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All these years he’d thought that he’d got up and got out, all these years he’d taken pride in his determination and ability to succeed, to strive forward, move on, but he was still there. Amelia had been right. He was still locked in the past, in his body, unable to escape—becausehewas the trap he had made for himself.Hiswere the chains that roped his body and his mind and his heart.
It’s you.Youare the one who betrayed me, this time, Alessandro.Youare guilty of that.
And in that moment, he realised how truly he had messed things up and finally he broke. The invincible shields he’d drawn around himself shattered all at once, falling to the floor, leaving him vulnerable and weak. And this time he allowed his mother to wrap her arms around him and protect him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Three months later...
AMELIAFOLDEDHERjumper and placed it in the suitcase beside the bed in the spare room of Gianni’s penthouse apartment in London as her sister, Issy, hovered anxiously in the corner. She couldn’t help but feel the pull of a smile tugging at her lips, knowing that her sister wouldn’t stay silent for long.
‘Don’t go,’ she begged.
‘Issy.’ Amelia turned and smiled. ‘It’s not far.’
‘It’s the other side of the river!’ Issy cried.
‘It’s fifteen minutes away,’ Amelia said, setting free the gentle thread of laughter beneath her words. Issy’s eyes, though, were full of concern—a concern that Amelia understood. When Issy had first found her, she had been utterly devastated. Full of heartache, not only for the future she had lost with Alessandro, but the past she had lost because of her parents.
The first month she had spent with the new and delightfully happy couple had been hard in many ways. The conversations that she’d had with Issy about their parents had been honest, difficult, but ultimately deeply healing. And they were conversations she wouldn’t have had, had Alessandro not initially allowed her to come into those feelings in a safe space.
She resisted the urge to check her phone. Usually, he was quick with his one-word responses to her messages about her obstetrics appointments, but uncharacteristically he hadn’t messaged in reply to her last one.
‘Are you sure you’re ready? I mean, you can always stay here a little longer?’
‘Don’t you want the place to yourself with your new husband?’ Amelia asked.
‘God, yes, but, oh—I’m sorry!’ Issy had a hand pressed to her mouth, clearly worried about what Amelia would think, but she needn’t have worried.
‘Never be sorry, Is! Never. I’m thrilled for you,’ Amelia said, wrapping her arms around her little sister and holding on tight. ‘Really. But it’s time that I got used to doing this on my own.’
Understanding shone in her sister’s eyes, before she heard Gianni calling for her below. With a quick kiss to her cheek, Issy left Amelia alone in the lovely room that had been a haven for her when she most needed it. Her heart turned in her chest as she wondered about Alessandro, worried about what haven he had gone to after she had returned to England.
Over and over again she had replayed their conversation in her mind, seeing at almost every turn where she had gone wrong, but been unable to stop herself from doing so. She despised herself for not being able to give him what he’d needed when he—who had rarely ever asked anything for himself—had asked for it. She’d wanted to, but she’d been so battered and bruised, having only just accepted the damage from her parents, it had not been within her power.
Amelia had found a female counsellor in North London in the second month, knowing that she had many things to work on in order not to make the same mistakes as her parents when it came to raising her child. She would accept whatever help in whatever form to provide her child with the best that she could possibly give, and that had—she reluctantly realised—included dipping into the account that Alessandro had provided for her.
She needed her own space to think and to be. Looking back now, the unease she had felt, the desperation that had driven her to force Alessandro’s hand, what had shaped so much of those last days with him, had been fear. Fear that had teeth and claws from the neglect of her parents who had left her alone carrying a burden that was too much for a young teenager. But she wasn’t that scared young teenager any more. She was an adult now, who relished the chance to care for her child, to accept that responsibility not as a burden but as a gift.
Now she could see that she wanted to share her life with Alessandro because she loved him, because she admired him, because he was exactly the kind of man her father had never been to his family—but most importantly Amelia knew that she didn’tneedhim to be the parent she wanted to be and the woman she knew she already was.
Her heart hurt to recognise it, but her soul knew it was right. As right as her need to find the right way to truly apologise to him. But for the first time, where Alessandro was concerned, she didn’t have a plan. A fix. Something that she could prepare for. Only...she knew that she wanted to apologise. Because for all her accusations of betrayal, shewasthe one who had let him down when he had needed her understanding the most.
Alessandro knocked on the door, unease painting thick strokes of ice across his back. When Gianni opened the door, he caught surprise, shock, hurt all flit across his cousin’s gaze, before it was replaced with indifference—a look Alessandro had never thought to see on Gianni’s face. But he could concede that it was the least he deserved.
Ever since Amelia had left Villa Vittoria, he’d been acting like a stranger. After the painful confrontation with his mother, Alessandro had completely retreated. He’d handed over control of the project to the team with final oversight going to Gianni and Sofia. He’d left Italy and its memories so that he could have the time and space to think clearly about what he wanted for his child, what he wanted for himself, and what he wanted for Amelia.
Looking back on it, he could see how badly the lie about Firstview had sat with Amelia. The shadows beneath her eyes, her behaviour stilted and pained, until the truth had come out. And then her fierce love and protection for her sister, her determination to make it right, her adamant protection of their child and her desperate desire to give their child more than they had...it overwhelmed him.
He didn’t just lust after her, that wasn’t the connection that had formed between them—as he’d tried to convince himself early on. It washer. He loved her. He was inspired by her, awed by her. She was greater than him in every way and he missed her so much it was as if part of him had gone. A part he’d never known existed.
‘Are you waiting for an invitation?’ Gianni demanded as he beckoned him into the London apartment he was now sharing with his new wife. Isabelle Seymore had taken Gianni’s surname and was now Isabelle Rossi and Alessandro was still wrapping his head around how the two cousins had fallen so deeply in love with the daughters of their one-time enemy.
‘You!’
The hurled accusation from the living room where a woman who resembled Amelia was pointing at him as if she had accused him of being the murderer in a country house crime drama.
‘You!’ she repeated.
