A Scandal in the Headlines(40)

Alessandro’s lips thinned, and he muttered something guttural and fierce in Sicilian. He looked furious again, dark and powerful, like some kind of vengeful god only pretending to sit there so civilly. Only waiting.

“Do you want to hear this?” she asked then, lifting a hand to rub at the pressure behind her temple and only then realizing that she was shaking. “All of it?”

“I told you,” he said, a kind of ferocity in his voice, all that ruthlessness and demand gleaming in his dark green eyes. He touched her then, reaching over to tuck a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear, that hard mouth curving when goose bumps rose along her neck, her shoulder. “I want everything.”

And Elena understood then that she was open and vulnerable to this man in ways she’d never been before. This really was everything. This was all she had left inside of her, all she’d had left to hold, laid out before him because she’d finally given in. She’d finally let go. This was everything lost, her whole world ruined, and nothing left to hope for but the possibility of his mercy.

This was surrender. Everything else had been games.

“I didn’t think I was particularly naive,” she said then, because he was looking at her in that too-incisive way of his, and she was afraid of what he might see. And of what he might do when she was finished. “I’d been to university. I have a law degree. I was starting to take on all the duties and responsibilities of the family business. The land. The money. The constant development proposals.” She shook her head, scowling at her own memories. Her own stupidity. “I wasn’t just some silly village girl.”

And that was the crux of it. She felt new tears prick at the backs of her eyes, and hurriedly blinked them back. She’d thought she was better than where she came from. She’d thought very highly of herself indeed. She’d been certain she deserved the handsome, wealthy stranger who had appeared like magic to sweep her off her feet.

Such vanity.

She only realized she’d said it out loud when Alessandro said something else in his brash Sicilian, so little of which she understood even after her time there. He shifted in his seat, making it swing with him as he did.

“I told you before,” he said. “It was a con.”

“I believed him,” Elena said simply, shame and regret in her voice, moving in her veins like sludge. She felt it all over her face, and had to stop looking at him before she saw it on his, too. “I believed every single thing he told me. All of his big dreams. All of his plans. That he and I were a team.” Her voice cracked, but she kept going. “That he loved me. I believed every word.”

“Elena,” he said in a voice she’d never heard him use before. She had to close her eyes briefly against it. As if her name was an endearment she couldn’t believe a man so hard even knew. “You were supposed to believe him. He set you up.”

She didn’t know why she wanted to weep then, again.

“I knew you were lying to me in Rome,” she said fiercely, hugging her knees tight, keeping her eyes trained on the sea, determined to hold the tears back. “About everything. You had to be lying, because Niccolo couldn’t possibly be the man you described, and because, of course, you were a Corretti.”

“Of course.” His tone made her wince. She didn’t dare look at his expression.

“I went looking for things to prove you were a liar. One night while Niccolo slept, I got up and decided to search the laptop he took everywhere with him.”

She heard Alessandro’s release of breath, short and sharp, but she still couldn’t look at him. Especially not now.

“He caught me, of course, but not until after I read far too many emails that explained in detail his plans for my family’s land.” She frowned, as horrified now as she had been then. “He wanted to build a luxury hotel, which would transform my forgotten village into a major tourist destination. We’re fishermen, first and foremost. We don’t even have a decent beach. We like to visit Amalfi, but we don’t want to compete with it.”

She shook her head, remembering that night in such stark detail. She’d only thrown on a shirt of Niccolo’s and a pair of socks, and had snuck down to the kitchen to snoop on his computer while he snored. It had been cold in his villa, and she remembered shivering as she sat on one of the stools, her legs growing chillier the longer she sat there.

And she remembered the way her stomach had lurched when she’d looked up to see him in the doorway.