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Jane shook her head in confusion. “He said that. The man in the Piazza. But I don’t understand why your dad would care about me? How he would even know that I was linked to you?”
Carlo reached out and ran his fingers over her hair. He couldn’t resist touching her now. He wondered if it might be the last time. Certainly, once he told her everything she needed to know. He braced himself for her anger, and said what he’d been thinking for years.
“Our meeting was no accident, cara.”
Frigid water filled her body. “What do you mean?”
“The night before I ran away from home, I saw my father kill a man. I didn’t know what was going.” His eyes were almost black, sheened with the intensity of what he was saying. “Your birth father was the man my father killed, Jane. I swore I would discover that man’s family – though I didn’t know then who he was, nor that he even had a family. But I knew I had to do something to amend for my father’s cruelty. I had to at least make sure your life had not suffered because of my father’s actions.”
Jane made a strangled sound of confusion. “I don’t understand. We met by chance. You were just a customer at the restaurant…”
He shook his head slowly. “I was at the restaurant especially to see you. My meeting was a convenient cover. I had traced you to the bar.”
Jane felt like she was going to be sick. Or pass out. Or both.
“So you wanted to make amends. But why marry me?” She asked quietly, as his confession began to sink through her aching, weary mind.
“I came to the restaurant to make amends, yes. Then I saw you, and everything changed. I fell in love with you, cara. You. What our fathers were, and did, ceased to matter. I fell in love with you.”
Jane might have believed him, the day before. Now? Nothing made sense.
He passed the folded pages to her, and she opened them out instinctively.
She held them in fingers that shook, and read them quickly. Her skin was paper white as the full import of the misshaped words sunk in.
“Someone sent you death threats.”
“Not me. These were for you,” Carlo corrected grimly. He took the paper back and replaced it in his pockets. “The first came a month after we were married.”
Jane’s stomach rolled. “So you decided you had to make me fall out of love with you?” She demanded, standing up and pacing across the room. “That if you treated me meanly enough, I would realise our marriage had been an awful mistake and I would leave you?”
“Don’t you get it?” He responded, his voice rising to match hers. “I beefed up my security system here, and I did everything I could to keep you out of my public life. I would have taken you everywhere with me, Jane, if I hadn’t been living with the fear that every outing put you in increased danger.” He put his hands on her hips, trying to get through to her. “I kept you here because I loved you, not because I wanted you to go. I wanted nothing more, in that year we were married, than to be with you. I told myself that I was enough. That what we shared in bed would be enough. That it would keep you happy. I thought… I thought you were.”
Jane wriggled out of his grip, and turned to stare out of the window. “I wasn’t,” she said honestly.
“I understand that now.” He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and stared at the same sight she was. Beyond them, the view of Rome was a majestic carpet in the early afternoon sun.
“You should have told me all this then.”
Carlo was very still. Should he have? He’d wondered that himself. But she’d been so young. So unused to the ways of the sophisticated world he moved in. And the shame he’d carried because of the blood in his veins… how could he explain that to her?
“That night,” Jane said quietly, her body unmoving. “The night before I left, I mean. You came to our room and said that you shouldn’t have married me. You meant… what did you mean?”
His eyes flecked with remembered pain, but he didn’t speak.
“What is it, Carlo? Tell me. I need to know.”
“It’s… dealt with now,” he said stiffly.
“No.” She shook her head, her insistence growing stronger. “Those words have haunted me. For three years, I have seen you in my mind. I’ve heard you saying them to me again and again. I need to know. Why?”
His throat moved as he swallowed, and his eyes assumed a faraway look. “That night…” He cleared his throat, and tried to focus on that horrible period of time. “It was the opening of a hospital. I had committed to
go two years earlier, and I knew it was important.” He shifted in his seat.
“Go on,” Jane was very still. She could sense that he was about to reveal something she’d been missing. Something she needed to know.
“You were in our bedroom, and I was in my study. I was about to leave, when my phone rang.” His eyes were clouded with visible anguish. “It was Tony Parelli. My father.” He spat the words out; it disgusted him to refer to his murderous father by name.
