AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘A car accident,’ Marco bit out. ‘My father should never have been driving. If I’d been here, I would have prevented it.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Claudia said. Despite the way he had just treated her, there was a sympathetic note in her voice. Sympathy was the last thing Marco wanted to hear.
‘No—it’s Vasile’s fault,’ Marco said.
‘How awful,’ Claudia said. ‘For everyone—especially Bianca. She never told me anything about that.’
‘Don’t talk about my sister as if you care.’ Marco rounded on her. ‘That’s where all this started between us.’
Claudia stared at him, utterly stunned by what Marco had told her.
Patches of livid red burned on his cheeks and he glared back at her with eyes that were full of accusation. His shoulders were trembling and she realised that he was consumed by a terrible combination of guilt and fury.
It was almost too much to take in. He had told her the night before that his mother had betrayed his family and abandoned Bianca, but she had never imagined that he was talking about such a cataclysmic outcome for the entire family.
The fact that Primo Vasile had been his mother’s seducer, the catalyst behind all the destruction, was an appalling discovery. She knew he was a bad person—after all, he was blackmailing her into marriage—but the dark picture Marco had painted made her feel dizzy with horror that he had embroiled her in his schemes.
‘I don’t understand why you kept all this secret from me,’ she said.
It had wrenched her heart when he’d told her how his family had suffered, but it wasn’t fair of him to blame her. She’d been thirteen years old when it had happened. And she was still reeling from the shock of discovering that their families were connected in such an awful way.
‘We both kept secrets,’ Marco countered.
‘I never deliberately withheld information,’ Claudia said. ‘In fact I did tell you everything—you always knew the names of my parents and where I came from. I didn’t hide anything.’
‘You never mentioned Primo Vasile,’ Marco said. ‘Don’t you think that’s a fairly major omission?’
‘What did he have to do with me?’ Claudia asked. Her blood ran cold—but it was only in the last couple of days that she’d had any direct involvement with him. ‘Did you expect me to discuss every one of my father’s business associates?’
Suddenly she stopped and stared at him in shock.
‘That’s what it was always about!’ she gasped. ‘You got close to me, hoping to find out information to use against Primo—because of what he did to your family.’
‘No,’ Marco said. ‘Not then. I wanted to know what you were doing hanging round my sister.’
‘She was my friend!’ Claudia declared.
She glared at him, horrified that he could even imagine she might have had any other reason than friendship for spending time with his sister. Just what sort of person did he take her for? And what sort of person was he to judge her by such awful standards?
‘Is Primo Vasile your friend?’ he asked blandly.
‘I hardly know him,’ she snapped, still smarting from his insinuation that she had somehow been a threat to his sister.
‘Maybe not the best basis for marriage,’ he said.
CHAPTER NINE
CLAUDIA’S heart lurched.
Somehow Marco knew about her planned marriage to Primo.
‘No…I…’ she stammered. She wanted to deny it—it had been such a hard struggle to accept that she must go through with it. Having Marco throw it in her face was unbearable.
‘Do you think I’m a complete fool?’ Marco demanded. ‘I’ve made it my business to know everything that bastard does. I know everything he so much as thinks, even before he knows it himself. Something like a wedding would never escape my notice.’
‘But how…?’ Claudia’s voice died away. It was only two days since she’d met Primo and Francesca at the Ritz, and that was the first time the subject of her marriage to Primo had been raised. Or, rather, that was when they had used her father’s precarious situation to blackmail her into marriage.
Marco had appeared right outside the Ritz only moments later. Somehow he had known about it before she had.
