.
The agonising pain of Cesare’s brutal rejection had caused a consuming need to hit back at him, to claw around her raw and ravaged heart the tattered, ragged shreds of her own pathetic pride any way she could—no matter who paid the price for it, no matter how vilely it made her behave.
‘I think,’ she heard herself say, from somewhere very far away, where icy winds scoured all emotion from her, ‘that’s an excellent idea.’
* * *
The next days passed in a choking blur. Carla blanked everything and everyone. Refused to talk, refused to face what she was doing. She was like one possessed by an evil spi
rit, with the devil driving her.
Vito, getting her away from Marlene, had railed at her disbelievingly. Then he’d done worse than rail. He had realised why she was playing to her mother’s obsession. His expression had said it all as the reason for her collusion with her mother dawned on him.
‘So that’s it—he’s finished with you, hasn’t he?’
Vito’s pity had lacerated her, like thorns scraping her flesh. Then he’d poured acid on the wound.
‘To speak frankly, it was always going to end that way. The Conte di Mantegna can trace his bloodline back to the ancient Romans! He’s going to marry a woman who can do the same! He might have affairs beforehand, but he’ll never marry a woman who—’
‘A woman, Vito, who is about to announce her engagement to another man!’ The words shot from her as from a gun.
Because that—that—was the truth of it! That was the poisonous salvation that her mother had put to her that unbearable morning in her apartment. That was how she was going to survive what Cesare had done to her—what she had done to herself. Falling in love with a man who was marrying another woman. A woman so much more suitable to be his wife than she was! A woman, so the gossip columns were already saying, who was utterly perfect to be the next Contessa di Mantegna.
As she herself had not been.
Worse than the words in the fawning articles had been the photos of Cesare and Francesca delle Ristori—smiling, elegant, aristocratic, such a perfectly matched couple!
Worse again than that were the photographs of herself and Cesare—taken, so she supposed in her embittered misery, at any time during the last six months at restaurants and art galleries—or of herself alone, the photos that accompanied her articles.
And the prurient, goading words that went with them, contrasting her with Cesare’s noble-born fiancée.
One-time constant companion...
Another shapely beauty to adorn the arm of our dashing, illustrious Conte di Mantegna...
Daughter of late hotelier Guido Viscari’s English wife, co-owner of the Viscari luxury hotel chain.
Well, it was that that was going to save her! Save her from the unbearable humiliation that crushed her, from the mockery of the world—and herself.
You fool—you pathetic fool! To have thought—to have really believed—that that final night with him was the start of something more! That he was feeling for you what you had realised you felt for him! When all along...
