A Hunger for the Forbidden(51)

He didn’t think they had.

“How did the meeting go?”

“We called each other names. Insulted each other’s honor and then shook hands. So about as expected.”

She laughed. “Good, I guess.”

“Yes. We’ve come up with a way to divide Corretti Enterprises up evenly. A way for everyone to get their share. It’s in everyone’s best interests, really. Especially the generation that comes after us. Which I now have a vested interest in.”

She smiled, the dimple on her left cheek deepening. “I suppose you do. And … I’m glad you do.”

He moved to sit on the couch, at her feet, then he leaned in. “Can you feel the baby move yet?”

She shook her head. “No. The doctor said it will feel like a flutter, though.”

“May I?” he asked, stretching his hand out, just over the small, rounded swell of her stomach.

“Of course.”

He swallowed hard and placed his palm flat on her belly. It was the smallest little bump, but it was different than it had been. Evidence of the life that was growing inside her. A life they’d created.

She was going to be the mother of his child. She deserved to know. To really understand him. Not to simply look at him and see an illusion. He’d given her a taste of it earlier, but his need for that look, that one she reserved just for him, that look he only got from her, had prevented him from being honest. Had made him hold back the most essential piece of just why he was not the man to be her husband.

The depth to which he was capable of stooping.

Because no matter how bright the future had become, the past was still filled with shadows. And until they were brought into the sunlight, their power would remain.

“There is something else,” he said, taking his hand from her stomach, curling it into a fist. His skin burned.

“About the meeting?”

“No,” he said. “Not about the meeting.”

“What about?”

“About me. About why … about why it might not be the best idea for you to try to make a marriage with me. About the limit of what I can give.”

“Matteo, I already told you how I feel about what happened with your father.”

“By that you mean when he took me on errands?”

“Well … yes.”

“So, you don’t mean what happened the night of the warehouse fire that killed him and Carlo.”

“No. No one knows what happened that night.”

“That isn’t true,” he said, the words scraping his throat raw. “Someone knows.”

“Who?” she asked, but he could tell she already knew.

“I know.”

“How?”

“Because, cara mia. I was there.”

“You were there?”

He nodded slowly. Visions of fire filled his mind. Fire and brimstone, such an appropriate vision. “Yes. I was there to try to convince my father to turn over the holdings of Corretti to me entirely. I wanted to change things. To end the extortion and scams. All of it. But he wouldn’t hear it. You see, at the time, he was still running criminal schemes, using the hotels, which I was managing, to help launder money. To help get counterfeit bills into circulation, into the right hands. Or wrong hands as the case may have been. I didn’t want any part of it, but as long as my father was involved in the running of the corporation, that was never going to end. I wanted out.”

“Oh,” Alessia said, the word a whisper, as if she knew what was coming next. He didn’t want her to guess at it, because he wanted, perversely, for her to believe it impossible. For her to cling to the white-knight image and turn away from the truth he was about to show her.

“I don’t know how the fire started. But the warehouse was filled with counterfeiting plates, and their printing presses. That’s one way to make money, right? Print your own.”

He looked down at his hands, his heart pounding hard, his stomach so tight he could hardly breathe. “The fire spread quickly. I don’t know where Carlo was when it broke out. But I was outside arguing with my father. And he turned and … and he looked at the blaze and he started to walk toward it.”

Matteo closed his eyes, the impression of flames burning bright behind his eyelids. “I told him if he went back into that damned warehouse to rescue those plates, I would leave him to it. I told him to let it burn. To let us start over. I told him that if he went back, I would be happy to let him burn with it all, and then let him continue to burn in hell.”