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‘But?’
His tawny eyes grew haunted and his lips thinned into a bleak line before he answered. ‘But then I discovered that they’d silenced another Pietro incident just that morning. So I hurled judgement at them. Threatened to remove myself from their so-called famiglia. Basically uttered words I never got the chance to take back.’
She placed a hand on his arm, as if it would stop his self-flagellation. ‘Maceo—’
‘The last thing I said to my father was that I was ashamed to be his son. Those were the words he took to his grave.’ He sliced his gaze towards her, his whole body bristling with pain, regret and fury.
She leaned in closer, sliding her hand higher up his shoulder until she encountered the cool skin of his nape. ‘I’m sure they weren’t.’
He slashed her a mocking look even as he angled his body towards hers. ‘You’re sure? Because you have personal insight into the afterlife?’
She let the mockery slide. ‘Because he’d have to have been a fool not to realise you were speaking from a place of love and concern. And I don’t think he was. Sounds like he was just caught in an impossible position.’
He laughed. ‘It wasn’t impossible. On the contrary, it was very clear-cut to me back then.’
‘Why? Because you’d walked in their shoes? Felt the pressure of pouring your heart and soul into a company only to risk it burning into nothing?’
His eyes turned to burnished slits. ‘Why, cara, you sound like you condone their actions. I take it that means you don’t hate Luigi quite as vigorously as you did when you arrived?’
Faye shrugged even as she scrambled to reclaim the foundations of her fortress before the sympathy pouring from her completely eroded it. ‘I’m merely trying to help you see things from another angle. You just said “back then”. Somewhere deep down you know differently now, don’t you?’
He shrugged, but his gaze swept away.
‘If you regret judging them, then perhaps you should consider forgiving yourself.’
‘Just like that?’ he rasped bitterly.
‘What’s the alternative? Carry this emotional baggage for the rest of your life?’
He swallowed, his hand once again straying to his pocket. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. But in the shadows of that response she caught a trace of uncertainty.
‘Maceo, why do you keep doing that?’ She indicated towards the hand on his chest.
He stiffened, his hand bunching before it dropped to his thigh. ‘It’s nothing I wish to discuss.’
The hollow inside her grew, but she ignored it. ‘Can I ask you something else?’
He gave a stiff but regal nod.
‘Did Luigi or your father make any provision for Pietro in their wills?’
He frowned, then shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Doesn’t that tell you something? I was nothing to Luigi and he left me potential millions, but he left nothing to his own twin?’
His frown deepened. ‘You weren’t nothing to him. Clearly you made a huge impact.’
‘Did I? Then why didn’t he tell me he had a twin brother?’
Bitterness returned full-force. ‘For the same reason he tried to suppress Pietro’s activities. The obsessive need to keep secrets,’ he railed.
Faye stiffened as terrifying reminders of her own secret crashed in. Registering that her hand was still on his nape, she started to withdraw it.
With lightning reflexes Maceo captured it. Eyes on hers, he planted a kiss in her palm, then laid it on his thigh, trapping it there with his hand.
‘You know everything now. Every last squalid Fiorenti and Caprio secret. And I thank the heavens for it, because I’ve grown tremendously bored of the subject,’ he drawled thickly.
She forgave the blatant lie so she could fight the disturbing urge to explore the taut, muscled thigh flexing beneath her palm, the male fingers trailing over her wrist and up her bare arm. She shivered when they lingered in the crook of her arm, then watched, terrifyingly fascinated and intensely turned on, as her skin prickled with desire. Even her goosebumps chased after his touch.
