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‘Really?’ Claudia glanced at him, suddenly feeling shy. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted him looking through her photos. But there were still a lot of hours of the evening to get through and she should make the most of the quiet mood they seemed to have reached.
‘I’ll get some mince pies,’ Marco said. ‘Then we’ll look at them together.’
It didn’t take him long to return with a plate of spicily fragrant mince pies, then she started scrolling through the beach photos. She was apprehensive to be looking at them for the first time in front of Marco, but at the same time very pleased with what she had achieved that afternoon.
‘They’re amazing,’ Marco said, moving closer to her and angling the laptop screen for his benefit. A moment later his hand covered hers as he took control of the computer, moving through the photographs at a rate that suited him.
A frisson passed through her as his fingers brushed hers, but she pulled her hand away carefully, trying not to let him notice the way that even that slight physical contact had affected her.
‘These pictures are really incredible,’ Marco said. Somehow he had manoeuvred the computer on the coffee table so that it was completely in front of him. ‘The way you’ve caught the surging elemental energy is amazing. I can all but feel the press of the brooding sky and hear the roar of the waves.’
Claudia stared at him, startled by his praise.
‘Do you mind if I scroll back through some of your other photos?’ he asked, already starting to scan back through her files.
The images flipped by, going backwards in time. December in a London park. Bonfire night fireworks in November. Autumn trees in the English countryside. The grape harvest in Piedmont with the Alps in the background.
It might have seemed as if those pictures represented her life over the last few months. But they were just places she’d been—photos she’d taken for work. They did nothing to convey the distress that had been growing inside her after her father had been taken seriously ill.
Suddenly she noticed she was watching images of the family home and vineyard near Turin flash past. They were personal photos and she should stop Marco looking at them. But then, at that moment, she found herself looking at a photo of her father.
He was sitting in the courtyard by the fountain pool and he was smiling and looking happy. Not as robust as in his younger years—but there were no real signs of the illness that was about to strike him. He appeared cheerful and well—not the frail shadow of himself he had been in recent months since he had become so ill.
She stared at the image, wishing herself back in time. Wishing her father still looked happy and fit. But that was never going to happen. He was never going to recover from his illness.
All she could do was watch him fade away. And marry a man she detested. That way her father would not have to lose everything and face a criminal investigation, when it was almost more than he could do to simply hang on to the last fragile threads of his life.
Her vision blurred and her eyes were full of tears. There was nothing she could do to stop them, so she squeezed her eyelids closed and turned away, trying to think about something different.
Marco was looking at images of his old family home. Distinctly uneasy emotions were rumbling within him as he studied the pictures of the house and surrounding vineyards.
He wasn’t seeing the elderly man in the foreground of the photo, although he’d recognised Hector Hazelton at once. He was staring at the fountain courtyard, remembering all the afternoons he’d spent there with his much younger sister, taking time to play with her before going off to meet his friends.
A sudden burst of fury exploded in him and he felt his hands clench involuntarily into fists. That property should still belong to his family. His sister Bianca should have finished growing up there, with a loving mother and father—but instead Claudia had grown up in his rightful home with her father, Hector, and with that witch Francesca Hazelton.
It was twelve years since the De Luca family had been destroyed, but the fury that had consumed Marco then continued to rage through him. His family had been torn apart from within—had suffered the ultimate treachery. Betrayed by one of their own—Marco’s mother.
It had started when Francesca Hazelton insinuated herself into his mother’s life, pretending to be her friend and gaining her trust. Then she had introduced her cousin, Primo Vasile.
It hadn’t taken long for the serpent, Vasile, to use his snakelike charm to seduce Marco’s mother. Afterwards, he had lured her into turning against her own family. She’d taken a vast amount of money from Marco’s father and revealed crucial business secrets that had enabled Vasile to bring the family business down. He’d taken whatever he’d wanted and destroyed everything else.
Marco’s father had been weak, blind to his wife’s treachery. He had not struck out against her when he had the chance, when he’d first discovered her duplicity. Marco would not make the same mistake.
Now he knew that Claudia was a snake in the grass, and he would not fail to treat her in the way that she deserved. She would pay for everything she had done—to him and to his sister.
Suddenly, despite the vengeful thoughts that filled his mind, Marco felt a change come over Claudia. She’d been sitting quietly beside him, making no comment as he looked through her photographs, but he realised that she must have seen his temper flare just now.
With a supreme effort of will, Marco consciously forced his body to relax and removed signs of his anger from his expression. The need for revenge burned stronger than ever within him, but he had to lock it away inside for a short while longer.
He turned and looked at Claudia.
What he saw doused his fury as effectively as a bucket of cold water.
Claudia was sitting with her eyes squeezed shut, huge tears rolling down her ashen face. She looked so sad and vulnerable that Marco reacted instinctively to her distress, momentarily forgetting what she had done to him and Bianca.
He slid off the sofa and kneeled in front of her, the anger that had overtaken him a moment before completely gone.
‘Claudia.’
