Chapter Eighteen
Vincenzo
I LEAVE THE villa an hour later, heading over the lawn to the helicopter. I have business in Naples and I’m more than ready to forget what just happened between Caterina and I, lose myself in the day-to-day operation of my business.
The meetings I attend run all day and into the evening, ending only at midnight. But I’m too restless to fly back to the villa, not to mention too angry.
The volcanic fury sitting inside me is no one’s responsibility but mine, and I need to get a handle on it somehow. After all, people tend to die when I get angry.
So, at three in the morning, I’m sitting in a rooftop bar, drinking vodka, watching the lights of the city spread out beneath me.
The associates I was meeting with, and who’ve been drinking with me, have all left, mainly with women, and there’s another woman beside me.
She’s almost in my lap and has making noises about going somewhere more ‘comfortable’, but I’m half-drunk and only half listening, because I can’t stop thinking about Caterina.
The ring box is still in my pocket, my empty threat about giving the rings to Annika echoing in my ears. I was never going to give them to Annika. Those were bought for Caterina and Caterina alone. I only said that to her because I was furious and I wasn’t sure why.
She told you you sounded like your father.
Fuck. That’s true. I was already disappointed because she didn’t want the rings or me, that she only wanted her so-called freedom, so that comment only kicked my rage into high gear.
I’d built my life these last twenty years on not being him, never ever.
So to tell me that I sounded just like him was… A red rag to a bull.
But that’s not all she did.
I grit my teeth, not wanting to remember the look in her eyes after I told her that I’d shot Stefano. The look of pity that glowed there and her saying sorry that there hadn’t been another way for me, as if she’d been concerned about me. About the effect killing my own father had on me.
She was right to be concerned. You’re a monster.
My jaw aches and I down the glass of vodka in my hand. The liquid is ice-cold and it burns on the way down, but it does nothing to ease the leaden weight in my gut.
She’s right to be concerned, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.
My hands are so red it doesn’t matter whose blood is whose, and I accepted that as my role the day I picked up the gun and shot him with it.
What’s done is done. There are no second chances, no shots at redemption, and there are none for her either.
Why not though? Why not give her the freedom she wants?
She’s right, it would be simple, but I can’t do it. I won’t. She wouldn’t be safe no matter how many new identities she has, and that’s not even considering the fact that she might be pregnant.
The wolf growls a protective warning at the thought of children, and the man is in agreement. My child, out in the world and unprotected is a possibility I can’t even think about. Just as I can’t think of bringing up any child of mine without their mother, because I know just how painful that is.
So no, she’s going nowhere. She’s staying at my side and I will consider all the ways and means to give her as much freedom as I can, but that’s as far as I’ll go.
And I’ll make sure that what she said about her own father, about looking into his eyes and seeing only anger and resentment, will never happen to our child. I won’t let it.
The woman next to me slides a hand up my thigh and leans in to whisper in my ear, promising me all kinds of naughty things. But both her hand and her voice leave me cold. I know the woman I really want and she’s not here.
Perhaps I won’t stay in Naples after all. Perhaps I’ll fly back to the villa. There are many ways I can convince my wife that’s she’s better off with me. No one else can give her what I can. No one.
Gently but firmly, I take the woman’s hand off my thigh. I tell her she’s beautiful, but I’m married and I will not be taking her to bed. She pouts a little, then leaves to find another, more receptive man.
I exit the bar, slightly amazed at myself for refusing what she was offering on the grounds that I’m married. Which I am, of course, but I never anticipated that I’d actually be faithful to the wife I kidnapped. And I am.
I don’t want another woman, I realise. I don’t want anyone else but the woman I married. My Caterina. Now, at the thought of her and the pleasure we shared, my body is waking despite how tired and half-drunk I am. It never woke for that other woman. Not even a flicker.
I organise the helicopter and soon I’m flying through the dark night back to Sicily.
I land just as dawn is breaking. I debate the merits of taking some time to sleep before seeing her, but I can’t wait, so I proceed up the stairs to my bedroom—our bedroom—to wake her. But she isn’t there.
Discomforted and unreasonably annoyed by her absence, I cross the hallway to her room and push open the door. But she’s not there either.
A flicker of alarm goes through me. Where is she? Has she managed to escape somehow? But that’s impossible. My security is second-to-none and they would have informed me if she’d somehow left.
I go downstairs and ask one of my guards where my wife is, only to have him inform me that she woke early and wanted to go for a walk on the beach at the base of the cliffs. No, she is not alone. Yes, she has eyes on her.
The relief that sweeps through me is impossible to deny, yet I have no time to think about why that is. Instead, I go quickly to the stone path that zigzags down the steep cliffs to the beach.
It’s where I used to walk with my mother, barefoot in the silky golden sand with the waves crashing on the shore. Back before I become the wolf and she became a husk of a woman. Before my father beat the both of us into the shapes he wanted us to be. Me, his perfect heir. Her, his perfect wife.
There are guards at the base of the path and I nod my approval as I go past them.
I can see her now, dressed in some kind of billowy, white nightgown that the wind catches, walking slowly along the sand, her back to me.
She has her arms wrapped around herself, though the wind isn’t cold, and I watch as she pauses and turns to face the sea.
She looks so like my mother, the way she’s standing and gazing out at the ocean like a desert island survivor looks for rescue. It sends a spear of ice right through me.
You know what you’re doing to her, don’t you?
I stop dead in the sand as the realisation comes to me. An unwelcome realisation. Because of course I know what I’m doing to her.
