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Joy filled her heart. “You will?”
“But you must let me choose where.”
“I don’t even care where,” she lied, pushing away her longing for her friends in New York. What difference did the location make? As long as their family had their own place with a garden, and they could live in one place long enough to make friends and really settle in, what did she care?
“You won’t be sorry,” she said tearfully. “We’ll be so happy. You’ll see. You won’t regret it.”
Cristiano looked at her, his eyes glittering in the shadows. “I regret it already.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
CRISTIANO RARELY DID things for others, and he never did anything he did not want to do.
But perhaps there was something in do-gooding after all. Because the moment he decided to buy a house to please his wife, he’d discovered one for sale on the Amalfi Coast that was spectacularly satisfying for him to acquire. Especially at a cut-rate price.
Just weeks after he’d made his promise to her, their Rolls-Royce approached the magnificent estate on the rugged cliffs of the Amalfi Coast a short distance from the village of Cavello. A wave of euphoria went through Cristiano.
It was his.
He remembered the first time he’d passed through this same tall wrought-iron gate, surrounded by old stone walls. He’d been young then, newly orphaned, utterly penniless. And obsessed with revenge.
Luigi Bennato had been kind from the beginning. Strange for a man who’d ruthlessly rejected his infant son, in order to focus on building his small luxury hotel chain. But Cristiano had been coldly determined to impress him. And he had. Bennato had seen something in eighteen-year-old Cristiano, something no one else had.
But he didn’t detect everything. He didn’t see that Cristiano was his long-abandoned son.
Why would he? Even if he’d remembered Cristiano’s mother, her name then had been Violetta Rossi. Moretti was the name of the man who’d been her husband when Cristiano was born. Her first husband. Her second husband had been an Englishman, her third an American. Both horrible stepfathers, whose only gift to Cristiano had been teaching him English. After a third screaming divorce, his mother had given up on marriage and focused on love affairs that were increasingly short, violent and toxic.
But Luigi Bennato was the man who’d destroyed her first. According to Violetta, before she’d met him, she’d been an innocent virgin who’d never tasted wine. Bennato had seduced her, then tossed her out of his life when she’d fallen pregnant and refused to have the abortion he demanded.
His mother had told Cristiano the story repeatedly when he was growing up. She’d always ended it the same way. “And Luigi was right,” she’d say with a swill of bourbon and a raspy cough. “I should have done what he wanted. Then I’d be happy!”
After his mother’s death, eighteen-year-old Cristiano had stood at her grave and felt nothing. What kind of man would feel nothing at the death of his own mother?
It was then that he knew himself for a monster.
But, standing in the rain, he’d had a new thought, one that lit a fire deep inside him. One that made him feel warm for the first time in his life.
Revenge. He had let the word settle against his lips, caressing it like a lover.
Vendetta. He’d loved the rhythm in his mouth.
Rivincita. He’d felt his tongue brush softly against his teeth.
He would have his revenge on the man who’d fi
rst made his mother a monster, so she in turn could make one of Cristiano.
And he’d had his revenge. In just three years, Cristiano got his vengeance. He’d claimed the ruined palazzo in Rome for himself, with Luigi’s rival as his investor. He’d left Luigi’s company in tatters.
Cristiano marked his adulthood from that moment. His revenge had been the act that had defined his life. The first step on a path that had made him richer than his wildest dreams.
The truth was it had been almost too easy. He still couldn’t believe how quickly and completely Bennato had trusted him. It was almost, he thought sardonically, as if the man had wanted to be destroyed.
Now Cristiano was more powerful than Luigi Bennato had ever been. He was famous. Better in every way.
It still wasn’t enough. Some part of him craved more, wanted to crush the ashes of the man’s life smaller still. Which was why he’d chosen Cavello as the site of his newest Campania Hotel.
The old man’s business had long since gone bankrupt, without enough capital to refurbish the hotels to satisfy the constant demands of perfection that a wealthy clientele required. Bennato’s three small luxury hotels, once the jewels of Capri, Sardinia and Sorrento, had all long been demolished and replaced.
