A Scandal in the Headlines(51)
Nothing had changed. She was the same selfish, foolish girl she’d ever been. She wanted yet another man to love her when she knew that no matter what she’d thought she glimpsed in him now and again, this was nothing more than a game to him, and she no more than another piece on a chessboard he controlled. Eventually, he would grow tired of her. He would leave her.
And yet some part of her was still vain enough to think he might change his mind, that she might change it. Still silly enough to risk everything on that slim, unlikely chance.
She hadn’t learned a thing in all this time.
“By all means,” he said then, languidly scrolling down a page on his tablet, “take your time agonizing over the only reasonable choice available to you. I’m happy to wait.”
Could she do it? Could she surrender the most important thing of all—the one thing even Niccolo had never got his hands on? The entire future of her village. Her family’s heritage. The land. All because she so desperately hoped that Alessandro was different. That he really would do the right thing.
Because she loved him.
Idiot. The voice in her head was scathing.
Elena jerked herself around and stared out his impressive windows at the lights of the city spread out before her, but what she saw were her parents’ faces. Her poor parents. They deserved so much better than this. Than her.
“What a romantic proposal.” She shut her eyes. She hated herself. But she couldn’t seem to stop the inevitable. She was as incapable of saving herself now as she’d been on that dance floor. And as guilty. “How can I possibly refuse?”
Late that night, Alessandro stood in the door of his bedroom and watched Elena sleep. She was curled up in his bed, and the sight of her there made the savage creature in him want to shout out his triumph to the moon. He almost did. He felt starkly possessive. Wildly victorious.
He could wake her, he knew. She would turn to him eagerly—soft and warm from sleep, and take him inside of her without a word. She would sigh slightly, sweetly, and wrap herself around him, then bury her face in his neck as he moved in her.
She’d done it so many times before.
But tonight was different. Tonight she’d agreed to become his wife.
His wife.
He hadn’t known he’d meant to offer marriage until he had. And once he had, he’d understood that there was no other acceptable outcome to this situation. No alternative. She needed to be his, without reservation or impediment. It had to be legal. It had to last. He didn’t care what trouble that might cause.
There were words for what was happening to him, Alessandro knew, but he wasn’t ready to think about that. Not until he’d secured her, made her his. He turned away from the bed and forced himself to head down the stairs.
Down in his home office, he sat at his wide, imposing desk and frowned down at all of the work Giovanni had prepared for his review. But he didn’t flip open the top report and start reading. He found himself staring at the photo that sat on the corner of his desk instead.
It was a family shot he’d meant to get rid of ever since his grandmother had given it to him years ago. All of the Correttis were gathered around his grandmother, Teresa, at her birthday celebration eight years ago. Canny old Salvatore was smirking at the camera, holding one of Teresa’s hands in his, looking just as Alessandro remembered him—as if death would never dare take him.
Alessandro’s father and uncle, alive and at war with each other, stood with their wives and children on either side of Teresa, who had long been the single unifying force in the family. Her birthday, at her insistence, was the one day of the year the Correttis came together, breathed the same air, refrained from spilling blood or hideous secrets and pretended they were a real family.
Alessandro sighed, and reached over to pick up the photograph. His uncle and four cousins looked like some kind of near mirror image of his own side of the family, faces frozen into varying degrees of mutiny and forced smiles, all stiffly acquiescing to the annual charade. They were all the same, in the end. All of them locked into this family, their seedy history, this bitter, futile fight. Sometimes he found himself envious of Angelo, the only family member missing from the picture, because at least he’d been spared the worst of it.
His sister, Rosa—because he couldn’t think of her any other way, he didn’t care who her father was—smiled genuinely. Alessandro and Santo stood close together, looking as if they were biting back laughter, though Alessandro could no longer remember what about. His father glared, as haughty and arrogant as he’d been to his grave. And his mother looked as she always did: ageless and angry. Always so very, very angry.