An Inheritance of Shame(32)

‘Lucia—’ he said hoarsely, and she flung up one hand.

‘No. I’ll say this now, only now, only once. Loving you doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make a difference, because I know—I’ve always known—you don’t love me back the same way. You don’t love me at all.’ He opened his mouth to say—what? Was he actually going to deny something that was so blatantly, brutally true? ‘You might think you feel something for me,’ she cut him off, ‘and perhaps you do. Affection, attraction, something so paltry it hardly matters. I mean no more to you than one of your cars or villas or perhaps one of your corporate takeovers. Something to be acquired, enjoyed and then discarded. That’s how you’ve always seen me, Angelo.’

Angelo just stared at her, unspeaking. He still looked dazed.

And he obviously had no answer, for after a few silent seconds he put the car into Drive and swung back onto the motorway, all without a word. Lucia leaned her head back against her seat and closed her eyes. Angelo’s silence hurt her far more than she knew it should. Had she actually been expecting him to deny the truth? Hoping for him to insist she was wrong, he really had changed, and he knew now that he loved her?

Fantasies.

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the trip back to Palermo.

Angelo still didn’t speak as he pulled in front of the hotel and waited for Lucia to get out. He was still spinning from what she’d said. All of it too incredible, too much. He felt too much.

And he’d said too much…more than he’d ever admitted before to anyone ever, and she’d thrown it all back in his face. Fury churned through him, along with the shock and the disbelief.

Lucia hesitated as she climbed out of the Porsche, her face still averted, her head bowed. For a second he thought she’d say something—but what? She’d said everything on the side of the road, when she’d told him she loved him and it didn’t matter.

Because he didn’t love her.

He waited until she’d disappeared into the hotel, and then he pulled away from the kerb with an angry screech of tyres.

His mind a haze, he drove through the crowded streets of Palermo and then along the ocean road towards Messina until he found a deserted stretch of beach. He parked the car on a patch of dry grass along the road and tossed his loafers in the car.

He didn’t know how long he walked along the beach, his hands shoved in his pockets, his mind numb. He had meetings to attend, pressure to put on the different Corretti factions. Hell, he had a coup to stage and here he was beachcombing.

Yet still he walked.

I love you. I’ve always loved you.

How could she love him? Nobody loved him. Nobody had ever told him they loved him before. Not his stony-faced grandparents, not his absent mother and certainly not the father who would have preferred he’d never existed at all.

All you were meant to be was a stain on the sheets.

He’d stopped expecting or even hoping for love or anything close to it long ago. He might have suspected Lucia had had some kind of schoolgirl crush on him at one point, but that’s all it had been. It hadn’t been real; it hadn’t been love. It simply wasn’t possible.

And he didn’t love her. He didn’t know how to love, didn’t have it in him. He’d accepted that too, understood that about himself. He hadn’t loved anyone in his life, hadn’t let himself, and so his emotions had atrophied into nothing, an atrophy of the heart. Some might view his lack of love as a weakness or deficiency, but he’d turned it into a strength. If you didn’t love anyone it was easier to focus on work, to live for it. Easier to not care when no one loved you back, easier to walk away.

Except now he didn’t want to walk away. Lucia was the one walking, and the thought filled him with frustration, fury—and fear. Why couldn’t she accept what he’d offered? Why couldn’t it be enough for her? It was a hell of a lot more than he’d offered seven years ago, and yet she still wanted more? From him?

Didn’t she realise he didn’t have any more to give?

Angelo sank onto the sand, his head in his hands. Yes, he realised hollowly, she did, and that was why she’d gone.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, unmoving, his mind retreating into numbness once more. Eventually he stirred, saw the sun was high overhead and realised he’d missed at least one, probably two, important meetings.

Resolutely he rose from the sand. He’d spent enough time thinking about Lucia. She didn’t want to have an affair? Fine, no problem. There were plenty of other women who did, and in any case he’d gone before without women or sex. Work—revenge—had been his companion, his lover, and it would be again.