AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But Megan knew that history never just went away. When a wound cut as deep as his had, it festered until it was dealt with. The broody Alessandro, the loving Alessandro, the hardworking Alessandro—all were in danger if he didn’t face these men.
So, yes, she betrayed him. He would never trust her again. She opened the door wider and said, “Come in.”
The brothers did so. Alessandro turned his back and went into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of orange juice. Leo and Massimo looked at Megan with wide, nervous eyes. Yeah, Alessandro was terrifying, even when all he was doing was drinking juice straight from the bottle. Maybe that darkness was what made him such a good actor.
They moved a few feet into the room. “Okay, talk,” Megan said, swallowing the tears that wanted to burst out of her at her beautiful, damaged man.
“We do not have excuses for—” Leo began. But Megan shook her head.
“Christ’s sake, speak Italian. Or you’ll never be done.”
She walked to the back of the house and out the patio door. With her pajamas still on, she jumped into the plunge pool and stayed down until her lungs burned and the tears had washed from her cheeks.
When she broke back through the surface, she heard Alessandro shouting, so she dunked again. But the tears came back and she couldn’t stay down for long, so she hauled herself out and grabbed a towel to hide her sobs, until the sounds inside the house ended.
She didn’t hear the door close, but the silence indicated that Alessandro’s brothers had left. Perhaps Alessandro had as well. No. He’d been in pajamas. Megan stayed on the chaise, wiping her eyes with the towel, and waited.
The patio door opened, and Alessandro came out to sit next to her. She couldn’t look at him. If she saw that same indifference he’d shown inside, she’d break into pieces.
He didn’t relax on the chaise, sitting sideways instead, facing her. About when she thought she was going to burst if he didn’t say something, he did.
“You think that my family is like yours.”
“I don’t. But they—”
“I had told you who they were. I shared with you what my brothers did. And you let them into the house anyway.”
Megan had thought she was all done crying. Nope. The coolness of his voice stabbed her. “It’s been years. Your parents poisoned them. They know that now. And when they found out, they flew over as soon as they could.”
His face a block of granite, he shook his head.
“But, Alessandro, they aresorry.”
He rubbed at one palm with his thumb, as though there was a very important piece of dirt on it he had to erase. “This is why you and I are too different. Your siblings are perfect to you.”
“They are not!”
“You love them. You have already forgiven your sister. You will go home and you have years of good memories to keep you with them. You will go back to being the Megan they want you to be. I was always myself around my brothers, and I was punished for it. But you will accept being their Megan, and I will not accept being my brothers’ Alessio.”
“’Sandro,” she cried. “Just because I love my family doesn’t mean I don’t see their flaws.”
“That is the difference between us. I do not love mine.”
“I’m not asking you to,” she said. Hiding the tears was hopeless. He wasn’t looking at her anyway. “I’m just asking you to let them in a little. Like you did me.”
“Yes, I did that.” Now he was looking at her, and she wished he would stop. She bit her lip at the calmness in his eyes. Like in the interview. He had closed off from her. She had betrayed him, and so she’d lost him. “I will not do that again.”
“Alessandro,” she said one last time.
“I will call Jacqui to help you pack,” he said, and he left her on the patio, the mellow burble of the pond at odds with the agony taking over her body.
♦
Chapter 24
Alessandro sat on his couch three hours after Megan left, looking out the front windows at the view. The trees and roofs and the distant skyscrapers. He’d forgotten how beautiful they all were before Megan had come into his house. He’d seen so much beauty because of her.
And then he’d watched her cry. And done nothing.
