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‘That’s not fair!’ he snarled. ‘If you’d told me, I would have—’
‘You would have what?’ She folded her arms across her chest, her green eyes wide with contempt. ‘Given up? Gone home? Yeah, right,’ she jeered. ‘And forgotten all about taking back your precious olive oil company. I think not. You might be careless about most things—like the truth...’ She paused, her expression not just hardening, but ossifying. ‘But clearly you care about that.’
He flinched inwardly, the truth of her words slicing through him to the bone.
But this conversation was always going to happen, he told himself quickly. It wasn’t as if he and Imma had ever been going to celebrate their ruby wedding in forty years, like his parents had.
The memory of the last time he’d visited his parents’ home made his spine tense painfully. At the time he’d vaguely registered that his father looked a little tired and seemed a little quieter than usual, but it had been easy—shamefully easy—to just tell himself that his dad was getting old.
Except now Alessandro would never get old. That was on him, even more than on his brother, but the person really responsible for this mess was this woman’s father: Cesare Buscetta.
She held up his phone. ‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten what you wrote? Perhaps you’d like me to read your text to you? Just to remind you.’
‘I know what I wrote, Imma,’ he said coldly. He met her gaze and then, reaching down, picked up his clothes from last night, pulling them on with deliberate unconcern.
Her eyes were sharp, like shards of broken glass. ‘You know what makes all this so much worse? I already knew about your reputation with women. I knew you couldn’t be trusted. But then we talked, and you made me believe that people had been wrong about you. That you weren’t some spoilt playboy with nothing in his head except living la dolce vita.’
She shook her head, and even though he was angry he couldn’t stop his brain from focusing on the way her still damp hair was turning her white dress transparent.
‘And I was right.’ She stared at him, contempt mingling with loathing in her green eyes. ‘You’re not just a spoilt playboy—you’re also a vicious, unprincipled liar.’
‘Says the woman who didn’t bother telling me she was a virgin,’ he snarled, feeling the dam inside him breaking.
A part of him knew that he was only angry with her because he was in the wrong. He had seduced her. Methodically, cold-bloodedly pursuing her at the wedding, gaining her trust, then using all his charm to woo her into bed.
And all the while he’d told himself that she deserved it. He’d thought he had her all figured out. Thought she was a silent witness to her father’s behaviour.
Only then she’d told him she was a virgin, and for some reason that had changed everything. It had made him feel responsible, guilty, and that wasn’t fair.
‘You should have told me,’ he said.
‘About my virginity?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why? What difference would it have made?’
He was in a blind fury now. ‘It would have made a difference to me!’
She was either incredibly naive or disingenuous if she thought that any man wouldn’t want to know whether a woman had ever had sex before.
‘Oh, and this is all about you. You and your stupid vendetta.’ Her lip curled. ‘You were lying to me, Vicè. And you would still be lying to me now if I hadn’t confronted you. Tossing a few rose petals on the bed and lighting some candles wouldn’t have changed anything.’
Porca miseria! Vicè stared at her, hearing her words pinballing around inside his brain. He wasn’t talking about rose petals and candles. He was talking about the rules of interaction between couples.
‘So what if I lied?’ he asked. ‘You lie all the time. To me. To other people. To yourself—’
‘Excuse me?’ Her voice was a whisper of loathing.
‘All that garbage about your father wishing he could have “helped” mine sooner.’ Helped! The word curdled in his mouth. ‘Turning a blind eye to his arm-twisting doesn’t absolve you. It was your monstrous father hounding him, breaking him down month after month, that sent my father to an early grave—as you very well know.’
‘That’s not true.’ She spat the words at him. ‘Papà told me what happened. How your father had overstretched himself. How he came and asked to be bought out. Maybe he didn’t want you and Ciro to know the truth.’ She gave him a withering glance. ‘I mean, why would he? He clearly knew neither of his sons had what was needed to save his life’s work.’
Vicè flinched inwardly. One son certainly hadn’t.
A stiletto of pain stabbed him beneath the ribs. Pain followed by rage. With her, for seeing what he was so desperate to hide, and with himself for not having been the son his father had needed.
Instead he had been an additional burden in Alessandro’s time of need. For in trying to protect him, his son, his father had been left with nobody to turn to.
‘Your father is a thief and a thug,’ he said slowly. ‘He stole the business my great-grandfather founded and the house where my parents lived their whole married life. Thanks to him, my mother lost her husband and her home all in one day.’
Her face turned pale, but then she rallied, lifting her chin so that her gaze was level with his. ‘And is your mother in on this too?’
