A Shadow of Guilt(6)

Much to her everlasting mortification she’d tagged along on her brother’s visits to Gio in his new home near Syracuse whenever he’d been home from college, during his long summers off. Gio had bought a palatial castello complete with a farm, where he’d installed a state-of-the-art stud and gallops. He’d been in the process of doing up a nearby run-down racetrack which by today had become the famed Corretti racetrack where the eponymous internationally renowned annual Corretti Cup race was held.

Gio had caught her staring once and she’d been so mortified she’d been red for a week. She hadn’t been able to get out of her head how he’d held her gaze for a long moment, a slow smile turning up his mouth, as if something illicit and secret had passed between them. Something that scared her as much as it had exhilarated her.

He had a beautiful face, sculpted lips. High cheekbones and a hard slashing line of a nose. A strong chin. But something in his demeanour took away any prettiness. A dark brooding energy surrounded him like a force-field.

Gio lifted a hand to point to her hair and said, ‘You have something … just there.’ It shattered her memories and brought her back to the present. He was pointing above her right ear and Valentina reached up and felt something wet and sticky and took her hand down to see a lump of viscous orange salmon caviar.

And then it was as if the deep baritone reality of his voice made the bells ring loud and clear in her head. He looked devil-may-care because that’s what he was, and that attitude had led directly to her brother’s death. For the past few moments she’d been protecting herself from the reality that he was here, in front of her, and now that protection was ripped away.

She remembered. And with that knowledge came the pain. The memories. That lonely grave in the graveyard. Seven years of an ache that didn’t seem to get any better, only fade slightly. Until it caught you unawares and the wound was reopened all over again. Like right now.

How dared he stand there and talk to her as if nothing had happened? As if civility could hide the ugly past. Anger and something much darker bubbled up inside Valentina. A kind of guilt, for having remembered another time for a moment; disgusted with herself she strode out of the room and straight up to Gio. She clenched the hand that held the remnants of the once-perfect canapé and looked up at him, focusing on the blazing incinerating anger of grief, and not something much more dangerous in her belly when she realised how tall he was. ‘Get out of my way, Corretti.’

Gio flinched minutely as if she’d slapped him. He could remember in vivid recall how it had felt that day when she’d punched him in the chest. And he welcomed it now. For a few seconds when she’d looked stunned and not angry, he’d thought that perhaps, with time, a mellowing had taken place. But then he mocked himself—the pain of losing Mario still as fresh as it had been on the night he died. And the shock to cushion that blow had long gone. Now there was just the excoriating and ever-present guilt.

Valentina was looking up at him, her eyes glowing gold and spitting. She hated him. It was in every taut and tense line of her body.

She gritted out, ‘I said get out of my way, Corretti.’





CHAPTER TWO



GIO STEPPED BACK, his voice was stiff. ‘I’m not in your way, Valentina.’

Valentina didn’t move though. She was vibrating all over with anger. It was like a tangible thing.

‘You need to go. You need to leave this place.’

A small flare of anger which he had no right to feel raced up Gio’s spine. His mouth tightened. ‘As this is my cousin’s wedding I think I have a right to stay.’ He didn’t bother to mention he’d been about to leave.

‘The wedding is off, or hadn’t you heard?’ Valentina supplied with a measure of satisfaction.

Something Gio didn’t understand made him bullishly stand his ground. ‘The reception is still on, or hadn’t you heard?’

He saw her face pale and instinctively put out a hand to touch her but she flinched backwards, disgust etched all over her. ‘Don’t touch me. And yes, I know the reception is still on—half a reception, that is, which your aunt expects me to cater for without handing over one euro in payment. Your whole family are poison, Corretti, right to the core.’

Gio wanted to say, Stop calling me that, but instead he frowned and said, ‘What do you mean? She’s not paying you?’

‘No,’ Valentina spat out, hating that she’d blurted that out, or that she was still even in a conversation with Giacomo Corretti.