Chapter Twelve
THE HOT TUB on the wraparound balcony of Massimiliano’s penthouse was utterly sublime. Or maybe that was the hour they’d spent before, making love as though they had been separated for years, not weeks. As though they’d been born for the sole purpose of coming together.
There’d been a shift.
She felt a thousand miles away from the virgin she’d been when she’d agreed to this marriage.
And for the first time since marrying, they’d agreed not to go out. Amelia was glad. While being wined and dined around Rome didn’t sound onerous, it was nice not to need to get dressed up, aware that all eyes in a venue were locked on her, the women sometimes staring daggers.
She sighed contentedly as her eyes chased the skyline of Rome, marvelling at the famous landmarks she could pick out from where they were, the beauty of this ancient city.
‘You know, I always swore I’d never come to Italy,’ she said, shifting her gaze to his face as her heart gave a little jolt.
He was just too handsome. Especially now, with his hair wet and slicked back from his brow, the top half of his hair-roughened chest exposed to her. His dark eyes locked to hers, probing.
The lights on the deck glowed gold, casting them in a warm ambience.
‘Because of your mother?’ he pushed, when she didn’t elaborate.
She reached for her prosecco and took a sip. ‘Yeah. I pretty much rejected everything to do with her when she left.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Just a girl. And she was my whole world,’ Amelia murmured.
‘I worshipped her. Then one day, she was just gone.’ He made a gruff sound in his throat, a noise of sympathy.
Her eyes shifted back to the view, but in her mind, she was drifting into the past. ‘They fought a lot, my parents. I think Mum got caught up in the romance of meeting |Dad, rebelling against her parents. Eloping. And then she was pregnant with me. Maybe if she hadn’t conceived, they’d have split sooner. ’ She swallowed quickly.
‘What did they fight about?’
‘My mother had a lot of male friends,’ she said, not trying to make it sound pointed. ‘Looking back, I’m pretty sure she had affairs, though my dad never said as much to me. But as an adult, remembering the tenor of their arguments…’
‘Which makes how I reacted today even worse.’
‘It made it familiar,’ she said. ‘My dad was pretty chill, except when they fought about her “friends”.’ A plane flew overhead, a distant, rumbling jet engine noise that drew her gaze upwards.
‘I suppose it’s why I knew that when I agreed to marry you, I would honour the sanctity of that institution, even when we weren’t, you know. A couple.’
She glanced at him, to find his eyes simply resting on her face, his expression inscrutable.
‘Anyway. Neither of them was happy. My mother’s infidelity wasn’t the only problem. I mean, we had no money. That was stressful. And then, one day, she just disappeared.’
Beneath the water, his foot reached out and rubbed her calf, so she flicked a half-smile in his direction. ‘I stopped speaking Italian. I removed any photos of her from the house. Any gifts she’d given me. I was so mad, Massimiliano—I swore I’d lose any part of me that was Italian.’
‘Understandably.’ His toe moved up to brush her thigh, sparking flames in the pit of her stomach. ‘So what changed your mind?’
‘You can be pretty persuasive.’
‘Me, or the money I was offering?’ he teased.
She ignored the way her stomach lurched, the immediate instinct she had to reject that. ‘Both,’ she said in the same spirit.
His expression shifted. ‘And learning Italian?’
Memories of that afternoon came back to her.
His jealousy. She ran her fingertips over the water’s surface, feeling the bubbles pop beneath them.
‘I’m not doing it for my mum,’ she said.
‘If anything, it’s for my dad. He always wanted me to stick with it.
To keep talking Italian. Losing him, it’s sort of made me think about the anger I’ve held, and I guess, made me want to be everything he thought I could be.
Plus, I’m here for two years, so it does make sense. ’
He dipped his head in acknowledgement of that. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘It never came up.’
He nodded slowly. ‘And your medical studies?’
For a long time, becoming a doctor was all she’d thought about. Strange, now, that it felt ephemeral. ‘Ever since I was a girl, I’ve wanted to be a doctor.’
The surprise on his face was obvious. ‘This is what you’re planning to study?’
She nodded. ‘About a year before Mum left, my best friend died. She had leukaemia. It was the first time I faced death, and I was too young, really, to fully understand it. I just knew she was sick, and everyone around her was worried. We couldn’t play together any more.
When I did get to see her, I had to wear a mask, sanitise my hands.
