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‘You’re here,’ Rio said simply.
‘You can’t stay here,’ Ellie argued, thoroughly disconcerted by that declaration. ‘It’s Beppe’s house.’
‘It’s not. I bought it from him years ago when the upkeep was becoming too much for him. I begged him to stay on and look after it,’ he explained with a casual shrug. ‘It was a property investment for me—’
‘You’re such a liar!’ Ellie told him helplessly. ‘You did it because you love him!’
‘That too.’ Rio looked uncomfortable. ‘Can we get to the point of what that stupid note you left behind meant? One sentence? I get one sentence of explanation?’
Ellie stiffened, more challenged than she had expected because Rio wasn’t shouting or raging, giving her the fight she had subconsciously craved and yet feared with every atom of her being, lest it lead to the end of their relationship. She lowered her legs and slid off the other side of the bed. ‘After the way you spent your morning, I should think the note was self-explanatory…’
‘After the way I spent… Franca? You saw me with Franca?’ Rio thundered without warning as he finally made the connection. ‘Why the hell didn’t you rescue me?’
Taken aback, Ellie froze. ‘Rescue you?’
‘Sì… I’m sitting in a public place while a woman weeps and sobs and talks about the kind of stuff I really don’t want to know and I can’t decently escape!’ Rio recounted wrathfully. ‘You think I was enjoying that? Are you out of your mind?’
It began to sink in on Ellie that she could have made a huge error of judgement.
‘I can’t believe this is all about Franca!’ Rio exclaimed with rampant incredulity.
‘You were holding hands. I thought you were flirting with her—’
‘You need to learn what flirting entails, principessa. I assure you that there was no flirting whatsoever. Franca lost her eldest daughter to leukaemia only weeks ago and has only recently returned to work after compassionate leave.’
‘Oh, my goodness…’ Ellie whispered in shock. ‘That poor, poor woman.’
‘Yes, even Rio with the heart of a stone was not going to get up and walk away from that!’ Rio grated. ‘And that was only a part of the doom and gloom rehash of the previous nine years that took place. She said it did her good to get it off her conscience but it only made me realise that my sense of moral superiority over events back then was entirely unmerited.’
Ellie nodded. ‘Okay. You contributed to the breakup and her going off with your business partner. I assumed that some of it must’ve been your fault.’
Rio dealt her an exasperated look. ‘I didn’t. I blamed Franca and Jax, but then I didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes. Her fling with Jax only lasted about five minutes, and at her lowest ebb she ended up homeless.’
Feeling guiltier than ever for her wrong assumptions, Ellie backed down into a corner armchair and sighed. ‘That can’t have been easy for you to hear—’
Rio’s gaze was sombre. ‘No, even at the time I never wished harm
on her, but then she lived with me and I didn’t even realise I was living with an alcoholic—’
Ellie’s brows lifted in wonderment.
Rio grimaced. ‘That tells you how much attention I gave Franca. My sole interest back then was really the business of making money. But to some extent that wasn’t all my fault. I was driven by the need to show Franca’s family that I could provide well for her. They had done everything they could to try to separate us—’
Ellie was now genuinely interested in what he was telling her and some of her stress had ebbed because she had recognised that her worst fears had been groundless. ‘But why?’
‘Primarily my background,’ Rio divulged stiffly.
‘That you grew up as an orphan?’ Ellie exclaimed. ‘But that’s so unfair!’
Rio braced himself to tell the truth and he paled and gritted his teeth. ‘It was more sordid than that. I was an abandoned baby, born addicted to heroin. I was left in a cardboard box in a dumpster and found by street cleaners,’ he admitted very stiffly. ‘The manufacturer’s name on the box was Rio. The nuns christened me Jerome after St Jerome but I was always known as Rio.’
Ellie was so appalled that she couldn’t speak. She glanced away to get herself back under control but her eyes shone with shocked tears. To think of Rio as a defenceless baby thrown out like so much rubbish absolutely broke her heart. ‘Why…a dumpster? Why not somewhere safer?’
‘I asked my mother when I met her. She said she didn’t want to get in trouble or be asked questions. It was nothing to do with my safety—it was all to do with her. I meant nothing to her. She was an addict and a whore,’ he confessed grimly. ‘Franca’s family were convinced that I had to have evil genes. Some people do think like that, Ellie, which is why I’ve always kept the circumstances of my birth a secret. It is not that I am ashamed but that I do not wish to be pitied or thought of as being a lesser person because of those circumstances.’
Fierce protectiveness slivered through Ellie as she looked back at him, all the love she had for him enveloping her. ‘I love you no matter what you came from. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything and I like Rio as a name. And only now understanding why it was so important for you to give our child a safer, happier start in life…well, it only makes me love you even more!’
Rio was transfixed. He had been prepared for Ellie to flinch and be repulsed by the sleazy facts of his birth and ancestry and then pretend that they didn’t matter even when it was obvious that they did. He certainly hadn’t expected her to tell him that she loved him without reservation.
