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“I would have eventually,” he answered quietly.
“Eventually,” she repeated, voice strangled. “Eventually killed her, Gio.”
“Money wouldn’t have changed her mental state, Rachel. Clearly, she wasn’t well if you—who were there—couldn’t help her. How could I?”
“You accept no blame, do you?”
“My job was to protect my family, including the business, a business that employs thousands of people. To give a quarter of a billion-dollar company to a young woman halfway across the world without doing due diligence, could have meant the end of Marcello Enterprises—”
“It’s always about the business, isn’t it?”
“I was raised from birth to put the family business first.”
“I think you mean from birth you were raised to put the business first. Family appears to be a very distant second.”
“I won’t apologize for being skeptical. I thought your sister took advantage of a dying man, and I wasn’t about to see his estate go to someone who hadn’t loved him, but rather saw an opportunity to grow rich at someone else’s expense. I will apologize for the lengthiness of the investigation. I insisted it be thorough, but I realize now that my legal team was perhaps too meticulous—”
“You can’t even apologize without adding in disqualifiers.”
“I’m sorry your sister is dead, but my brother is gone, too.” His voice was deep and granite hard, and yet his accent softened the words, taking the truth and pain in them and searing them into her heart. “They’re both gone,” he added, “but they’re not lost to us. They’ve left us their love child.”
“Stop. You don’t love, and you don’t believe in love.”
“That’s not true. I love you—”
“Now you say it? Now, when it’s all over? When it’s too late? My goodness, you’re desperate—”
He moved while she was speaking, reaching for her, bringing her hard against him. He cupped her face and kissed her, a kiss that was unlike any of the kisses before. This one wasn’t hard and fierce, nor was it scalding, blistering with bone-melting desire. This kiss was dark and intense, layered with emotion and raw, undeniable need. He didn’t just want her lips and touch. She felt as if he wanted to reach into her and steal her very heart.
“You can’t have me,” she whispered against his mouth, as tears stung her eyes and filled the back of her throat. “You Marcellos have taken enough.” She wrenched away and nearly tripped over her full lace skirt in her need for distance. “It’s over, Gio. We’re through—”
“Not by half,” he ground out. “We have a family.”
“You’re not part of it anymore.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You can’t cut me out. Your sister didn’t leave a will. She didn’t indicate that she wanted you to be Michael’s guardian. You have no more legal right to him than I do.”
“But I want him more.”
“That’s not true. I want him very much. He’s all I have left of my brother, which makes him infinitely dear. Unlike you and Juliet, I didn’t have a complicated relationship with Antonio. There was no guilt or anger, no envy or resentment. From the time he was born, he was my brother and best friend. I sat with him as he died, and it killed me watching him suffer and fade. His death wasn’t quick, either. It took him weeks to go, and even as great as his suffering was, I grieved terribly when he was gone. I still miss him profoundly.”
His words came at her, one after the other, and it was overwhelming his passion and love—love he’d never shown her. She shouldn’t be jealous, but she was. Rachel had wanted Gio to love her that much, but he never did.
“No, I didn’t rush to Seattle with open arms when I learned of Michael,” Gio added. “But I had to be cautious about this claim that he had a son there. A dozen different women claimed they’d had his son or daughter. A dozen different claims to process. A dozen different women who wanted a piece of Antonio’s wealth. It was bad enough to lose my brother, but then to deal with all of this desperation and greed?”
Rachel flinched, aware of how desperate she’d been when she’d arrived in Venice on Gio’s doorstep. “Desperation doesn’t make a person bad!”
“No, but it does make one suspect.”
“You should have told me this right away. You should have sat me down on that first day in your mother’s favorite salon and laid out the facts—”
“Buon Dio, Rachel! You had called the paparazzi. You invited the media to my doorstep. How was I to trust you?”
She shook her head, thoughts muddled, hating that he could tangle her up, make her question everything all over again.
Gio closed the distance, hands settling on her shoulder, his skin so warm through the thin lace of her gown. “We have both made our share of mistakes, but we won’t make another one today. We will marry, and we will be a family for Michael. You may feel hurt, and you might be angry with me, but you can’t allow your anger to hurt Michael. Our baby.”
Our baby. The words rippled through her, and she exhaled at the truth in the words. Gio somehow always cut straight to the heart. Maybe it was his engineering mind, or maybe it was his way of problem solving, but it felt as if he’d taken a lance to her, cutting away the garbage and nonsense and revealing what was essential and true.
