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‘Yes, me,’ Alessandro replied in the hope that acknowledging it might make her stop—his hands might have also gestured surrender.
This, he knew, he also deserved.
She glared at him and he knew he’d made a mistake.
‘You think this is funny?’ she demanded.
‘There is nothing funny about it,’ he replied truthfully and something in his tone must have made her stop, as she glanced uncertainly at Gianni who, he saw, shrugged.
‘What do you want?’ Isabelle asked, eyeing him with a considerable amount of suspicion.
‘I want to know where Amelia is.’
Isabelle snorted and he thought he’d heard her say,yeah, not likely, but he couldn’t be sure. He looked at Gianni.
‘I need to see her.’
Gianni shook his head. ‘You are my cousin—my blood. But she is my wife. You’ll understand one day.’
‘Not if no one tells me where Amelia is,’ he all but growled, his frustration getting the better of him.
‘You broke her heart,’ Isabelle accused.
‘I know,’ Alessandro admitted.
‘No. You don’t. She is my sister and I will fight to the death for her and her child,’ she said fiercely and suddenly he saw it—the similarity between the siblings, the passion, the fire, the determination. ‘You—’ she stabbed a finger at him ‘—broke—’ another stab ‘—her.’
‘And I promise you that—if I get the chance—I will spend every single day for the rest of my life ensuring that it never happens again. I know that nothing I say will fix the damage that has been done, but she needs to know that it wasme, not her.’ His words burned and cracked as they came from his soul, but he needed to say them. ‘Icaused the cracks that broke a strong, powerful, beautiful woman,’ he said, thumping his chest. ‘I need her to know that,’ he said to Isabelle, his tone all but begging.
Something flickered across Isabelle’s gaze and he felt the hairs stand on the back of his neck. He felt the pull of that connection that he only ever felt when Amelia was nearby. He turned, slowly, vaguely registering Gianni pulling his wife from the room, because all he saw was Amelia. Amelia glowing, eyes bright, cheeks flushed healthily and skin still wearing the faint bronze of Italy. Amelia so round with their child that it took his breath away.
‘You’re here?’ Alessandro couldn’t believe his eyes.
‘Yes, I... I wanted to be with family,’ she said, unable to meet his gaze.
He took a step forward, but the way that Amelia held herself made him stop. She looked as if she were trying to hold the pieces of herself together and he hated that he’d done this to her. But he bore it, because that was his due.
‘You heard what I said to your sister?’ he asked, his words sounding as if they’d been dragged across gravel.
Amelia nodded, sending a wave of chestnut rippling down her back. Her hair was longer, richer, more vibrant than he remembered.
‘It was not... I wanted to...’ Alessandro bit back a curse. He’d planned what he’d wanted to say to her, how he wanted to start, and this was going horribly wrong. He wasn’t prepared, but that didn’t, couldn’t matter. She deserved to know and hear the truth of his feelings and he needed to tell them. He took a breath—a deep one.
‘You make me flustered,’ he admitted, helplessly. ‘And I don’t get flustered. At least not any more. My mother tells me that it used to happen to me as a child when I desperately wanted something,’ he said, ruefully, rubbing the back of his neck.
‘Tellsyou?’ Amelia asked, picking up on the tense he had used.
He nodded. ‘We’ve been spending some time together,’ he replied, noticing the way her hand had begun to sweep slow, soothing circles over her round belly. He wondered if she’d felt their baby kick.
‘I went to see her. You were right—about so many things. But the first and most important one was how trapped I was by the past. How it coloured everything and made it impossible for me to move on, move forward with any kind of life, let alone one that I want more than my next breath.’ He hoped that she could read the truth in his gaze—that it was a life with her that he was speaking of.
Amelia was standing by the large window looking out onto the street as if only partially listening to him, but he knew—he knew that all of her considerable focus was on him. He felt it like a touch—warm, comforting, hopeful.
‘I realised that it was not her I was angry with,’ he said, willingly offering Amelia the deepest of his truths, baring his soul to her, hoping that somehow he might be worthy of her, ‘it was me.’ Some of the shame he had spent years wrapped in still lingered, but he was working through that knowing that neither he nor his mother deserved to feel shame or anger any more.
Amelia turned to him at his words. ‘Alessandro—’ She reached for him and he went to her, but he also needed to finish. As if she had read the thought in his mind, she held her words back.
‘There is much more work I need to do, she and I need to do, but all this time I thought that I had left the past behind me and you were right. I was chained by it. And had it not been for you I would never have seen that, never have realised it. No matter what happens after today, or in any of the days that follow, I want you to know that you have changed my life for the better because of who you are. And I love you.’
