An Inheritance of Shame(52)

A few other guests entered the VIP box then, and Angelo stood as he said hello to several expensive-suited corporate types. Lucia saw one of the women, a sleek brunette, flick a dismissive glance first towards her frivolous hair clip and then at her shoes. She fought not to blush. Damn her shoes anyway. If she’d been trying to fool anybody, she obviously wasn’t. Everyone could see how she didn’t belong here.

And she wasn’t trying to fool anybody, Lucia reminded herself fiercely. This was not her world. She didn’t want it to be Angelo’s world. She wanted to go home.

‘All right?’ Angelo asked, and reached for the champagne bottle to top up her barely touched flute.

‘Yes.’ Lucia smiled tightly. Every muscle in her body ached with tension, and the evening had barely started. She glanced at Angelo, who was leaning forward, his body looking as tense as hers felt. He wasn’t enjoying himself either, she thought suddenly, and she felt a flicker of something almost like relief. Maybe they weren’t so different at all. Neither of them wanted to be here.

They didn’t talk much as more people took their seats and then the race started. Lucia watched the horses, elegantly sinuous, eat up the track, clouds of dust billowing behind them and the sea a sunlit shimmer on the horizon. She couldn’t tell what was going on, but it was over soon enough—and Cry of Thunder had come in fifth. Gio Corretti’s horse had won.

‘How much did you lose?’ she asked, smiling, trying to keep it light, and Angelo shrugged.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

After the race they went with the other VIPs into a glittering ballroom. Tuxedoed waiters passed around yet more champagne as well as chocolate-dipped strawberries, caviar, pâté. Food Lucia had never had before and didn’t really like, although she helped herself to several strawberries. Angelo kept surveying the ballroom, his eyes narrowed as if he were looking for someone. He barely spoke to Lucia, and her unease turned to pure feminine annoyance.

‘Angelo—’

‘Come here.’ He took her elbow, striding forward towards a man Lucia recognised from earlier, Gio Corretti—a son of Benito Corretti, a cousin of Angelo’s.

The man inclined his head slightly in cool acknowledgement and Angelo smiled back, although there was no friendliness or warmth in that curving of lips. He looked hard, unyielding, ruthless. Underneath her hand his arm felt as if it had been hewn from granite, forged from steel.

‘You lost quite a bit tonight,’ Gio remarked as he shook Angelo’s outstretched hand. Angelo’s smile deepened, became even colder.

‘Pocket change, Gio.’

‘Ah.’ Gio Corretti nodded slowly. ‘I see.’

Lucia didn’t see anything at all. The men stared at each other, Angelo cold, Gio chillingly remote. Lucia felt like screaming at them to behave—but of course, to all intents and purposes, they were behaving. No fisticuffs, no hurling of insults. Just this cold, hard, glittering anger. Like the diamonds Angelo had wanted to buy for her, costly and soulless.

‘I’m not the one you’re fighting, you know,’ Gio said quietly, and Angelo’s whole body stiffened as if he’d been jerked on a string.

‘Who said I’m fighting?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘It’s business.’

‘Some business.’ Gio shrugged, turned away, and Angelo stood there, his whole body quivering with tension, with anger. With hurt.

Lucia could feel it coming off him in waves, knew he felt like he’d been dismissed, rejected by a Corretti. What she saw in Gio Corretti was a grudging respect for a self-made man like Angelo, but Angelo hadn’t seen it.

‘Angelo…’ she murmured, and he shook his head, shrugged off her arm.

‘Let’s go.’

As relieved as she was to get out of there, she didn’t like the way he seemed about to stomp off, pulling her along with him. ‘Don’t you think—’

‘I’ve done what I came to do,’ Angelo said flatly, and reaching for her hand, he led her swiftly out of the ballroom.

They didn’t talk until they were in the Porsche, speeding back towards Palermo, the night inky-black all around them.

‘What was that all about?’ Lucia asked quietly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why did you bring me there, Angelo? Why did you go yourself?’ She shook her head, bewildered, uncertain, starting to get angry. ‘You certainly didn’t go because you enjoyed the experience.’