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And she left.
CHAPTER NINE
“SIGNOR.” LOOKING UP from where he’d been pacing the hotel’s terrace just after dawn, Cristiano saw Luca Pizzati, the new manager. The young man gave him an apologetic smile. “Sir, you are acting crazy. The entire staff is threatening to quit.”
Cristiano’s mouth fell open. How could the man say such a thing?
The day after his wife and child left him, Cristiano had planned to leave for Tokyo. And after that, Seoul. And after that... Cristiano couldn’t remember. But he’d been forced to stay in Cavello. Something wasn’t right here, and until he could find the source of the problem, he couldn’t leave. He could barely eat or sleep. All he could do was pace the halls of the hotel, checking every detail, trying to find the problem that haunted him, taunted him, just out of his reach.
“Look at this,” Cristiano ground out. He yanked a purple flower from a bougainvillea bush that was a slightly different shade from the rest. “A disgrace! Do I have to fix everything?”
The young manager looked at the flower, then Cristiano.
“Signor Moretti,” he said gently, “when was the last time you slept?”
He bit out furiously, “How can I sleep, until the hotel is perfect?”
“It will never be perfect,” the manager said. “Because people are living in it.”
Cristiano took a deep breath. Blinking hard, he looked up at the beautiful new hotel. It was already full of guests and getting nothing but praise. He looked down at the flower in his hand. He’d been about to scream at the gardening staff because the bougainvillea flowers were not all the exact same shade of purple.
Pizzati was right. He was acting crazy.
Crushing the bloom in his fingers, Cristiano tossed it to the ground.
“You’re right,” he said in a low voice. “Please give the staff my apologies. I...I will stop.”
The manager came closer, a look of concern in his eyes. “Shall I send for your driver? Or would you like Esposito to take you home?”
The empty villa was the last place Cristiano wanted to be. There, he heard only the echoes of his baby son’s laughter in the nursery, of his wife’s sweet singing in the garden. And in the bedroom, the haunting echo of her soft moans from the times he’d made love to her.
Lost, all lost.
And he was tired. So tired. Thinking of his wife and child, a strange ice spread slowly through Cristiano’s body, down his neck, to his spine, until his fingers and toes felt numb. At that point he felt nothing, absolutely nothing.
“Sir?”
He focused with effort. Then he nodded heavily. “Thank you, Mr. Pizzati. I leave the hotel in good hands. Please order my pilot to ready the plane for Tokyo.”
“Of course, sir.” The manager sounded relieved. Cristiano could only imagine how many problems he’d caused the man over the last ten days.
He tried to remember what his scheduled meetings in Asia were about. Marcia had left him multiple messages, as had various board members, all of which he’d ignored. He took a deep breath. He pictured the Campania Hotel Tokyo, ultramodern and gleaming in the Shinjuku district.
But when he tried to recall the details, all he could remember was the darkness in his wife’s eyes the night she’d left him.
Thank you for teaching me how the world really is.
“Have a pleasant trip, sir,” the manager said.
Turning, Cristiano left the terrace without a word. When he came out of the lobby into the bright Italian sunshine, Marco was waiting to take him back home.
Home. The word tasted bitter on his tongue. There was no such thing. It was a lie. A dream. Like love.
As the Rolls-Royce passed through the gate one last time, he looked up at the magnificent nineteenth-century villa. He wished he’d never come here. He’d done it to prove that he’d triumphed over his past.
Instead, it had triumphed over him.
When Hallie had told him she loved him, he should have said the words back to her and made her believe them. Why hadn’t he tried? It would have been a lie, but at least their marriage would have endured. She would never have known the difference.
