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‘Does it matter?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, sincerely. ‘It does. I need time. Please...’
But she couldn’t give him that, she thought, even as she knew she was wrong to refuse him it. The idea of watching another person in her life give up on her was too much. She had given her heart to him and he was already shutting her out because he didn’t trust her. It rocked her to be standing here in the proof of how adamantly he clung to his betrayals.
‘You won’t forgive me, will you?’ she said, her heart shattering beneath his gaze. ‘It’s why you kept the problems with Aurora from me, because you can’t trust me.’
It was as if he’d been turned to stone, her statement proved truer for it. The only reason she knew he was still alive was the breath sawing in and out of his chest.
‘Yet you trust me with your child?’ she asked, half terrified, her breath caught in her lungs, because if he didn’t—
‘Yes.’
The word burst from his lips and she knew, instinctively, that he was telling the truth. She was thankful for it, but it wasn’t enough.
‘I need more than that, and our child does too.’ She needed to know that their child would be raised in love and support without bitter undercurrents that dragged unformed hearts under.
He flinched. She barely caught it in the shadows of a night descending relentlessly, as if time was—and had always been—running out for them. And he simply stared at her while their lives began to come apart at the seams. Everything she’d hoped for, wished for in the sweetest of dreams, was falling away and he was doing nothing to stop it.
‘Say something, damn you,’ she hurled at him.
‘There is nothing left to say.’ His voice was raw as if he’d struggled to say even that.
‘Yes, there is,’ she said, her voice now shaking with a hurt and devastation that was only just beginning. ‘You lied to me, Alessandro. You told me that you would keep me safe, you would protect me. You cling so tightly to others’ betrayal, but it’s you.Youare the one who betrayed me, this time, Alessandro.Youare guilty of that.’
And with that, she stalked past him and returned to the house, every step dimming the hope that he might stop her until it was snuffed out completely with the message that dinged her phone.
The jet is at your disposal.
Amelia hadn’t been surprised to find a car waiting for her by the time she came downstairs with her clothes all packed in her suitcase. She’d been tempted to leave the things he had bought for her in Orvieto behind, but stubborn and stupid were close enough and it was possible she would need the clothes before long.
She knew that Alessandro would give her whatever she needed. He would never turn his back on her or their child. There would be painful, difficult, stilted conversations to come, but all she needed, right now, was time, space and...her sister.
She wanted to go home. But as the private jet swept in the arc that would bring them down to the English runway, she knew that the flat she shared with her sister just wasn’t it. Home was where the heart was and she had just left that in Italy in the keeping of a man who was so determined to protect himself, he might never understand the value of what she’d given him.
She was holding herself together with numb fingers and desperation when she received a text message, and then another and then another. Hope turned to ash the moment she caught her sister’s name on the phone’s screen and she hated herself for being disappointed that it wasn’t Alessandro.
Are you okay?
I’m back.
Where are you?
I don’t know, her mind cried in reply. Amelia didn’t have a plan for this. And for the first time in her life she wanted to give up, to curl up in a ball, to howl her pain as her mother had, to lose herself as her father had. But she couldn’t. She had a little life to protect and, as much as her fragile heart was fractured and breaking, she needed to get up. She needed to make a plan. She needed to be the strong one.
Issy’s name flashed up on the screen a second before her phone started to ring. Evidently her sister was too impatient to wait any longer.
‘Issy?’
‘Oh, my God, Amelia. Oh, thank God. Are you okay? Where are you?’
Amelia struggled to respond, wanting to tell her, wanting to give her answers to her questions, wanting to explain so much more, wanting to beg for forgiveness for lying to her about the evidence of corruption, for putting her in jeopardy with Gianni, for ruining her childhood on some naïve and mistaken path of vengeance. But instead, all she was capable of saying was her sister’s name, before a sob took over and the tears came and they wouldn’t stop.
In some distant part of her mind she knew she was on the verge of hysteria, that she needed to stop, pull herself together, but she just couldn’t. It wasn’t just Alessandro, it was her mother, her father, it was all of it and she couldn’t keep it in any more. It was pouring out of her and nothing would make it stop.
Then she felt hands come around her. Small hands, but strong arms and she looked up to find Issy staring at her, tears in her own eyes, and concern stark across her features.
‘Lia, please. You’re okay. It’s okay, I promise. It will all be okay,’ her younger sister said, smoothing damp tendrils of hair away from her hot wet face.
