CHAPTER TEN
THEISLANDSEBASTIANO flew them to for their honeymoon was everything Layla had anticipated.
Entirely private, the golden beach lapped at their villa’s flowering front lawn. The skeleton staff was even more skeleton than she’d imagined, a husband-and-wife team who lived in a small cottage at the rear of the grounds and who only came to the villa when they were called for.
The honeymoon clothes that had been brought ahead for her were exactly as she’d imagined, mostly consisting of string bikinis and scraps of lace that called itself lingerie. She didn’t bother with any of it, preferring to drive Sebastiano insane by wearing various skimpy, strappy little summer dresses and absolutely nothing underneath. If she wanted to swim or sunbathe, she simply threw it off and paraded around naked.
It was the most liberating feeling in the world, almost as liberating as having sex whenever and wherever she wanted. Or whenever or wherever Sebastiano wanted.
After four days, there wasn’t an item of furniture in the whole villa they hadn’t had sex on or against. She could no longer walk into the kitchen without her pelvis throbbing to remember how she’d been pouring herself a glass of water when he’d sneaked up behind her and bent her over the work surface. She could no longer walk past the swimming pool without seeing the sun longue he’d been laid back on, dozing, when she’d woken him by taking him in her mouth.
Sometimes it shocked her, how she had absolutely no inhibitions with Sebastiano. None at all. It didn’t matter how many times she climaxed. Still she wanted more. And more. And more.
More of him. Constantly.
She was self-aware enough to know that constant lovemaking meant she didn’t have to think too deeply about anything other than making love. It didn’t change that here on this beautiful, dreamily romantic island, she was little more than a receptacle for pleasure, that her insides turned to fire just to look at him.
Wasn’t all this what she’d told herself the day she’d made her vows? That their marriage only had to be a nightmare if she chose to make it so? That Sebastiano could only hurt her again if she let him? Hadn’t they both agreed that they didn’t want their marriage to be a war?
And so she’d chosen to push aside the wrench in her heart at his denial of paternity and concentrate on the one thing that was always good between them. After all, she’d made those vows without any illusions, and in a way he had a point, that she should be happy her baby would have the security she’d always craved.
When they parted ways, Sebastiano would already have the proof of paternity he insisted on and her child would have what she’d never had. Financial security and a father.
And just in case he did renege on it and found a way to overturn their prenup, she had the suburban house to fall back on.
Until they parted ways, or overdosed on lovemaking, whichever came first, she had a lover, which was what she was training herself to see him as. Her lover.
If she kept thinking of him as her husband then she risked the danger of believing it.
Sebastiano kept expecting to wake from the dream he’d fallen into. He’d always had a high sex drive but this was something else. Five days of pure hedonism and now he was being ridden by Layla on the outside dining chair, her breast in his mouth and her hair covering them both like a sheet. The sun was setting over the sea, the sky a dark orange, the heady perfume of flowers in the air around them but losing to the sultry fragrance and taste of Layla.
He could not get enough of her. If sex was an addiction then he was rapidly becoming addicted to having sex with her. He probably already was addicted.
Who knew, he wondered, dazed after yet another powerful climax, that it was possible to become addicted to sex with your own wife?
He was still inside her when she kissed him and murmured, ‘Shower, my lover?’
He laughed gruffly, thinking of the untouched plates on the table beside them. ‘Food, then shower?’
She blinked as if she’d forgotten all about the meal they’d been about to share then brightened. ‘Oh, yes! Food.’ One last kiss and she climbed off him.
It was as she scooped her discarded dress off the patio tiles and pulled it over her head that he saw it. The slight bump of her belly.
When had that appeared? And had her breasts grown...?
‘What’s wrong?’
He met the questioning forget-me-nots and shook his head. ‘Nothing. Just thinking how beautiful you are.’
She blushed and smiled and retook the rattan seat she’d been on before she’d pounced on him. Helping herself to a chip, she chewed on it then jumped back to her feet. ‘Music?’
Pulling his shorts up, he laughed and reached for a chip of his own. Layla was never happier than when music was playing...apart from when making love, that was. His addiction to having sex with Layla was completely mutual. ‘Sure.’
But, sitting back down and watching her fiddle with her phone to connect her playlist with the villa’s outdoor speakers, he found his gaze drawn again to her stomach and breasts. His thudding heart felt colder than the chip that had stuck in his throat. Even though her short dress was floaty, he could see the delineation of a stomach that had seemingly swollen over the space of an hour. For the first time, he could see that she was pregnant.
Jazz music piped out. He dragged his stare away from her stomach to her face.
She tapped his nose and grinned. ‘Got you.’
A moment later a band they both like replaced it and she sat back down. After she’d piled her plate with salad and a handful more of the cold chips, her forehead creased with concern. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’
What could he tell her? That her pregnancy was showing and his heart had turned cold for it?
