Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Elio had won.
Everything he’d spent over two decades plotting and planning had finally come to bear. The Esposito empire now belonged to him. The Espositos themselves belonged to him.
Bruno and Elvira had left, gone to celebrate their success.
Elvira had been so young when their parents had been killed that she didn’t remember their faces. She’d been pissed at being unable to kill Valeria, but she’d recognised that Siena wasn’t bluffing as well as he had.
He would not allow himself to think of how he’d felt when Siena produced that gun.
Pouring himself a good measure of whisky, Elio took the glass and the bottle outside.
He was sure the numbness he was currently feeling would soon leave, and the euphoria he’d expected to feel at this moment would hit him.
Soon, when Siena had gone. She was in the bedroom packing her things.
There had been no discussion. Once her brothers and their wives had gone to wherever they were going, she’d met his eyes briefly and said, “Give me an hour to get my things together?”
He’d nodded. What could he have said? He’d already known she would leave.
She’d walked up the stairs without looking back at him.
Rolling his trousers up, he dipped his feet into the pool as he’d done with Siena all those weeks ago, the night she’d told him about Stefano’s assault and her mother protecting him.
Taking a deep drink of his whisky, he stared blankly at his lawn. He’d created all this. Everything he’d built had been his own hard work. And now he had everything that had been built on his parents’ blood.
Siena’s footsteps were so light that he couldn’t hear them, but the sudden jolt of his heart told him she was approaching him.
He closed his eyes. He’d thought she would leave without saying goodbye. After all, what was there to say? She was the only one who’d sensed the danger coming. His clever, clever wife had slipped a gun into her suspender belt when no one had been looking. Especially not him.
From the moment their guests had arrived, he’d been unable to look at her.
He couldn’t look at her now.
She sat beside him and put her bare feet in the pool. She’d changed out of her dress into three-quarter-length black jeans and a plain t-shirt.
“Can I have the bottle, please?” she asked quietly.
Keeping his gaze where it was, he held it out to her.
The tip of her fingers brushed against his.
He heard her drink. Heard her swallow. Heard her sigh. “That was quite the performance tonight.”
“But you weren’t surprised by it.” She’d been staggeringly calm… Right until she’d pulled the gun out.
“No,” she agreed. “Despite your denials, I always knew there had to be more to your vengeance than our marriage.”
“You called it restitution.”
“That’s what it is. Everything I have … had … came about because my father murdered my best friend’s father to justify murdering your parents. It’s not generations old. It’s living memory. Everything I had came through the suffering of those I love.”
She meant Gabriella. Siena had been so light in her spirits after visiting her oldest friend. Her beautiful face had been alight with relief and happiness that she’d made the move needed to mend their relationship.
His wife was stubborn and hot-tempered, but she wasn’t so stubborn that she couldn’t change her mind when the facts changed.
Not his wife anymore, he reminded himself. She would remain so on paper until they could divorce, but their marriage was over.
A part of him wished she were displaying her hot temper at him now. Her stoical acceptance of everything only added to his numbness.
She took another drink of the whisky before thrusting the bottle back at him. “Where have you taken my mother?”
“I can’t tell you that, Siena.”
“I’m hardly going to attempt a rescue, am I? Not when it means losing my own life.”
“What is wrong with you?” he suddenly bit out. “Do you value your life so little?”
“No less than you do.”
“That is such…” He cut himself off and shook his head violently as a flush of the emotion he’d experienced when Siena put the gun to her heart cut through the numbness.
“Why would you exchange your life for hers? For God’s sake, Siena, why did you put me in that position?
You could have walked away. I know damned well you’ve got enough money stashed away to set up a new life for yourself.
You could have been as free as a bird, but this fucking deal you’ve made with me means you’ll never be able to leave our city, and it means I might one day have to kill you. ”
“It never bothered you before, but if it bothers you now, then get Elvira to do it,” she said blithely. “I’m sure she wouldn’t hesitate.”
“For fuck’s sake, Siena!” he exploded, turning his head to her. “Do you actually want to die?”
Her beautiful face whipped to his. Even before she spoke, he saw that the blitheness in her voice was a mask for the agony she was feeling inside.
