Chapter 6 #2
As if she could read his thoughts, the glimmer of humour left her voice. “Nic, please believe I always intended to tell you about the baby, but I was scared about the repercussions of telling you before you married Siena. I didn’t know how you’d react or what you’d do.”
He pressed his mouth tightly into her precious hair. Niccolo never believed he could hate anyone more than he hated his father and Lorenzo Esposito, but the hatred he felt for himself in that moment burned like sulphur through his veins. “I do believe you,” he dragged out heavily.
She tightened her hold around him. “I’m sorry for lying to you about Callie.”
“If anyone needs to apologise, it’s me. You were trying to protect me, whereas I…” He inhaled the scent of her hair. “Believe me, I would never have jilted Siena if I’d known they’d come for you in retaliation. I will never forgive myself for the danger I’ve put you in.”
The danger he’d put Georgia and their unborn child in.
“I swear, I will not let anything happen to you or our baby. I swear.”
He would do whatever it took to protect them.
He could only pray that he, too, would get through whatever was coming for them and live long enough to meet their child.
“Is your friend a health freak?” Georgia asked an hour later as she placed bowls of risotto on the kitchen table Niccolo had laid.
It was the only thing she’d allowed him to help with.
He was in pain – although his pain threshold was much, much higher than other mortals; a gazillion times higher than her own – and needed to rest and let the painkillers he’d finally taken get to work.
“Somewhat,” he answered from the seat he’d taken at the head of the table. “Why?”
“He has no ice cream. I’ve looked everywhere, but nothing.”
Niccolo’s expression of mock-horror at this made her smile. His, “I will have to reconsider our friendship,” made her laugh. Only a little, but it felt good. Needed. Whipping up the mushroom and pine nut risotto had felt good, too. Normal.
But there was absolutely nothing normal about their situation.
Georgia had whipped up the risotto after re-dressing his wound.
She’d been terrified of finding signs of infection, but, mercifully, the skin around the wound had been healthy.
It frightened her to think that nothing would ever be normal for her again.
She still couldn’t get her head around what had happened on this kitchen table just a short while ago. Not the sex itself, but how emotional it had all become. Watching Niccolo’s fury dissolve into…
No. She must not read too deeply into what they’d shared. Their relationship had always been hugely physical, the chemistry between them strong enough to taste.
It had been inevitable, given the situation and their confines, that they would become lovers again. This was a highly pressured and fraught time for them both, certainly not normal. Throw a pregnancy into the mix and emotions ran even higher.
Pretending to herself that she’d seen love in Niccolo’s eyes was a pretence that would only hurt her in the long run… if there even was a long run.
Niccolo could never love her the way she loved him.
What she’d thought was a relationship had, for him, been an affair.
The closeness they’d shared… She’d thought it was special.
Meaningful. If she’d had lovers before him, she’d have had something to compare their relationship to, but he’d been her first and only.
Worse, she hadn’t understood just how different their worlds were, and she didn’t mean the fact that she was English and he was Italian.
Niccolo was from a world of glamour and money, a world where taking a mistress was considered normal, even by the wives. Georgia’s world was just ordinary.
If she’d understood those differences before they’d become lovers, had understood exactly what she was walking into, would they even have become lovers?
It was a question for which she wished she could say a resounding no, but she’d been besotted with Niccolo from the moment he’d taken her hand and she’d stared into those beautiful dark chocolate eyes.
That he was here and not spending his millions in safety on some Caribbean island was a testament to his feelings for her.
He did care for her, deeply, and maybe in his own way, he was in love with her, but it was not the kind of love that she could live with.
She could live only with exclusive, faithful, monogamous love. One man and one woman.
Here and now, though, none of that mattered. The here and now might be all they had left.
She took her seat angled to the right side of him, and wondered if there was anything more normal than sitting down for a meal.
“This is good,” he said appreciatively after trying a large forkful of the risotto.
