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‘You.’
‘Me?’ Claudia frowned at him. ‘You mean you gave it up for me? You’ve worked towards that moment for years.’
‘It was meaningless,’ Marco said. ‘Compared to how I feel about you, it was utterly meaningless.’
She looked at him, hardly daring to breathe. Or to hope.
‘I achieved what I set out to do. I deceived you. I made you care for me. And I think I broke your heart,’ Marco said. ‘But I also broke my own.’
He stood up and strode to the window and Claudia realised he was in the grip of very powerful emotions. She waited quietly, trying not to let the glimmer of hope that was building inside her grow too strong too soon. He’d said he’d broken his own heart. But she wouldn’t let herself think about what that might mean.
‘When Bianca first told me you were her new friend I was suspicious,’ Marco continued. ‘But when I met you I was overwhelmed.’
‘I was overwhelmed by you too,’ Claudia said, remembering how she’d been so impressed by him, so in awe of his incredible good looks and so flattered by his attention.
‘You were beautiful, charming and wonderfully enthusiastic about life,’ Marco said. ‘I fell in love with you immediately.’
Claudia gasped, then covered her mouth with her hand, looking up at him with wide startled eyes. He’d said he’d fallen in love with her. But he’d used the past tense—he was talking about what happened more than four years ago.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Marco said, gazing down at her shocked face. She looked so pale and vulnerable that he wanted to wrap her in his arms and protect her from the world.
The unbearable knowledge that he was the one she needed protection from lashed at him viciously, ripping through him—making his heart bleed in an agony of guilt-ridden sorrow.
‘What?’ she asked, her voice shaking.
‘If I loved you—how could I have treated you so badly?’
He’d asked himself that question a million times since their terrible argument the night before. He hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind. He truly must be a terrible person. A man as despicable as Primo Vasile.
‘You were right when you said my hatred of Vasile blinded me,’ he continued doggedly. ‘That’s why I never challenged you about our mutual connection to him. I told myself I was waiting to see what you’d do, to see if you’d reveal any involvement with him. The truth was I enjoyed your company too much to do anything that might make me lose you.’
He paused and drew in a long shaky breath.
‘I wish you’d asked me about it.’ Claudia gazed up into his haunted eyes. His suffering was drawn on every plane and angle of his face, and her heart contracted with the need to comfort him somehow. But she instinctively understood that he needed to complete his confession.
‘So do I,’ Marco said, pacing across to the window and back again.
‘I still can’t believe that all along you thought I knew what Primo did to your family,’ she said. ‘That you thought I was hiding that knowledge from you for some reason.’
‘That’s because you have a kind, pure heart,’ Marco said, raking his hands in agitation through his already dishevelled hair. ‘I know now that you would never be capable of such deception—but, as you said last night, I judged you by my own despicable standards.’
‘Your family had been destroyed by Primo,’ Claudia said, desperate to ease his pain. ‘No wonder you were cautious.’
‘I wasn’t cautious. I was obsessed,’ Marco said. ‘I told myself I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. But I realise now that my hatred of your family was so strong that I was just waiting for you to trip up.’
He stopped pacing and looked down at her, making eye contact.
‘I’d fallen in love with you—that’s why it hurt me so much when I thought you had betrayed me,’ he said.
‘So you wanted to hurt me in return.’ Claudia’s voice was so quiet she could hardly hear it herself.
‘I feel so ashamed,’ he said, suddenly dropping down to his knees in front of her and taking her hands in his. ‘How could I want to hurt the person I love?’
Claudia gazed into his eyes and saw they were clouded by a miasma of guilt and pain. But beneath that misery, she could see a glimmer of something else.
No, it was more than a glimmer. It was a warm bright glow and it was shining directly into her soul.
It was love. He loved her.