Hadit turned cold? Or had that just been his chest? Was there a difference?
He wished he could erase the cynicism that stopped him from believing in anything that wasn’t tangible and verifiable. When his mind refused to see Layla with another man was it because his current addiction to her had made her so entirely his or because he wanted to believe the baby could be his too much?
And that was where the danger lay. How could he believe? He’d thought about that night so many times and there was not a single moment when he’d been careless.
But why would she lie? What was there to gain by it when she already had the money, he’d paid Laurence the money for the firm and she’d been promised a minimum of a further fifty million? She could walk away now and he’d be obliged to give it to her.
She had no need to lie. Not now.
So why couldn’t he make the leap of faith in either his head or his heart?
He opened his mouth to assure her again that nothing was wrong, then changed his mind before the words formed, instead asking, ‘How did you become so good at acting?’
The crease in her forehead became one of confusion.
‘You’re one person one minute and someone else the next. You can turn it on like a tap.’
‘But you do the same,’ she protested, clearly taken aback. ‘Everyone does. How we are together... When we’re alone you’re almost a different man from how you are in your professional life.’
‘I get your point but my professional persona and who I am when it’s just you and me, they are still just me. I cannot assimilate into being someone else like you can. I knew you for two years and you gave no hint that you were anything more than a bar tender.’
‘You never asked.’
‘I appreciate that, but you never showed a side of yourself that would make me question that there was more to you than what you were showing.’
‘I was being what you wanted from a bar tender.’
‘And that is my point. You are a chameleon. I can only be different versions of myself but you can assimilate into being whoever you want or whatever you think someone wants you to be. You have slotted into my life and family as if you were born into Sicilian society—’
‘But that’s what you wanted me to do! It’s partly why you made me marry you!’
He took a deep breath to keep his tone calm. ‘I’m not denying that but I want to understand how you do it. I want to understand where it comes from. I want to understand you, Layla.’
She gave a helpless shrug. ‘I don’t know where it comes from. It’s not something I think about.’
‘What is it then? Some kind of super power?’ He was only half joking. Sebastiano had met plenty of actors and actresses in his time, many of them award winning. If Layla was on a stage with them she would act them off it.
Shoving her chair back a little, she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around her calves. ‘I honestly don’t know.’ A short shake of her head. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’
‘Try this then—when can you first remember doing it?’
Clearly upset, she sucked her cheeks in and grazed her bottom lip. ‘Primary school,’ she eventually replied. ‘I realised very quickly that I was different from the other children, and I didn’t want to be different.’
‘What made you different from them?’
‘What do you think?’ She shook her head. ‘I was the only one without a father.’
‘There must have been other children growing up in single-parent homes.’
‘Yes, but I was the only one who had literally never met the other parent. I can remember, very distinctly, realising that I was the only child in my class who didn’t know their father, and begging my mum to let me meet him. I thought she could magic him up for me.’ Her lips pulled in and she swallowed. ‘Looking back, I can only imagine how hard it must have been for her to tell me the truth—my father left before I was born and they made an agreement that I would always live with my mum and he would not be part of our lives.
‘I was too young to understand. Even my friends who didn’t live with their dads still saw them, so I begged and begged and begged her to let me meet him. I would not let the subject drop and in the end she agreed to reach out and ask him. I was so excited, utterly convinced he was waiting for the right moment to swing into my life.’ She turned her face away and gathered her hair together, twisting it into a knot that held itself together without any means of support.
When she next spoke, all the musicality in her voice had gone. ‘She got the reply on a Saturday. I only remember that because I was watching cartoons in my pyjamas. I was young enough to find post being delivered incredibly exciting and so I grabbed the envelope and gave it to her and...’ He heard her swallow before she continued in the same monotone. ‘When she’d read it, she picked me up and carried me into the living room and sat me on her lap and wrapped her arms tightly around me and told me that she was very sorry but that he’d said no.’
Although Sebastiano knew she’d never met her father and so had known the outcome, he still flinched. ‘How old were you?’
‘Five.’ Her shoulders hunched up and she whispered, ‘So I think that’s what made me become the chameleon you think I am.’
‘You were looking for love?’ he asked into the silence.
Her gaze flickered back to him, surprise ringing from it. ‘My mother loved me enough for two parents. She practically smothered me in it. It was rejection I became frightened of. My father didn’t abandon me like you said, Sebastiano—he abandoned my mum. Me, he rejected. He rejected me before I was born and he rejected me when I was old enough to want to know him, and...’ Her shoulders rose. ‘It hurt. Really hurt. If I hadn’t had my mum constantly telling me that it wasn’t my fault, that it was all him, then God knows what I’d have become, but, even with the security of her love, I couldn’t shake the fear that there was something inherently wrong with me and so I became adept at being all things to all people and being whatever I thought they wanted me to be, anything to stop them having an excuse to reject me.’ A smile suddenly pulled at her cheeks but there was sadness contained in it. ‘I grew out of it eventually. Funnily enough, it was my father who inadvertently gave me the tools to become comfortable in my own skin.’