When she spoke, there was no blitheness, only pain. “No, Elio, I don’t want to die, but if you’d let your sister pull that trigger, I would have had nothing left to live for.”
“Dear God, how can you say that?”
“You didn’t need to kill her. You’d already taken your vengeance. Killing her in cold blood like that would have killed your soul and made you no better than him.”
“Any soul I had was destroyed by him when I was nine years old,” he said harshly.
“No.” She shook her head and pulled her feet out of the water.
“I’ve seen it, Elio, just as you’ve seen mine.
” Picking up her shoes, she stood and gazed down at him.
“Neither of us is completely ruined, but you’re edging closer to it.
You control our city now, and with the Esposito Group yours, you control much of Italy itself.
As you’re going to learn, obtaining power is one thing.
Keeping it is another. The choices you’re going to have to make are what will determine if you die with even a fragment of your soul left. ”
Head bowed, she crossed the patio back into the villa without another word.
His own head bowed and swarming with jumbled thoughts, his guts a churning mess, Elio drank deeply from the bottle before dragging himself back to his feet.
This was how it had to be. He wouldn’t ask her or force her to stay even if he still had a mind to it. The future he’d contemplated for them, with Siena his partner in life as well as his bed, would never happen. Not now.
He wanted her gone from his life.
When she’d produced that gun and put it to her heart…
His own heart had frozen.
The chill from it still resided in his chest. Still snaked through his blood.
He’d taken only two steps when she came flying back out of the villa. Blonde hair streaming behind her, her short legs strode quickly to him.
When she reached him, her chest was heaving. She stared at him for the longest time before her beautiful face twisted in misery. “Why me, Elio? Why me? Why was I the one singled out for extra punishment? What did I ever do to you to put me through that?”
God help him, he wanted to clasp that beautiful face and kiss all the misery off it.
“You were born,” he answered starkly.
Her head reared as if he’d slapped her.
“My brother had tonsillitis. He needed antibiotics. It’s the only reason she left our apartment. She was ambushed outside the pharmacy. My mother took a bullet to her heart on the same day your parents were celebrating the birth of their precious baby girl.”
All the colour in her face drained away, the soft blue eyes he’d come so close so many times to drowning in filling with tears. “Oh my God. I… I’m so sorry.”
“You were that baby.”
“I know, but Elio…” Her voice was pleading. “I didn’t choose to be born.”
“No, but you chose to force your father into making you a part of his shadowed world.”
“It’s your world too,” she protested shakily.
“But never my choice to enter it.” And as he spoke those words, the chill in his chest heated with the pain and fury that had driven him all those years and which had brought them to this very point.
“I had no choice, Siena. None,” he said harshly.
“My family deserved vengeance, and I was the one chosen to deliver it, and to do that, I had no choice but to embrace this world. You were the only one of Lorenzo’s children with a genuine choice.
You could have worked legitimately for the Esposito Group, away from the danger and greed of the shadowed world, but you demanded entry into it. You demanded it.”
The solitary tear that fell down her cheek only fed his enmity.
“You were born innocent, but you sold your soul to the same devil who ruled your father and you demanded entry into the world that was built on the blood of the woman who died when you were taking your first breath.” Closing the gap between them, he brought his face down to hers and, with quiet savagery, said, “I never saw your soul, Siena. You sold it before I could save it. Now get out of my home.”
* * *
Siena sat on the small balcony of her room, watching the sun rise over Naples. The early morning air was warm, but she hugged herself closely for protection against the chill that was in her heart.
How could the sun still rise, she wondered despairingly. How could the skyline remain unchanged? Her whole world had collapsed, and yet the world itself continued to turn, uncaring.
She’d not slept for two days. Not a wink of it.
Hadn’t left the apartment since she’d moved into it in the dead of night.
The only person she’d spoken to had been her cousin Francesca, to give her a brief rundown on what had happened and warn her that Siena’s apartment, which she’d given Francesca a key to, no longer belonged to her.
Her sweet, loving cousin, who’d never been as na?ve as they’d all assumed, had sprung into action. Within minutes, Siena had been sent an address to go to. An apartment in Naples owned by Francesca’s fiancé, Gino. Siena could stay there for as long as she wanted.