Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Niccolo stopped the car in front of the pedestrian gate that opened into the cemetery.
The mourning crowds had thinned away, respecting the family’s wish that the funeral itself be a private affair.
Which was good for him. It meant that leaving at the end of it all would be easier. That’s if there was an end.
It was time. The beginning of the end.
He turned the engine off and turned to the white-faced woman beside him.
His heart turned over. Any anger at the vitriol she’d thrown at him had dissolved. Not that there had been much anger. None of what she’d said hadn’t been deserved.
“Open the holdall.” After the complete silence of the drive, his voice sounded loud. Her body jerked at the sound.
Her gaze darted to his.
The misery in her eyes made his heart flip over again.
“Open the holdall, Georgia,” he said softly. “And take the gun out.” The small gun Dante had arranged to be placed in the holdall, along with numerous rounds of bullets.
She closed her eyes briefly.
“Keep it in your hand at all times, okay? You need to be alert to any danger.”
She cleared her throat. When she spoke, her husky voice was scratchy. “How will I know if there’s danger?”
He gave a rueful smile, wishing with all his heart that none of this was necessary. “You’ll know. Remind me of the drill for using it.”
Her voice was hardly audible. “Safety catch, aim, fire.”
“Perfect. Remember, there are six bullets loaded in it. If I’m not back in thirty minutes, call me.
If I don’t answer, get a taxi to the hotel and call Dante.
He will send someone for you.” Whether she could get out of Naples and whether that someone could smuggle her into Dante’s castle before the Espositos tracked her down was for the fates to decide.
It was a future he could not allow himself to imagine.
The next thirty minutes would decide both their fates, and he needed to keep a cool head if he was to have any chance of tipping fate to their advantage.
Tears swimming in her eyes, she swallowed and nodded. Then she swallowed again and whispered, “Please be careful.”
“I’ll try, I promise.”
He estimated he had five minutes to get himself into position, but he couldn’t get out of the car with so much left unsaid.
Leaning closer, he gently stroked her cheek. “I’ve always loved you, Georgia.”
Her face scrunched up with pain.
“From the moment you came into my life, you were the best part of my life. The months I spent with you were the happiest I have ever been. Your love for me… I felt it. The words were never said, but I felt it, right here.” He tapped his fist to his heart.
“I’d never been in love before. I barely knew what love was.
My parents never loved me. My brother shows no emotion.
Whatever feelings he has, he keeps them close to his chest – you wouldn’t think he has feelings.
Dante loves me, but that’s a fraternal love, not an affectionate love or a romantic love like your love.
Your love…” He exhaled. “Your love was everything to me.
“When I realised I’d walked into Lorenzo’s blackmail trap, my first thought was you and what it would mean for us.
Even while I dreamed up the plan to make you my mistress and keep you with me for always, I knew deep down that you would never accept, but your pain…
Carina, it was too much for me. I felt it like it was my own pain, and that scared the hell out of me.
I walked away because I couldn’t deal with how deeply my feelings for you ran, but I didn’t know there was no walking away from you and no way out from my feelings because I couldn’t get you out of my head or out of my heart. ”
He blew a long puff of air from his lungs, then refilled them.
“Last week, I watched my cold, emotionless brother fall in love with his wife. I didn’t even recognise what was happening, but it was right there under my nose.
The day before I was supposed to marry Siena, I saw him holding Luisa’s hand, and he looked happy.
Gennaro looked happy. It was a modern-day miracle.
I can’t remember the last time I saw my brother smile, but he was smiling, and he was looking at Luisa as if she was the most precious thing on this whole earth, but as I watched him looking at her, all I could see was your face.
I stood in that church, and all I could picture was you walking down the aisle towards me.
That’s what the final spur for me to escape it all came from – you.
Because Siena wasn’t you. No one else is you, and there has been no one else for me since I left you, and when Rico told me his brothers were coming for you…
I have never known such cold fear and panic. I nearly lost my mind.”
He cupped both her cheeks and rubbed the tip of his nose to hers.