At his questioning gaze, she explained, ‘The letter he sent to my mum—I found it tucked in a drawer when I was fifteen. I’d always assumed he’d written it but it actually came from his solicitor, and it was a threat telling my mum that if she contacted him again, he would take legal action against her for harassment. I knew straight away that it was an empty threat but I also knew why it would have terrified her. I was old enough by then to understand.
‘My mum’s not academically minded—she left school at sixteen because she struggled so much. My father was a lot older than her but she had no idea he was married. She was crazy about him. As soon as he found out she was pregnant, he ran for the hills. He was rich, not by your standards of course, but rich enough to buy her a small home without his wife’s knowledge and manipulative enough to get Mum to sign a document stating the house was in lieu of all future child support. He signed full custody of me over to her and she never saw him again. She was nineteen.’
Sebastiano could feel a pulse in his jaw throbbing in time to the beats of blood pounding in his head.
His investigation into Layla’s background had brought to light the basics of this but to actually hear it from her and have it explained so starkly...
‘She was nineteen, Sebastiano,’ she repeated. ‘Her parents were deeply religious and they disowned her. She was all alone in the world with a newborn baby. She had a roof over her head but no means to pay the bills for it. She relied on charity to furnish it. My earliest memory is sitting in an office with a picture book while she cleaned around me. She couldn’t afford childcare so she took jobs where I could go with her, and she worked so hard. She worked her fingers to the bone while that bastard lived the high life with his real family, and once I understood the full picture, and once I’d stalked my father on social media—well, I stalked his wife; he doesn’t use it—and saw how he lavished everything on them while letting us suffer, I found my purpose.’
‘The law,’ he supplied as the pieces of the jigsaw that was Layla slotted together.
She nodded. ‘The money you’ve given the firm will do more good than you could imagine. If even just a couple of those who promised donations at the wedding keep their word, we’ll be able to raise much more awareness about what we offer to those who actually need us.’
The pulse in his jaw throbbed even stronger. Years of study and training and Layla earned, by choice, the equivalent of a shop worker’s salary, and all to help those too poor or too uneducated to navigate the legal system for themselves. To compare it with his own job, where he oversaw thousands of people turning up to work each day for the sole reason of making the rich even richer, made his guts clench in the most uncomfortable way. He couldn’t even say he’d followed the path set for him by his parents and the generations of Russos before him out of duty because that would be a lie. He’d embraced his destiny as soon as he’d been old enough to understand what it was.
His bank and its divisions around the world played lip service to charity in a variety of ways but it was all corporate dress-up, a means of gaining social kudos and brownie points.
Layla and her firm didn’t just talk the talk. They walked it in the cheapest shoes they could afford so as to leave more money in the coffers for the clients who needed it.
No one could be that selfless. Angels did not exist any more than miracles did.
Angels certainly did not handcuff people to beds and demand five million pounds from them.
‘Are you going to use the law to make your father pay?’ he asked. That was what he would do if his father had treated him and his mother the way Layla’s father had. He would burn for revenge, and as flames licked in his chest, he understood they were flames burning for the need for vengeance for Layla.
For the second time that evening, surprise rang from the forget-me-nots. ‘And destroy his children...my half-siblings? No way. They’re innocent in all this.’
It wasn’t just the pulse in his jaw throbbing now. All his pulses had joined in. ‘They’re adults.’
‘Adults with families of their own who don’t deserve to have their lives torn apart.’
‘Surely his wife deserves to know?’
‘What, like your real wife will know about the mistresses you’ll take on the side?’
Breathing heavily through the swathe of rancid emotions churning in him, he stared at her. Sometimes he forgot how much Layla had learned by tending his bar at the club in the years where her every movement around him had been a performance. ‘In my world, affairs are conducted discreetly but it is rare that a spouse doesn’t know. It is rare for the spouse not to take a lover of their own.’
Colour suffusing her high cheekbones, her musical voice was tight as she said, ‘You can fill your boots with mistresses to your heart’s content with your future wife but there’s no way I’ll put up with it.’
His own voice equally tight, he put his arms on the table and leaned his face into hers. ‘You agreed to this marriage, Layla. You knew what you were marrying into.’
The flash in her eyes this time was of pure hurt.
Getting to her feet, she said, ‘It was marry you or have you destroy the firm that dedicates itself to helping vulnerable people like my mum, so that was hardly a choice, was it? And that’s the difference between you and me, Sebastiano—you’re happy to destroy innocents whereas I’ve only ever wanted to help them. I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone.’
‘Where are you going?’ he demanded as she headed towards the bifold doors back into the villa.
‘To bed. I’ve developed a headache so feel free to sleep in a guest suite. I’m sure your staff are quite convinced enough already that this marriage is genuine.’