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But she needed closure and now, because she considered only him and his feelings, she was dismissing that need.
And there was no way he’d deprive her of anything at all. He’d swallow his hatred, hell, he’d swallow molten steel if it provided her with peace. On the off chance that her father and his family brought her a measure of contentment, he’d even tolerate them. He’d be there for her, with her, at every event, honoring her and showing them she had a lethal protector in him. Just in case any of them thought to show their true colors.
He gathered her closer, delighting in her feel, her love. “We’ll forget nothing. I’m going to meet your father, and we’re going to New York to meet your family.” Anxiety flared again in her reddened eyes. He caught her lips in a cherishing kiss, aborting her protest. “We’ll do everything that might provide you with even a remote possibility of well-being, always. And that, mi amore, is that.”
* * *
Flying to New York on Antonio’s private jet, Lili felt she’d plunged deeper into the parallel universe she’d stumbled into since the day he’d entered her life.
The Accardis had set the reception for the very next weekend, two days after Antonio had insisted they accept their invitation. The haste had to be her father’s doing, no doubt. But this meant that the first time Antonio met him would be at the reception.
All the way, Antonio had placated her worries about his aversion to her family. He assured her if she enjoyed knowing them, he’d be lenient and might even consider liking them. After all, she made him so happy he could forgive any past transgressions and afford to be magnanimous like her. That had reassured
her, until they entered the Accardi family mansion.
Now she felt something writhing inside him. Something dark and vicious.
Before she told him she would leave if he didn’t want to be here after all, her father came rushing toward them as soon as they crossed the mansion’s threshold.
In the seconds before he reached them, his smile as wide as humanly possible, Lili noticed something for the first time. Her father and Antonio looked alike. Apart from the size and age difference—Antonio was much bigger, and her father had wrinkles and silver hair—the two men shared the same bone structure and skin tone. If she’d seen them on the streets, she would have thought them relatives. In fact, if someone saw the three of them, with her looking like her mother, people would have thought it was Antonio who was her father’s son.
“Mia bella Lilianissima, you’re here!”
Feeling Antonio going rigid beside her, she stood with a wooden smile, awkwardly letting her father hug her.
Thankfully, he did so more briefly than in the few times she’d seen him. For now he had a distraction in Antonio.
“Dr. Balducci, a hundred welcomes to Casa Accardi.”
“One would do, Signore Accardi.” Antonio took her father’s extended hand after a telling hesitation, as if he loathed touching him. He still managed a courteous nod, for her sake.
Oblivious to Antonio’s aversion, her father enfolded Antonio’s hand in both of his fervently. “I’m beyond delighted about your and Lili’s engagement. Only the best man is worthy of her, and that’s what I hear you are. And an Italian, too. It’s just perfection. Everything is coming together in the exact perfect way that my incomparable daughter deserves.”
As if he’d reached his limit, Antonio withdrew his hand from her father’s grip. “Liliana is beyond incomparable, and deserves only the best of everything. Which I’ll make sure she gets, now and forever.”
Antonio’s words sounded like a warning. He was telling her father he’d better be on his best behavior with her, or else.
Her nerves jangled at Antonio’s barely veiled threat. Regardless of whether her father deserved it for his past behavior, she’d hoped her fiancé would offer him that leniency he’d talked about. It was clear Antonio wouldn’t offer any until her father proved himself. Which she was sure Antonio wouldn’t make easy.
Not that her father noticed any subscript in Antonio’s words. He now led them to the open doors at the end of the expansive entrance hall, from which the sounds of music and conversation were emanating. “Between us, we’re going to make sure of that, Dr. Balducci.” Her father looked at him expectantly. “Can I call you Antonio?”
“If you wish.” That was said in the tone of “don’t you dare.” Antonio looked so forbidding it was only thanks to her father’s enthusiastic obliviousness that he hadn’t turned to stone. Then his voice plunged into the subzero domain. “I understand you had no contact with Liliana as she grew up. Now, in your new eagerness to know her, I keep wondering what could possibly explain the years of absence and silence.”
Her father stopped, looking as if Antonio had just handed him the best gift he’d ever had. “I’m so glad you asked! I tried to explain to Lili when I contacted her after Luanne’s death. But she always insisted what was past was past.”
Yeah. She hadn’t wanted to hear his reasons. She could establish some kind of relationship with him not knowing them. But if she knew them and found them pathetic or unacceptable, she wouldn’t be able to go forward in any kind of relationship with him.
Her father clamped her and Antonio’s arms. “Come, please. This can’t be told with dozens of nosy Accardis around.”
Her father rushed them to an old-fashioned smoking room filled with burgundy leather chesterfields, Persian rugs and dark wood paneling. Though everything was authentic and antique, it showed the weight of time and clearly hadn’t had any recent maintenance. Though the three-hundred-year-old mansion was imposing, it wasn’t in the prime condition she’d expected from such an elite family.
After her father sat them down side by side, he stood before them as if to give the performance he’d been waiting for all his life.
Then he began. “Luanne was glorious, very much like you, my beloved Lili, at least in looks and in her brilliant mind. Unorthodox, independent, a trailblazer. I fell in love with her on sight in Saint Mark’s Basilica, as I believe she did with me. She told me she was the only child of a single mother who also worked in the medical field, that all she’d known since childhood had been academic endeavor and excellence.”
So she’d been living her mother’s life. Until Antonio.
“She’d just finished her medical residency and was about to start her fellowship when she discovered she hadn’t actually lived yet. So before she plunged into her hospital work she’d decided to take two years to roam the world. Italy was her first stop.
