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‘And maybe you need to give up this false pretence of trying to play papà, return to Rome and just let us be.’
He lounged against the wall, sliding long fingers into his pockets in a display of utter calm. But she wasn’t fooled. The lazy way his gaze raked her from head to toe only served to raise her hackles, along with her pulse rate.
Warning shrieked in her head. Cesare was most dangerous at his calmest. He hadn’t built a globally successful venture capitalist company without being extremely calculating and ruthless where he needed to be.
He shrugged amiably, as if they were discussing which entrée to have. ‘No, you’re right. On second thoughts, maybe this is just what we need.’
A thread of trepidation unfurled in the pit of her stomach. ‘And what exactly is this?’
‘To have this marriage brought under the scrutiny it deserves,’ he delivered. ‘For us to stop avoiding the fact that this marriage is anything but a sham. Maybe once we face facts, I can get round to discussing the more important issue of custody of my daughter.’
Her laughter was so strained it scraped her throat. ‘And you think when that happens I’d allow you anywhere near Annabelle?’ It didn’t click that she’d surged to her feet, that she’d bridged the gap between them, until her forefinger jabbed his chest. ‘You really think any judge on earth would grant custody to a less than part-time father who’s abandoned his daughter for most of her life?’
CHAPTER TWO
CESARE FLINCHED, THE sting of her words like whips lacerating his skin; the stab of her finger pierced like a knife in his chest. Raw pain pounded with every heartbeat as Ava’s words barrelled into him.
He’d abandoned her.
When his daughter had needed him most, he’d failed her. He’d been unable to protect Annabelle...
Dark torment crept in, threatening to drown him every time he thought of what he’d let happen. He’d been too quick to believe...too swift to embrace his destiny.
And in choosing that path, he’d done the unforgivable.
The heart he thought had withered to nothing clenched hard. But within that torment, within the potent swirl of guilt and recrimination, a different emotion crept in.
Excitement. The guilt and recrimination were ever present, but alongside it a flood of hot excitement stole over his senses, awakening that treacherous desire he thought he’d slain a long time ago.
With every ounce of control he possessed, he tried to push it away, but like a drowning victim accepting the inevitable, he let it close in on him, submerge him deeper in its relentless maelstrom.
Dio, he felt...alive; from her single touch, he felt more alive than he had in a very long time. More than he deserved to feel after what he’d done.
Ava’s finger jabbed him again, but all he could think, could feel, was how much cleaner the air smelled—richer, bringing a clarity that had eluded him for a long time.
‘From the moment she was born, you abandoned her.’ Her rough, pain-racked whisper stabbed deeper than if she’d shouted. ‘And the day of the earthquake, you were supposed to spend time with her; instead you were on a conference call! You palmed her off on Rita—’
He wrenched back control and sucked in a breath. ‘The minute I knew what was happening, I went in search of her. We both did. We tore apart that Bali marketplace with our bare hands.’ Until they’d bled both inside and out.
Her hand dropped and she shook her head. ‘Do you know how it feels to know neither of us were with her when the earthquake hit?’ she whispered in anguish.
The thought tortured him day and night. ‘Sì, I know. I’ve lived with that horror every day since. I know how very easily we could’ve lost her. But I also thank God she was found.’ Someone else had dug his daughter out of the submerged marketplace. Someone else had cared for Annabelle, taken her to the hospital and taken the time to put her photograph on the missing person’s wall. ‘We may not have found her ourselves but she was found,’ he repeated. ‘She was all right. She was alive.’ Somehow, miraculously, his daughter had survived the devastating earthquake that had killed tens of thousands.
And, for as long as he lived, he intended to make sure his daughter never came to harm again.
‘She was all right,’ she repeated numbly. ‘So you just thought you’d carry on being emotionally unavailable to her again?’ Her words were hushed, but the pain behind them ripped through the silence.