“If anything happened to you, Georgia, that would be it for me. You are my love, my life, my soul, and I’m just sorry that it took me so long to realise it, and more sorry than words can ever say for the pain I’ve put you through.
If I make it out of this, I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you, because you are the love of my life, and there will never be anyone else for me but you. ”
He felt and heard her sob, and then she was making a fist of his shirt.
He kissed her lips gently before pulling away. “It’s time now, carina.”
Tears were pouring down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry for what I said. I…”
He pressed his finger to her lips to stop her from saying anything more. He knew what was in her heart, and that was all that mattered. “I have to go now, so dry your eyes because I will not be able to concentrate if I think you won’t be able to see any danger coming through your tears.”
She sniffed a sad laugh. “Just come back to me, please.”
“I will do my best, I promise, but whatever happens, never forget that I love you.” He kissed her forehead. “Keep the gun in your hand and keep alert.”
She wiped her eyes as he pulled away from her, sniffed even more deeply and gave a brave mock salute. “Yes sir.”
Niccolo’s last image of Georgia before he climbed out of the car was of her tear-stained eyes and the determined jut of her jaw.
Niccolo walked through the gate and took the path through the trees until he reached the cemetery proper. Half-hidden behind a yew tree, he scanned his surroundings.
With a tight breath of relief, he saw the mourners were just stepping out of the mausoleum that marked Lorenzo Esposito’s final resting place.
May he rest in hell.
He fingered the grip of the gun placed face down in the back pocket of his trousers.
He carried it for Georgia’s peace of mind because he did not doubt that the majority of the mourners also carried weapons.
He guessed there were around a hundred of them.
Official mourners that was. Probably close to the same number of weapons, too.
About to step out into the sun and reveal himself, he noticed another figure hiding in the trees, roughly ten meters from where he stood.
He wasn’t the only one to notice. One of the Esposito sons…
he thought Tommaso… was indicating the figure to Rico, and as it dawned on Niccolo that the figure was Marisa, the sister of his brother’s wife and the woman he believed responsible for Rico’s newfound conscience, Rico started walking…
make that staggering… towards her, his expression that of the utmost disbelief.
But there was no time for Niccolo to wonder why Rico should look so disbelieving at Marisa’s appearance. Tommaso and Mattia were heading towards the cars.
Niccolo stepped out into the open.
Unsurprisingly, it was Siena who noticed him first. She’d always been more observant than any of the men in her family gave her credit for. Maybe she would be the one to try and shoot him first. But no, she caught Mattia’s eye and nodded in Niccolo’s direction.
To see Mattia come to such an abrupt stop that Tommaso walked into him was almost comical.
Niccolo lifted his hand in greeting. He even creased his face into a smile.
Georgia couldn’t stop looking at her watch. Exactly ten minutes had passed. She’d known days that had passed more quickly.
Please, God, keep him safe.
Had Niccolo made contact with the Espositos yet?
The first cars had started leaving the cemetery, a convoy of gleaming black limousines filing out that she assumed belonged to Lorenzo’s mourners.
But she shouldn’t assume. For all she knew, Niccolo could have been stuffed into the boot of one of them.
But no. A check of her phone, which was linked to his, showed he was still in the cemetery. At least, his phone was still in the cemetery.
Her mind was a whirl of everything. Of the present and the past. It was all converging. Time ticking slowly, but her head a speeding reel of images of memories.
Twelve minutes had passed.
Please, God, keep him safe.
She’d once dreamed of Niccolo proposing.
That once had lasted all the wonderful months of their relationship, idle daydreams when she was still oblivious to the fact that she was in love with him.
She’d hugged her love close inside herself, a precious secret locked away so tightly she hadn’t even known it herself.
Thirteen minutes.
Please, God, keep him safe.
If anything happened to him…
She hadn’t told him she loved him. Never said the words. Not properly. She’d let him walk away, into the gravest danger, without telling him how she felt. It didn’t matter that he knew it. She should have said it.
Fresh tears welled up. She blinked them away and firmly told herself not to cry.
Why hadn’t she said the words? Niccolo had laid his heart bare for her, and she’d absorbed it without saying anything.