“Thank you.” Niccolo, she knew, had never cooked a meal in his life. Born into riches, he’d turned a family trust fund he’d inherited at the age of twenty-one into his own fortune. But even thinking about his wealth made her think about the Espositos.
Niccolo was rich by anyone’s standards. The Espositos’ wealth was on another planet.
“Why did Lorenzo approach you about The Diamond venture?” she asked once she’d eaten a few mouthfuls.
“I mean, how did it all come about? How did you even know him?” When he’d told her about the blackmail and the kind of man Lorenzo Esposito was, she’d been reeling too hard to even consider any of this.
He had a long drink of his water before answering. “I visited one of Rico’s casinos with a group of friends. Rico’s his youngest son. Lorenzo happened to be visiting that night.”
Something in his tone made her look closely at him. “Happened to be visiting? You think he was there deliberately?”
His smile at this was tight. “The Espositos’ casinos are more than casinos. My assistant booked a table for us in one of the private dining rooms there, so yes, he knew. The booking was under my name.”
His stare locked in the past, he ate some more before his eyes fell back on her.
“We had our meal and then hit the casino. Lorenzo introduced himself while I was playing blackjack. He insisted on buying me a drink.” He grimaced.
“It would have been rude to refuse, and besides…” He raised a shoulder.
“I didn’t want to refuse. There’s a reason Lorenzo Esposito was so popular amongst my compatriots and the bookies’ favourite to be our next prime minister – the man had charm.
Real charm. He was good company. We struck up a friendship. ”
“Did you know about the old mafia rumours and all the bad stuff he’d done?”
“Yes.” He slid a heaped forkful of risotto into his mouth and continued gazing at her as he chewed.
After he’d swallowed, he said, “It was a friendship I was happy for him to cultivate as I knew it would piss my father off.” Something dark flashed in his eyes.
“My father and all his high-society friends considered the Espositos to be the scum of the earth. They didn’t care how much wealth or power Lorenzo had created for his family, and they wouldn’t have cared if it had been gained by legitimate means rather than through drugs and arms. My parents and their friends all come from old money. ”
“I remember you saying they were snobs.” Georgia thought again about the night they’d discussed their parents.
Niccolo’s contribution had been short, but the brevity had been enough for her to understand that his relationship with his parents was worse than Georgia and Callie’s relationship with their own neglectful ones, who’d emigrated to France the moment the girls had completed their secondary education without inviting them to move with them.
Niccolo had seen his parents only a handful of times in a decade.
“They believe themselves to be above everyone else. They struggle to accept that our monarchy was abolished nearly a century ago and that their titles mean nothing.” He forked the last of his risotto into his mouth and pushed the empty bowl aside.
When he met her stare again, his dark eyes had hardened. “My father is a nasty, violent, shit. When I was growing up, he used me as his punching bag. He beat me black and blue, and my mother enabled it. I despise them both and everything they stand for.”
Physically blanching, Georgia’s mind set off like a Catherine Wheel as pieces of the Niccolo puzzle she hadn’t even realised was a puzzle knitted together.
His fierce, long-standing independence. His loathing of his parents.
The numerous scars on his body. His superhuman pain threshold. His nonchalance about concussion…
“The scar above your eyebrow?” she whispered. A scar so old it was a faint silver line only visible under bright light. “Your father did that?”
He inclined his head tightly.
Her gaze dipped to another, much longer, silvery scar on his arm.
He inclined his head again at her unspoken question.
All the food she’d just consumed churned in her stomach.
Niccolo hadn’t been an accident-prone child as she’d assumed. It was all his father.
Georgia’s parents would never win any parenting award, but they’d never laid a finger on either of their daughters. Never even threatened it. Not once in her life had she feared violence.
To imagine Niccolo as a child, living with that level of brutality…
She thought she might be sick.
The hardness in his eyes and tightness of his jaw softened, and he reached for her hand. “It’s in the past, carina. My father hasn’t touched me since I was fourteen.”
“But why…?” She was close to tears. “How could he do that to you, to his own son?”