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‘Of course.’
‘I think she may be pregnant,’ he revealed. The doctor didn’t offer congratulations; instead he waited to hear what else Luca had to say. ‘I have questions, Leo. Things I need to know about my past, about me…’
‘Then ask,’ Leo offered, ‘and I will try to give honest answers.’
‘Always I feel different from my father—my mother says I am the same, that I am like him…’He watched as Leo’s drink paused near his lips. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘I think so.’
‘Is it true?’
‘Is what true, Luca?’ Leo asked.
That I will beat my wife, that the cruel streak of the D’Amato men is my inevitable fate—or Emma’s? This was what he wanted to say, but instead he downed his drink.
‘I should never have started this.’ Luca stood up. ‘I should get back to the house.’
‘Sit, Luca.’ Leo gestured to the waiter to fill his glass, but Luca remained standing. ‘There are things we need to discuss, and it will be better for you, for Emma too perhaps, to know the truth.’
‘I don’t want to discuss it any more,’ Luca said, because even if he had started it, he didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to face the inevitable, but it was coming at him now.
‘There is a good counsellor in Palermo, one I highly recommend to deal with these things.’
‘No!’ He shouted it.
‘Luca, you cannot escape your genes.’ It was like hearing the guillotine fall, the truth was so appalling, and the horrible inevitability had Luca wanting to vomit. But instead he drowned the acrid taste in his mouth with whisky and willed the fear to abate as the doctor delivered his diagnosis that no matter the strength of Luca’s feelings, his unenviable gene pool would claim, not just him but Emma and the baby he was sure she carried.
* * *
‘No!’ It was Emma’s sobs that filled the house—and Luca had to restrain her flailing arms from making contact with his chest as he broke her heart again. ‘You said you loved me.’
‘Emma.’ His voice was detached, matter-of-fact even, as she raged at what he was doing, at what he was saying. ‘I was upset this morning, emotional…’
‘You!’ Emma sobbed. ‘Emotional? You’re a cold-hearted bastard. You looked me in the eyes and said you loved me, and you did love me, I could see it.’ She wanted to lash out again if he would just let go of her arms.
‘People say that…’ Luca’s was the voice of cool reason. ‘Men say that, you know that. Men say these things to—’
‘Get what they want?’ Emma finished for him. ‘You already had what you wanted, Luca. You were already screwing me when you said it!’
‘Don’t talk like a tart.’
‘Well, that’s what you made me, that’s what you did to me!’ And then, because he was holding her arms, because she couldn’t hit him again, she swore at him instead.
And then she swore again, using the most vile epithets she could think of.
He didn’t even flinch.
* * *
She didn’t tell him about the baby, didn’t play her last card.
And for that Luca had grudging admiration.
She didn’t cash in the cheque he sent her, which made Luca worry.
In the weeks and months that followed, every day he waited, for her letter, or her lawyer’s letter, or a phone call—admiring her that it never came, eroding him that it didn’t.
Back in his village for another tour of duty, for the three-month mass to mark his father’s passing, it killed him to be back in the same room, only this time without her.
He lay in bed that morning, not wanting to get up, not wanting to shower, to walk into the bathroom, where he had told her his ultimate truth.
He had hurt her.
Not in the way that he had feared, but he had hurt her all the same.
He had never—except in this—doubted himself.
And he was angry now.
Angry for doubting himself, because after weeks of soul searching he knew—Luca knew—he would never hurt her. His grief on the night of his father’s funeral and in the days that had followed had been real—except it had all been because of losing Emma.
Since she’d left, in the depths of his grief, this proud man had visited a counsellor—although not the Italian one Leo had suggested. Instead, he had sat in a bland beige office in the middle of London and had opened his closed heart to a stranger, explored his closed mind in a way he had never dared to do before, and he knew now.
Knew, despite his heritage, despite what Leo had said, despite the facts and figures, despite the anger of his youth and the unenviable history of the D’Amato men, he knew that his anger would never, could never be aimed at her.