I felt so powerless. I was just a kid, and all I could think was, I want to save her.
And then, anyone like her. When Dad got sick, I was struck by that same sense. I want to make a difference.’
He leaned forward then, his palm cupping her cheek, eyes locked to hers in a way that made her pulse trip. ‘I have no doubt you will, cara.’
Her smile was shy, his praise so heart-warming. It wasn’t as if she needed external validation—she knew she had the grades to get into medicine—it was only because of life circumstances that she’d had to put it on hold. But having his support was like a shot in the arm, regardless.
‘You’re very smart,’ he said, after a beat, the praise glowing inside her. She knew it was true, though. Her grades had always been excellent, but hearing it from Massimiliano set her pulse alight. ‘I don’t think I was expecting you to be so well read, so interesting.’
She pulled a face. ‘I think you meant that as a compliment, but I’m not so sure.’
‘I mean because you are young. Working in a diner.’
She rolled her eyes, missing the way his mouth quirked in an appreciative smile.
‘I always did very well at school,’ she said.
‘I got a scholarship to study medicine, aced my pre-admission test. But then, he got sick.’ She cleared her throat, wishing she didn’t still feel that acid reflux when she thought of her dad.
‘And while he was sick, I would read the papers to him, every day. He would close his eyes and listen, but if I thought he’d drifted off, and stopped, he’d reach out and squeeze my arm, wanting me to keep going.
I would read them back to front for him. ’
The sympathy in his expression was impossible to miss. It hit her right in the solar plexus.
‘And you haven’t heard from your mother since she left?’ he asked, gently, settling back in the hot tub, but keeping their legs entwined.
‘Not a single card. I have no idea if she’s alive or dead.’
His brows knitted together. ‘You could hire a detective.’
She rejected that thought. ‘Either way, she’s dead to me. If she doesn’t want to be in my life, why would I push that?’
His eyes raked her face, then, slowly, he nodded. ‘I feel the same.’
‘About your father.’
He shifted his head in agreement.
‘With your father, he’d actually committed crimes. So I presume police were searching for him.’
‘There was a massive operation. He has evaded discovery. We know only that he transferred hundreds of millions of euros offshore, money he convinced every single person we knew to invest with him. He must have been planning it for a long time—the detail was meticulous.’
Amelia shook her head. ‘But your family was already wealthy. Why do that?’
‘We were wealthy enough, but not like this.’ He gestured to the view. ‘Although, sometimes I think it wasn’t about the money at all, so much as the thrill of it. He scammed his friends, he got away with it.’
‘But he lost you and your grandfather and ruined your life in the process.’
He made a gruff noise of agreement. ‘What he did was also, in all likelihood, the making of me.’
‘How so?’
‘I was always driven, I suppose, but not like this. From the moment his crimes were revealed, I vowed to repair the damage. To earn enough to pay back every last cent, and then to have enough money that, no matter what my father had done, people would respect us. I didn’t realise how entrenched those prejudices would become.
The name Moretti remained mud, no matter how much money I had. ’
‘That’s not true,’ she disputed. ‘You are hugely admired. You’re one of the richest men in the world. Your business success is legendary.’
‘I am talking about a very specific legacy. The Moretti name, here in Italy and in Europe, the respect that was once afforded us simply because of the generations that have gone before.’
‘I thought you didn’t care about that.’
‘I don’t. Either way, the name ends with me, so why do I care what the value of it is? But my grandfather cares. It is, I suppose you could say, his dying wish.’
Something thudded in her chest. ‘You mean the name ends with you because you don’t intend to have children?’
His eyes held hers. ‘Sì.’
A shiver ran the length of her spine. ‘Does your grandfather know?’
Those dark eyes continued to probe hers, as though looking through her. ‘On the contrary, he now feels that children are imminent.’
Comprehension began to dawn. ‘Because of our marriage.’
‘Yes.’
‘Another benefit of pretending this is real,’ she murmured.
‘A definite advantage.’
‘But what happens when we split up?’
Massimiliano’s features tightened. ‘The future is uncertain, for my grandfather.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, softly. ‘I get that. You don’t know how long you’ll have him for. But the best-case scenario is that he fights and wins, right? So…isn’t that going to destroy him, when we get divorced?’
‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.’
‘You really don’t plan on ever having kids?’
‘No.’ He said it so swiftly, so assuredly, that she knew there was absolutely no wiggle room in his mind.