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‘Signor Vitali? Is there anything left to say?’
Rafael blinked the lawyer back into focus, along with Mancini’s widow and stepdaughter. He’d thought he’d enjoy seeing Caterina Mancini brought low but, despite the obvious fact that she was a gold-digger, he felt sorry for her. She’d had nothing to do with his father’s downfall, and right now his eye-for-an-eye justice tasted bitter.
And if she was right, and Mancini had died of a heart attack, of shock at having his business bought out from under him...
Then he’d killed Mancini just as Mancini had killed his father.
Uncertainty and guilt cramped his stomach. He didn’t like either emotion, would not entertain them for a moment. If his actions had brought about Mancini’s death, then so be it. Justice had finally, fully been served. He had to believe that.
* * *
Allegra travelled back to New York in a daze, sleeping nearly the entire flight, wanting only escape from the grief and memory and pain.
The world felt as if it had righted itself a little bit when she was back in her studio apartment in the East Village, enjoying the quiet, peaceful solitude of her own space, the sound of muted traffic barely audible from the sixth floor. She’d said hello to Anton, her boss and landlord, and then retreated upstairs. All she needed now was some music to help to soothe and restore her.
Allegra automatically reached for her favourite Shostakovich before her hand stilled, her stomach souring. Had Rafael ruined her favourite music for her for ever? Maybe. She chose some Elgar instead, and then curled up on her sofa, hugging a pillow to her chest, trying not to give in to tears.
A few minutes later her mobile rang, and Allegra’s heart sank a little to see it was her mother.
‘Well?’ Jennifer demanded before Allegra had said so much as hello. ‘Did you get anything? Did I?’
‘It was a lovely funeral service,’ Allegra said quietly, and Jennifer merely snorted. Her mother held no love, or even any sentiment, for Alberto Mancini. ‘We didn’t get anything,’ she said after a tiny pause. Although she didn’t understand it, she would heed her father’s advice not to tell her mother about the sapphire necklace. ‘He didn’t even have much to give.’ She explained about Rafael Vitali and his takeover of Mancini Technologies, striving to keep her voice toneless, betraying none of the emotion still coursing through her at the memory of that one earth-shattering night. She’d forget it. She’d start forgetting it right then. She had to.
‘Vitali?’ Jennifer said sharply. ‘He bought the company?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not that it has anything to do with us.’
‘No,’ Allegra agreed dourly. ‘Although Caterina Mancini accused him of practically killing...’ Even now she could not say Papa. He might have signed the letter as her papa, but he hadn’t acted or felt like one since she’d been a child. ‘Him. Because the heart attack might have been brought on by shock.’ The thought that Rafael might have actually killed her father was like a stone inside her.
And she’d given herself to this man.
Jennifer was silent for a moment. ‘It’s over,’ she said at last, and that knowledge rested in Allegra’s stomach like lead. Yes, it was over. It was all over.
* * *
Over the next month Allegra did her best to move on with her life. She worked at the café, she chatted with customers, she walked in the park and tried to enjoy the small pleasures of her life, but after that one earth-shattering night with Rafael, everything felt dull and colourless.
It was foolish to miss him when he’d treated her so brutally, and yet Allegra felt like Sleeping Beauty who had been woken up. She couldn’t go back to sleep again. Retreat was not an option, and yet it was the only one she’d ever known.
So she tried to forget about that evening entirely, but a month after she returned from Italy she threw up her breakfast. She passed it off as having had a dodgy takeaway the night before, but when she threw up the next morning, realisation crept in, cold and unwelcome. The third morning she bought a pregnancy test.
She stared down at the two pink lines in shock, realisation coursing through her in an icy wave. It seemed too unfair that on top of having the misfortune to have slept with Rafael Vitali and then been brutally rejected by him, she now was carrying his baby. One night—and now this?
