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She glanced back at him, his face relaxed in sleep, his dark lashes feathering his olive-toned cheeks. He looked beautiful, like something out of a Renaissance painting, and he made her heart ache with love. But would he countenance a trip to America? What would his reaction to the possibility of her mother’s crime be?
As if he could sense her thoughts Rafael opened her eyes. He blinked away the dazed confusion of sleep, his amber gaze arrowing in on her. ‘Allegra? Is something wrong?’
She licked dry lips, her heart starting to pound. What if he was angry? What if he blamed her somehow? Despite everything they’d said and shared, she still didn’t know if Rafael actually loved her. He hadn’t said the words. He’d fought against the feeling, even last night, everything in him resisting, but she’d pressed and pushed and tried so hard...
‘Allegra?’ Rafael said again, his tone sharpening.
‘I think I know who embezzled the money. Back then.’
‘What?’ Rafael sat up in bed, his eyes narrowed as he raked a hand through his hair. ‘How could you possibly know that?’ He almost sounded suspicious. Of her.
Allegra took a deep breath. She felt nervous, even afraid. Why was she risking this—them—so soon? Before she even knew the truth or strength of Rafael’s feelings? And yet, with this new truth lodged inside her like a stone, how could she not?
‘It came to me last night.’ She gulped, Rafael’s stare still hard and unrelenting. ‘I think... I think it was my mother.’
‘Your mother?’
‘It makes sense, in an awful way. She had some money, but she didn’t get it from my father. And the divorce was so sudden, so abrupt...’
Rafael swung his legs out of bed, sitting so his back was to her, his hands raked through his hair.
‘This doesn’t have to change anything between us,’ Allegra said quietly. ‘Does it?’
‘There’s no proof, is there?’ Rafael’s voice was flat, toneless. ‘We could never prove it.’
‘I... I don’t know. I thought, perhaps, we could go to New York. Confront her. Maybe...maybe then you’d feel...’ She trailed off, uncertain and miserable. Why had she begun this wretched conversation? Yet she couldn’t have kept such an awful suspicion, a huge secret, to herself. She didn’t want there to be secrets or lies between them, ever.
‘You can’t go to New York in your state.’
‘Rafael, I’m barely into the third trimester. And I want to be there. Let’s do this together. Even if there’s no proof, it would be good to know, wouldn’t it? Maybe then...maybe then you could finally let the past go.’
‘While your mother walks free?’
Allegra blinked at the savage note in his voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, because she was, even if none of it was her fault. Still everything felt complicated and messy, painful.
‘I’ll book the tickets,’ Rafael said, and then he rose from the bed and walked out of the room.
* * *
It felt like too much, on top of everything that had happened last night. Allegra’s mother. She’d as good as signed the death warrant on his family. He didn’t blame Allegra, knew she had nothing to do with it, and yet...
It felt bitter, almost too much to bear.
Rafael got ready in taut silence, booking the tickets, packing clothes, telling himself he’d feel better when he knew.
Salvatore drove them to Palermo; Allegra looked tired and miserable, huddled on one side of the limo, one hand resting on her bump. Guilt flashed through him, an acidic rush. She’d given him so much last night. She’d told him she loved him. And he’d fought her every step of the way, couldn’t bear the thought of being that vulnerable. That exposed.
And yet he’d shown her the worst of him and she still hadn’t walked away. Even now, when he was practically ignoring him, Allegra was there, for the duration, determined to stay by his side, to see this through.
And maybe she needed this as much as he did. If her mother was guilty, it had affected Allegra’s life as much as his. They’d both been ensnared by the past—and perhaps the truth could now set them both free.
