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‘Ah.’
‘Yes. Ah.’
They lay there in silence for a moment, and then Emma raised herself up one elbow so she could gaze down at him. Her face was flushed, her hair like a golden-brown cloud, but her eyes were serious.
‘Larenzo, at the party tonight, I overheard something.’
The sleepy relaxation that had been stealing through him vanished in an instant. ‘Oh?’
‘Some women in the ladies’. They said...’ She nibbled her lip, and, despite the tension that was now keeping his body rigid, Larenzo felt another wave of lust crash through him. He almost reached for her again, to satisfy his desire as well as to keep her from talking. He didn’t know what she was going to say, but he felt sure he didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to talk about how people had gossiped, speculated, doubted.
‘They said Bertrano Raguso was your mentor,’ she said quietly. ‘Like a father to you.’
He blinked, shocked, because he’d been expecting her to talk about crime and guilt, not about Bertrano. Not about feelings.
‘Was he?’ she asked, her voice wavering slightly, and Larenzo shrugged.
‘I told you we were close.’
‘I suppose I didn’t realise you were that close.’ She hesitated, and then pressed her hand to his cheek, the simple movement nearly his undoing. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, and the realisation that she was sorry on his account, that she was sad on his account, made a lump form in Larenzo’s throat and for a moment he couldn’t speak.
‘There’s nothing you need to be sorry for,’ he said gruffly as he gathered her back into his arms. ‘It had nothing to do with you.’
‘I’m sorry someone you cared about so much betrayed you so terribly. I thought it was bad enough that he was your business partner. But a man like a father—’
‘Yes.’ Larenzo stared up at the ceiling, as close to weeping as he’d ever been. Eventually he forced the feeling back. ‘Yes, he was that.’
‘How did you meet him?’
No one knew the story, and yet now, to his amazement, Larenzo realised he wanted to tell Emma. He wanted her to know.
‘I was attempting to pick his pocket,’ he said, and she let out a little startled laugh.
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously. I was twelve. I’d been living on the streets for about a year. Surviving mainly by my wits, stealing, pickpocketing, occasionally making honest money by doing odd jobs. Sleeping rough, or sometimes in a shelter. For a few months, in winter, a couple of us clubbed together in an abandoned apartment building.’
She shivered a little in his arms. ‘I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.’
‘It was better than the orphanage,’ Larenzo answered. ‘At least on the street I had control of my own destiny. In the orphanage...some of the nuns were kind. Others were needlessly cruel. They enjoyed meting out punishment, seeing our pain. I hated it.’ Emma didn’t answer, just put her arms more tightly around him, and absently Larenzo stroked her hand as the memories assailed him and then spilled from his lips.
‘Anyway, when I was twelve, I saw Bertrano. He was in his forties then, a successful businessman. I remember his coat was the softest thing I’d ever touched. Cashmere.’
‘And what happened? Did he catch you?’
‘Yes, even though I must say I was a very good pickpocket. He caught me by the scruff of my neck and shook me hard. Told me he’d take me to the police, and that I’d end up in prison if...’ Larenzo broke off. He had ended up in prison, thanks to Bertrano. Even now it hurt.
Gently Emma stroked his cheek, brought him back from the darkness. ‘If you didn’t stop?’ she guessed, and he nodded.
‘Yes. I ran off, didn’t really think anything of it. But he found me the next day, and bought me a meal. It went on like that for a few months. I was suspicious of him, but Bertrano, I think, was lonely. He’d lost his wife and son in a car accident. He had no family.’
‘And you had no family.’
‘No.’
‘So what happened then?’ Emma asked and Larenzo forced himself to continue. The memories were harder now, tainted as they were by Bertrano’s betrayal, and yet he still wanted, or at least needed, to say them.
‘He offered to send me to boarding school. He wanted me to do something with myself. I didn’t want to at first. I knew what institutional life was like. But then one of my friends, a boy who was only ten, died. Knifed in an alleyway, and I realised I had to get out. So I accepted, and went to a school near Rome. At first I wasn’t accepted, people could tell where I came from. But I didn’t care. I had warm clothes and a bed and so much food. And I actually liked the learning.’
