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‘How much do you want?’
‘Oh, darling, you can be so crude. You may hold the purse strings but I hold the baby, so play nice or I might change my mind.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘So you’ve met Mother’s little mistake, have you? Mummy said she wouldn’t be a problem or try and encroach in our lives, but it never occurred to me that she’d actually be useful.’
Samuele was glad that Maya had moved out of his line of vision; he didn’t want to see her reaction to that disgusting remark. ‘Get to the point,’ he bit out.
‘I see my future with Charlie.’
‘And his millions,’ he added contemptuously.
‘Well, I wouldn’t marry a poor man, would I?’ she cooed.
He didn’t bother replying.
‘It suits me for you to have Mattio right now. Charlie is not really into babies, but there’s always the possibility that I might just change his mind about that.’ And with that, she hung up.
After any conversation with Violetta, Samuele usually felt as though he needed a shower and this was no exception. He didn’t know at what point Maya had left the room or how much she had heard.
She was standing in the kitchen, her head bent. She had dragged her hair across one shoulder and was anchoring it there with her forearm, revealing the sculpted hollows of her collarbones, the delicately defined angle of her jaw and the elegant length of her neck.
She didn’t immediately turn when he entered but the added level of quivering tension in her body made it clear she knew he was there.
‘I don’t know how much of that you heard...?’
Maya’s arm fell away and her hair tumbled free as she spun around to face him.
‘Enough to know you were right, I was wrong, she was using me and now you’ve got what you want.’ She struggled to keep her voice flat, and struggled harder to push away the overwhelming self-pity, ashamed she was making this personal because the only person who should be considered in this scenario was the baby in the next room. ‘I suppose you want me to pack up his things?’ Without any warning her dignity was drowned in a rush of blinding anger.
‘Is it all about the challenge for you? The winning? I suppose you’ll lose interest in him now you’ve won,’ she threw out, not even sure she believed it but wanting to hurt him because—well, she was not about to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to be the only one hurting here.
Samuele tensed, every muscle in his face clenching as his face blanked, and anger bit deep at the insult. She had unerringly targeted his pride, questioning his integrity and implying he had no conscience.
He knew many men who were successful because they possessed little or no conscience. When it came to making money a conscience was something of a hindrance so he hid his, which made it doubly ironic that he was insulted now because he’d succeeded.
But when their gazes connected there was no spite in hers, just a mixture of sadness and pain, a pain so deep it took a real effort for him to detach himself from the emotions he saw there. His own anger deflated, leaving a vague sense of utterly irrational guilt in its place.
‘This child doesn’t have a father, which is not my definition of winning.’ He arched a brow. ‘What’s yours?’
Maya’s brow puckered, the muscles on her face quivering as her eyes softened and went liquid. ‘I’m so sorry, your brother must have been very young when he died.’
He watched her fighting back tears and struggled to imagine just how uncomfortable that degree of empathy must be to live with as he found himself revealing, ‘He tried to hang on to see his son, but he didn’t make it. He was the bravest man I have ever known.’
Samuele had never discussed his brother or the battle he had fought with anyone, so why was he suddenly opening up to Maya, of all people? He dodged the answer and swore under his breath. ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry for.’
‘When I lost my dad I bottled up my feelings, but when I actually talked about them—’
In a voice that could have wilted green shoots on a plant, he cut across her. It was for her own sake really; if she started wandering around in his head, she would definitely find more than a few things that she didn’t like. ‘I appreciate the sharing,’ he drawled sardonically, ‘but—’
This time it was Maya who shut him down. ‘I get the message.’
She did. If he was one of those people who thought admitting to emotions was a sign of weakness, that was his business; it was the baby her heart ached for. Being taught by example that tosuck it upwas what real men did... God, it was so depressing.
As she thought of the baby her eyes softened. She might have been abandoned but there was never a moment in her life after she was adopted that she had doubted she was loved. It was those early years that had made her tough enough to survive Edward’s concerted campaign of destruction.
