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“Only the one man?”
“Basta. One is enough.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Simon Cave. I am waiting for my security to furnish me with a file on him.”
Marcos held it in for as long as he could, but the words wouldn’t be ignored. “She’s not our mother, Niko.”
Niko shook his head slowly from side to side, his eyes fixed on a small dent on the marble table top in the center of his office. Like his wife, it was a thing of great beauty. Rare, and elegant, but imperfect and damaged. Slowly, he forced himself to look at his older brother. “Isn’t she? How is she any different?”
“She is, and you know it. Resist the temptation to punish her for our mother’s failings.”
Niko didn’t like being told how to feel, especially when it came to his marriage. He straightened his shoulders and nodded stiffly, but it was enough of a signal to Marcos. Conversation closed.
* * *
Bianca hummed under her breath as she slowly lifted the Christmas decorations from the tree. It was her least favorite chore, because it signaled the official end of Christmas. But to have the tree up in the house after the beautiful festive day had passed was likewise intolerable to Bianca. She almost felt that the tree mocked her love of the holiday, each moment it stood there beyond December twenty sixth. Just like that, it went from being an object of her adoration and delight, to something she scowled at as she passed, like an unwelcome invader. Eventually, she could handle it no longer and she had to remove any sign of Christmas. And so one by one, she lifted each decoration from its hook, and placed them care
fully back into their boxes.
She heard the door open and shut, and then moments later felt the blast of cold air that had rushed through the townhouse. A smile played about the corner of her lips as she thought of Niko, and her heart started to race that little bit faster. Despite having been married for three years now, her husband never failed to make her feel like that. Giddy and excited, and breathless. Just the thought of him still managed to make her pulse race.
“I’m in here, Nik,” she called, reaching on her tiptoes for another ornament and carefully disentangling it from the lights and tinsel.
When he spoke, his voice was distant. Cold. “I know about the affair, Bianca.”
And just like that, her whole world started to shake uncontrollably. Her heart was racing now for an entirely different reason as guilt washed over. Slowly she turned and with piercingly blue eyes, she examined his face. It was the same face, the same man, who had stolen her heart the first second she’d seen him. Despite the passage of time, he looked exactly as he had then. Some men had nice eyes, or striking lips, but Niko Casacelli had it all. His face was overloaded with features: cheekbones that could have been slashed from stone, lips that were full and wide, even white teeth, dark speckled eyes that were rimmed with curling lashes, an autocratic profile, and all over his body, skin the color of warm caramel. But now, his face was cast in a mask of restrained anger that made her blink twice.
“What are you talking about, Niko?” Though she knew. She knew what he thought, and why. Inwardly, she cringed at having been so stupid. A man like Niko didn’t miss a beat. Had she really thought he wouldn’t find out? That this happiness could continue forever? She looked around their picture-book perfect lounge room, her eyes misting at what she knew she was going to lose.
His lips compressed so that they were just a slash in his symmetrical face. “Don’t even think about denying it, Bianca.”
For as long as she’d known and loved him, he’d never used that tone of voice with her. She’d heard him employ it to wayward staff, or business opponents he was locking horns with, but never her. To his wife, he had always been a picture of patience. But now, she saw why Niko Casacelli was famed for his hard-headed business style. When Time magazine had called him The Satan of the Stock Exchange, she had giggled uncontrollably. Her husband was no such thing! As she watched his dark brown eyes now, she finally saw what everyone else saw. He had a streak of iron in him, only he’d never needed to show it to her. Before now.
The decoration she held, a fine crystal star that she’d bought at Portobello and had loved because it was old and weathered, slipped through her numb fingertips. She watched it fall to the ground, and splinter into a million and one tiny shards. It was too symptomatic of what was happening in her life to be a coincidence.
“Niko, please,” her voice was husky, thick with emotion. “I can explain.” Could she? When it had all began, she had made a firm decision not to tell her husband. She had lied to him from almost the first day of their married life. How could she expect him to accept it had been going on for so long?
There was no way he’d overlook her deception. Sure enough, disbelief was obvious in his haughty, olive-skinned face. “Oh, you are going to explain, cara. Start at the beginning.” And he sidestepped the spray of fine glass on the ground and took hold of her elbow, so that he could steer her towards the leather sofa.
Bianca’s heart was racing. Beneath the woolen dress she wore, she thought he must surely be able to see it actually palpating against her breast. Nervously, she wet her lower lip with the tip of her tongue, trying to work out how she could explain Simon’s place in her life without telling Niko the whole, terrible truth.
Because that was a secret she couldn’t tell anyone – least of all her husband. If he knew what she’d done, she thought with a shudder, he would despise her even more than he did now.
“I went to school with Simon,” she said quietly, biting down on her lower lip. Shock had set in and she was shaking. She clasped her hands on her lap to disguise the tell-tale sign. Her husband had zero tolerance for weakness. It would not engender sympathy in him now, to see the anguish she was experiencing.
“I’m more interested about how you just happened to fall onto his penis, once we were married, and how often it happened.”
Scarlet flamed in her cheeks. “Don’t be crude.”
He crossed to the dumb waiter in the corner and poured himself a generous measure of scotch. He didn’t offer her one, because she rarely drank, but now, God, she needed something. “Would you get me one of those?” She asked shakily.
With a perfectly arched brow, he tipped some of the amber liquid into a glass and handed it to her. As she took it, and her fingers touched his, she registered the way he startled, as though she’d slapped him.
She watched as he threw his own drink back, his head tilted towards the ceiling so that his dark curls shook a little.
“It’s not what you think,” she said finally, though inwardly she groaned. How many bad movies had she heard that line uttered in?
