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‘A lot of things have happened while you’ve been busy pretending I don’t exist, Cesare.’
His lips firmed. ‘I can see that. And I’m wondering how all this impacts on my daughter.’
She turned sharply. ‘Stop right there! You’d better erase that whiff of you’re a bad mother I hear in your voice, PDQ! And stop referring to her as your daughter. Up until very recently, your part in all this has merely been the biology. You chose to live away from us! You lost the right to be a father when you withdrew so far physically and emotionally from our daughter, she may as well have been dead to you!’
In the darkened interior of the car, his head went back as if she’d struck him. What little colour had remained left his face. She couldn’t have struck a deeper blow if she’d shot a bullet into his heart.
Immediately contrite, she reached out and grabbed his hand. It remained cold and unmoving beneath hers.
‘Cesare, I didn’t mean that—’
‘I deserved that. But I had good reason. Or I thought I had for a long time, well before the earthquake. What happened with Roberto and Valentina...I didn’t think I deserved a child when Roberto had lost his.’
‘Do you really think Roberto begrudged you a family?’
‘I didn’t think—I knew. He told me many times that I didn’t deserve a family—’ a tight edge of pain roughened his voice ‘—that I deserved to be alone the way he was.’
Her insides fractured at his torment. But she couldn’t stop her own pain from welling up alongside it. She sank deeper into the warm jacket that had so recently draped Cesare’s body. Curiously, she drew strength from it to fight him. ‘I’m sorry he said that to you. But did you really think Annabelle deserved to suffer because your brother was fighting his own monsters?’
‘It was my duty to protect him—’
‘You also had a duty to your wife and child. I know you married me because I was pregnant,’ she forced out painfully, ‘but you shouldn’t have left me alone to bring up our daughter alone.’
A small, taut silence reigned before, ‘You were never alone,’ he said, almost under his breath. ‘You had nannies, household staff and a security detail.’
Rage smashed her burgeoning hope to smithereens. ‘Security detail? Oh, that’s all right then. You know I’ve never been part of a family. I told you how my father and brothers treated me. God, Cesare, I had no idea what I was doing when I had a baby. I expected you to stick around and help me, be with me. Instead you jumped on your jet at the first opportunity, and chased deal after deal. I didn’t marry your household staff or your security detail. I married you! You should have been there, not them!’
His hand tightened painfully on hers and his head dipped in solemn acknowledgement. ‘I should’ve been. No matter my inadequacies as a husband, I should’ve tried harder as a father. Trust me, Ava, I know my failings where my daughter is concerned.’ He spread his fingers in a purely Latin gesture. ‘It’s why I’m here now, trying to right that wrong. I intend not to lose sight of the fact that she is the most important thing in all of this.’
Hearing the words—so resolute and promising where their daughter was concerned, and so excluding where she was—made Ava’s heart catch so painfully she couldn’t speak for several seconds. But she didn’t need to. Cesare was in the mood to unburden himself. ‘Dio mio, Ava, you must remember we barely knew each other before you got pregnant and yet you so quickly put me front and centre of everything you wanted in a family. I couldn’t think straight. You say you had no idea what you were doing but to me you seemed the epitome of calm and composure. When, after a while, you didn’t seem to need me, I left.’
Ava reeled, fiercely glad she wasn’t standing up, for surely she’d have lost the power of her legs. Her spine turned liquid and she collapsed into the soft leather seat. ‘I had no idea...’
The rest of her words dried up as he shook his head, raised a silencing hand before clenching it into a fist mid-air. The action, so wrought with despair, made her inhale sharply. She glanced at his profile.
The corresponding look of wrenching pain on his face made her reach out.
‘Cesare—’
* * *
Cesare couldn’t stop the hiss of pain that slipped through his lips. ‘Enough! Do not say another word.’
Regret, self-condemnation, jealousy and anger all coalesced into a seething ball of emotion in his chest. Emotions he’d been fighting what felt like forever sank their steely talons deeper into him. He was exhausted... Dio, was he exhausted.
