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He felt stupid then, foolish. His first instinct when faced with Sonia had been to protect Alicia from her venomous presence; he’d even moved her behind him. And yet … the two women were peas in a pod. A hard, heavy, dense mass weighed his chest down. Talk about a sign to wake him up, having Alicia and Sonia come face to face like that.
He laughed harshly then. ‘You want to know who she is?’ Because she is you and you are she; that’s why you’re so interested isn’t it?
He paced back and forth on the carpet like a caged panther and Alicia instinctively stepped away a little. His energy was lashing out like the end of a live wire.
‘I’ll tell you exactly who she is; you’ll probably admire her. Her name is Sonia Paparo.’ His mouth twisted with extreme distaste. ‘And yes, we were lovers. A long time ago, when I inherited the business from Stefano. Actually, to be exact, the day after I made my first million she turned up on my doorstep. She had some lame story but I didn’t care because she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.’
Alicia backed away even further, every word a dart that cut and stung. But she had asked for it and knew he wouldn’t stop now.
His accent was thicker. ‘I told her all about myself because, well, when you’re in love you do, don’t you?’ He didn’t wait for an answer; his eyes were like burning coals.
‘I told her how our mother left us, how angry I was, how hurt. How Paolo had pined for her for years, that he still pined for her. Then one day she arrived and had a woman with her, an old woman who knelt down at my feet and begged forgiveness for leaving me and Paolo.’
Alicia’s hand went to her chest. Hearing the words was like watching a car crash in slow motion.
‘I saw no reason not to believe Sonia’s fantastic story of how she’d overheard this woman in the market talking about the two boys she’d deserted, and how much she regretted it. How she’d put two and two together. After all, why would she lie to me? She loved me. And I did look at it logically; it wasn’t so unbelievably fantastical, we were still in the same area of Naples. The woman would have been around the right age, the same colouring … and she knew things about us … but it was only afterwards I realized that they were things I had told Sonia, together with a bit of intuition, supposition and women’s innate deviousness thrown in for good measure.’
‘Dante—’ She put out a hand but he cut her off curtly.
‘I’m not finished. So, against my best instincts, I welcomed the woman into my house. Too much had happened for me to forgive so quickly, but Paolo, being at an impressionable age, was ecstatic to have his mother back again, not that he’d even really known her in the first place. A huge part of me didn’t believe … and Sonia accused me of being cynical, unbelieving. She pointed out how happy Paolo was … and I didn’t want to be like that—cynical, mistrustful. I’d had a bellyful of it on the streets.’
Alicia felt a chair behind her and sat down dumbly. She watched as Dante still paced.
‘I don’t think I need to explain to you the importance of the mother in Italian families.’ It wasn’t a question and Dante had gone inwards to another place. Alicia could only sit and watch, mute.
‘I knew Sonia expected a marriage proposal; she’d made it obvious from very early on. But I’d held back, I’d always vowed I’d never marry.’ His mouth twisted in a parody of black humour. ‘But, funnily enough, by then Mama was firmly ensconced in her new role and encouraging me daily to make an honest woman of Sonia. One day I came home to find them cackling together in the kitchen over how much money they would stand to get when I asked Sonia to marry me, as they predicted I was about to do any day.’ He laughed harshly. ‘And, more fool me, I’d even picked out a ring. Had stupidly listened to her advice.’
Alicia couldn’t move.
He looked straight at her, through her, the pain in his eyes intense. ‘Mother and daughter, con artists. It was a well worn ploy and we were the perfect victims. When I wasn’t quick enough to propose, Sonia got creative. Between us, we wouldn’t have really remembered our mother … but Paolo … I had to tell him the truth. He couldn’t have borne the thought of being abandoned again.’
Alicia stood up and came over, her eyes anguished. ‘Dante, I’m so sorry, truly … I know exactly how you must have felt—’
Her words cut into him, the wound still raw, and he couldn’t believe how he’d been provoked into telling her about Sonia. He turned on her, eyebrows drawn together in fury. ‘You? How on earth could you ever know what it was like to be abandoned?’
He looked down his strong nose at her in disgust.
‘I know,’ she said quietly, ‘because I watched my own mother walk away from me when I was four and Melanie was two and a half.’
Betrayal—all over again. The word resounded in his head, deafening him. For a minute there was silence and then the cold fury that blasted from Dante was worse than any hot temper.
‘You …’ He said something undoubtedly rude in Italian, his mouth a tight sneer. ‘I tell you this and still you think that you can worm your way in with not only a baby but now a
fairy tale of abandonment. You haven’t even got the intelligence to try and make up a slightly better version, an even more lurid story to really tug on the heartstrings?’
Alicia was trying to make sense of this; she knew on some banal level that obviously he didn’t believe her. And on another level this pain cut so deep that she didn’t think she’d even make it from the room.
Dante looked at her, incandescent with rage at her blatant greed and audacity. Her eyes had closed with his words and now she looked dead ahead, through him. Her face was pale.
How could she do this? Didn’t she see? Acting to the bitter end.
Yet, even in the midst of this he was aware of her, in a visceral way that eclipsed anything he’d felt for any other woman, even Sonia. It was the worst thing of all; it even made the naked greed and avarice seem unimportant. Something dark moved through him. And what it was, was this: he knew he couldn’t let this woman go; he wasn’t ready for that, no matter what. He assured himself he was still in control, even though he felt anything but.
‘Nothing has changed, Alicia. We can get past this, at least we can be totally honest now.’
She lifted dead eyes to his and he took a step back. She laughed and it didn’t sound like her. ‘You just can’t believe that your brother could fall in love with a girl—a nice girl, a good girl—have a baby and want to get married, can you? Because it didn’t happen for you. You got tricked in a heinous way, Dante, but she was one woman and her very twisted mother … and I’m afraid, as inconveniently coincidental as it may sound, we do share a similar history of woe.’
She sounded incredibly weary all of a sudden. ‘To be honest, I don’t much care if you believe me, I should be used to it now, you haven’t believed a word I’ve said since the moment we met and I’ve done nothing but tell the truth. And when I was wrong, I apologized. You can look up the records of the North London Orphanage Trust and you’ll see our names there.’