If she’s standing here on the beach, looking for rescue just like my mother, then I am my father, keeping her here. I am my father, accepting the parts of her that I like and rejecting the rest. Her need for freedom, her need to have a normal life, her need to feel safe.
I want her passion, her fire and her anger, yet I also want her to obey me, to stay here at my side, to accept the fact that I’m the head of the family and I decide what happens, not her.
The spear of ice twists inside me and a burst of pain radiates out through my chest, squeezing my heart.
It happened gradually to my mother. Stefano slowly crushed the life out of her with his insistence that she never argue with him. He was the head of the family and as his wife she had to obey, and even though he never hit her, his constant belittlements and criticisms took their toll.
Her failure to give him more children incensed him and so he exiled her here to the villa, making her stay so the doctors could examine her and give her special diets, and on occasion sedate her to keep her ‘calm’. All so she could conceive.
He didn’t stay with her. He kept her like a princess in a tower, his brood mare that he would visit every week to encourage a conception.
She loathed being a prisoner. That’s why she and I would walk along the beach every day. As a child I’d thought nothing of it since she’d make each walk an adventure, but in retrospect I knew that she paced the beach like a tiger pacing around the bars of a cage.
Until my father decided that she should join him in Rome for some big family meeting and the car she was in exploded. I was devastated when I learned she’d died. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if in that moment of death she felt finally free.
You cannot do that to Caterina.
The world slows and stops as I stare at the tall, slender figure of my wife, standing and looking out to sea. The wind blows her black hair around her face and makes her nightgown billow around her calves, and the spear of ice in my chest begins to melt, filling my veins with ice water.
I try to ignore it, pushing the thoughts away as I make myself continue on to where she stands. She must have seen my approach but she doesn’t turn, her attention still on the distant horizon.
Dawn is flaming, the sun rising from the sea, red and pink shading the dense dark blue of the sky. Another beautiful sunrise, but all she is looking at are the bars of her cage, isn’t she?
‘My mother and I used to walk along this beach,’ I say after a moment.
‘We would look for shells and sea glass and pretty stones. Sometimes I’d pretend to be a pirate, and I’d kidnap her in my pirate ship, but then we’d become friends.
She’d draw maps in the sand and tell me about all the places we’d sail to, and have adventures there. ’
The waves lap against the sand. The tide is coming in. If she’s not careful, my wife will get her feet wet, yet she doesn’t seem to notice.
‘That sounds idyllic,’ she says, still looking out over the sea.
‘It was.’ I pause a moment. ‘Until I realised that my mother was trapped here and she came to the beach to feel free.’
Slowly, Caterina turns to me, her hair blowing around her face. Her green eyes are shadowed, and there are dark circles under them. ‘Why was your mother trapped here?’
I push my hands into my pockets. ‘My father wanted more children and decided that she needed to stay here being looked after by doctors and having her diet monitored. She’d be sedated sometimes too. He thought that would make it more likely for her to conceive. He used to visit her once a week.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘Yes.’ I meet her gaze. ‘She couldn’t leave and nothing she did or said could make my father change his mind.
She had three miscarriages and after that, fell into a deep depression.
After five years of being trapped here, my father eventually brought her to a family meeting in Rome and that’s when she was killed by the car bomb. ’
There are flickers of pity and horror in Caterina’s eyes, and no wonder. Not considering her own position here and the similarities between my mother and herself.
‘Is that how you’re going to treat me?’ she asks bluntly.
I’m expecting the question, so I don’t hesitate. ‘No. Of course not. I would never do that to you.’
‘And yet that’s what you’re doing. I’m trapped here. You won’t even consider giving me my freedom.’
You know she’s right.
I know she is, I know. Yet I can’t accept her leaving me. ‘You’re not trapped here, gattina,’ I remind her and myself. ‘You can leave. With the appropriate security, naturally. You’re not a prisoner.’
She turns fully to face me now, her arms still wrapped around herself. I can see goose bumps rising on her skin, so I slip my jacket off and move over to her, putting it around her shoulders.
She doesn’t resist, looking up at me. ‘I’m just an object to you, aren’t I? Just a thing. A wife at your side, a sex toy in your bed and an incubator for your children.’
She’s so direct, so blunt, but she’s wrong.
‘No,’ I say, suddenly fierce. ‘That’s not how I think of you.
’ Her jaw is tight, her body stiff with anger, but I reach for her, pulling her against me.
She’s so warm and despite my tiredness, my cock is hard and getting harder.
I grip her hips firmly, feeling the softness and heat of her skin beneath her thin nightgown.
The fabric is slightly transparent and I can see the pink of her nipples through it, and I feel suddenly feral at the thought of all my guards being able to see them too.
‘What you want matters,’ I say to her, meaning every word.
‘I can work it so that our life will be as normal as possible, I promise. You’ll never be a prisoner here.
If you like, I can find you an apartment anywhere in the world that can be yours and yours alone. And you can visit it anytime you want.’
Her body is still stiff with resistance, her features set, so I lift my hands from her hips and cup her face between my palms. Emotions move through her green eyes, fury, pain, sadness.
They are precious, these emotions of hers, and I want to ease her.
Soothe her in any way I can, which is unlike me.
‘I can make it easy for you,’ I murmur, bending to her mouth and pressing a soft kiss there. ‘I can make it so you’ll be freer than you’ve ever felt in your life.’ Another kiss. ‘There are no bars on this cage, gattina.’ Another kiss to her jaw. ‘There is no cage at all.’