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He stilled, his face wiped of expression. ‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she said in exasperation. ‘I’m not leaving you. I want you to leave me, for a little while.’ He stared at her, nonplussed, and she took a deep breath. ‘I want you to go back to Sicily.’
Larenzo’s eyebrows snapped together. ‘No. Never.’
‘I want you to see Bertrano.’
‘No,’ he said again, his voice as hard as she’d ever heard it. ‘I have no desire to see him again, Emma. Ever.’
‘Don’t you think you need closure?’ Emma asked softly. ‘For both our sakes? Meghan was talking to me and I realised how much of my past I’d avoided. I thought I could put all my bad memories in a box and pretend they didn’t exist. But it doesn’t work that way.’
‘It can.’
‘Please, Larenzo. Just to finally learn why he did what he did. To make peace with it, if you can.’
Larenzo flicked his gaze away from hers. ‘And if I can’t?’
‘You can, Larenzo.’ Emma laid her hand on his arm. ‘I know you can.’
He said nothing for a long, long moment, and she could see the emotions battling in his eyes, on his face. Then slowly, painfully, he nodded.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LARENZO STOOD IN the small waiting room of the high-security prison near Terni, in central Italy. Sweat prickled his scalp and his stomach did a queasy flip. Just a little over two months ago he’d been behind those locked steel doors. He’d walked out a free man, but returning to the place where he’d felt so hopeless was not a comfortable feeling.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He’d been waiting for fifteen minutes for the guard to tell Bertrano he had a visitor. Larenzo hadn’t asked his former mentor if he could visit; he hadn’t wanted to give Bertrano the opportunity to refuse. And he hoped, now that he was actually here, Bertrano wouldn’t. He’d realised, in the few days since Emma had confronted him, that she’d been right. He needed to talk to Bertrano. He needed to understand.
‘Come with me,’ the guard told him in Italian, and with a terse nod Larenzo followed him through the heavy steel door, past the metal detector, and then to a holding cell where he was patted down before finally emerging in the visiting room, a dour place with half a dozen non-contact phone booths. Bertrano waited in one.
Just the sight of him caused shock and something worse, something like loss, to jolt through him. Bertrano was slouched in his chair, his face haggard and lined so he looked far older than his sixty-seven years. He lifted his bleary glance to Larenzo as he sat down, then looked away again, seemingly indifferent.
Larenzo took a deep, even breath and then picked up the phone. After a moment Bertrano picked up his.
‘So you came,’ he said flatly.
‘Yes. I came. Which is more than I can say you did for me.’ He hadn’t wanted to start this conversation with bitterness, yet he couldn’t seem to keep himself from it. Bertrano just shrugged. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’ Larenzo asked, and the old man shrugged again.
‘Frankly,’ he answered, ‘I didn’t really care.’
Larenzo blinked. He realised he’d expected Bertrano’s shame, his guilt, his anger, even his defensiveness...but this indifference shocked him.
‘Why?’ he asked eventually.
Bertrano glanced at him, shaggy eyebrows raised. ‘Why what?’
‘Why did you do it?’ Larenzo asked, his voice low. ‘I thought about it many times. I had many hours in prison to think about why you would betray me in such a fashion.’
To his amazement Bertrano let out a hoarse, rasping laugh. ‘Betray you?’ he repeated. ‘Even now, you can think that?’
Larenzo stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
Slowly Bertrano shook his head. ‘After all this time,’ he said. ‘After everything I’ve done, you still want an explanation? Isn’t it obvious, Larenzo? Or are you just being blind? Cazzaro,’ he spat, and Larenzo recoiled at the insult.
‘I am not an idiot,’ he said coolly. ‘I am trying to understand—’
‘Understand what? It’s all pretty simple to me. I used you, Larenzo. I framed you. Which part don’t you understand?’ He shook his head before looking away.
‘I know that. What I don’t understand is how you could do such a thing, after all—’ he broke off, feeling a pressure building in his chest, before he continued tightly ‘—after all our time together. You rescued me, Bertrano. You saved me, you treated me with such kindness, and then to betray—’
