Chapter Seven #2
Micha gestured for him to follow as he turned away from the family gathering over breakfast and towards one of the old barns on the property. The moment they were out of sight of the family, Antonio gripped Micha by the shirt and pushed him up against a building.
The only thing that stopped this from going further was the fact that Micha wasn’t fighting back. Not even pushing. No, instead, the bastard was laughing.
‘ Calmati , Antonio. Seriously. What’s got into you?’
It was a damn good question. Antonio released his grip, stepping back in disgust, whether for himself or for Micha he didn’t know.
‘Tell me how you know her,’ he ordered.
‘What makes you think—?’
‘I saw you both talking. That wasn’t a “hi, nice to meet you” conversation.’
Micha looked at him, assessing, debating.
‘Just spit it out.’
‘Okay,’ Micha said, arms raised in surrender. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’
Antonio’s stomach turned. If Ivy was like everyone else, if she had somehow used him…
betrayed him… Then, yes. He needed to know.
For himself. For his sanity. When had she become so important to him, enough to make him so reckless as to physically assault someone?
He couldn’t say. But the idea that she had wanted to use him—
‘Whatever it is you’re thinking, you’re wrong,’ Micha said, dusting his hands off each other. He looked out into the distance and pulled loose the tie at his throat. Then he shook his head. ‘Gio asked me to find her.’
‘When?’ The question shot out of him.
‘Last year.’
‘What? Why?’ Antonio demanded.
‘He wanted to pay her off to divorce you.’
‘What?’
Shock nearly buckled his knees. His mouth fell open with a thousand questions, but nothing came out.
Micha squinted in the morning sun. ‘Gio knew he wasn’t well and he was desperate. He wanted to see you married to Maria. He wanted that damn company to stay in the family and was willing to do whatever it took.’
‘Including paying Ivy off?’ he said. ‘Is that why she’s here? Is she going to collect money from the will or something?’
‘What?’ Micha asked, confused. ‘ Imbecille . She said no,’ he announced, pulling the sleeves of his shirt down by his cuffs.
‘She said no.’
‘Antonio, how is it that you have a multinational corporation, when all you do is parrot what I say?’ Micha demanded as if he were thick. ‘She said no, I left, that’s it.’
‘How much was she offered?’ Antonio asked, his eyes closed, as if that would somehow soften the blow of his monumental misjudgement of her.
‘Half a million.’
Breath shot out of his lungs. He’d only given her half that much to marry him in the first place.
‘She said no?’ Antonio repeated. ‘Why?’ he asked incredulously.
‘You will have to ask your wife,’ Micha said disdainfully.
‘Half a million,’ Antonio repeated, stunned, opening his eyes to find Micha looking at him accusatorily.
‘Yes. Half a million. And I know how much you paid her, don’t think I don’t.
I also know what she could have done with that money too,’ Micha warned, and Antonio was struck by the sense that Micha Rufina knew more about his wife than he had seven days ago.
‘I’d not really thought you were a bastard, until then,’ Micha said, shocking Antonio with the vehemence in his tone.
‘She deserves better than you. And one day I hope she finds it.’
With that parting shot, Micha left Antonio reeling.
Something was different about Antonio when he came to find her later that morning.
‘We’re leaving,’ he announced in a clipped tone.
She looked up at him, immediately worried. ‘Has something happened?’
‘No.’
‘Did I do something wrong?’ she asked in a whisper, aware of the attention his behaviour was drawing.
He simply stared at her, his expression heated but unreadable.
‘What about the assessment?’ she asked as he led her away from the courtyard where the little group of children she’d been playing with were waving after her. ‘Do we need proof that I was here?’
‘There’ll be photographs. We have done as was asked. We can now truthfully say that you have met my family. You certainly seem to have made an impression,’ he said, opening the passenger door of his car for her with more force than was strictly necessary.
‘Antonio—’
‘Not here. They are still looking,’ Antonio said of his family, some of whom she saw pretending not to stare when she cast her gaze back to them.
It nearly gave her a headache, having to spin the threads of lies into a rug thick enough to stand on.
She didn’t know how Antonio and Maria had grown up like this.
Micha too. Ivy wasn’t quite sure how he’d fitted into their childhood—clearly, at some point there was a severed connection.
And she couldn’t help but think that Gio Gallo was the hand that had wielded that knife too.
And not for the first time, she found herself thinking uncharitably of the man whose hand reached beyond the grave and into the present to achieve his own ends.
Yes, she understood wanting to protect family—after all, she was here precisely because she had wanted to help Jamie.
But at some point people had to live their own lives.
Did you?
The question caught her by surprise. Had she lived her own life? Losing her sight and her flat after the accident had thrown her off her path. But now? What did she want for her life now?
Antonio manoeuvred the car down the gravel drive, away from his mother, who had come to stand at the front door to bid them farewell, the same unreadable expression on the older woman’s gaze as worn by her son. They might not be blood, but their bond was irrefutable.
‘I believe he needs more.’
Her words echoed in Ivy’s mind on a loop.
She felt the same way, but she just didn’t know what it would take for him to feel that way too.
And right now? Tension coiled like a rope through the body of the man beside her, the sleeves rolled up on his forearms revealing the power he used each time he changed gear.
‘Antonio—’ she tried, but he cut her off before she could finish.
‘I need to concentrate on the drive,’ he announced through his teeth, and she wondered what demons he was battling.
It was an uncomfortable forty-minute drive back to the villa.
She didn’t want to have done something wrong, she realised.
She didn’t want to disappoint him. The hostility she’d felt directed towards him from some members of his family was horrible and unjust, whether it was because he was adopted or just because he stood to inherit half a business that they wanted to get their hands on themselves.
He might have been watching out for her throughout the visit with his family, but she’d been paying him just as much attention. She’d seen the way he’d been with Maria and his mother. She’d seen the way he’d been easy with those he’d got on with, and polite even with those who he hadn’t.
She liked him. Admired him—how he handled himself. She might not agree with how he went about things—she still wasn’t sure that using marriage as if it was part of some business deal was okay. But she understood why he was doing it now. Understood what Maria meant to him.
But understanding Antonio and what made him tick was a double-edged sword, deepening her already risky feelings for him while at the very same time making it heartbreakingly clear that he would never feel the same way about her.
Because his bond with the people he had chosen to be loyal to, his mother, Maria— his family —the very thing that she admired most about him, would always come before her.
When the car finally pulled up at the villa, the winding drive strangely familiar and welcome, Antonio turned off the engine and neither of them moved.
They sat in silence as the car engine ticked.
But while the car cooled, the tension in the air between them heated.
Not like the heat from last night, but a different kind of heat.
Angry, restless, but unsure and dangerous.
Ivy got out of the car first, heart bruised already, and was halfway towards the villa when she heard Antonio’s car door open.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Micha?’ she heard him ask from over her shoulder.
Breath shuddered in her lungs and she dropped her head. She huffed out a small laugh.
Why hadn’t she told him that Gio had tried to buy her off?
She wasn’t sure he’d actually believe her if she told him that it was because she hadn’t wanted to hurt him. That she had been keeping her vow to protect him. Because she knew. She knew that you could cut ties and still be hurt by the people who should have loved you the most.
And no matter what she’d felt waiting in that hospital room, hoping against all hope that he might come for her. No matter what she’d felt then, Antonio had never deserved what Gio Gallo had tried to do.
She turned and took in the sight of him. Halfway out of the car, his arm braced across the top of the door, his sunglasses hiding his gaze from her view, he was even more unreadable than usual. But she saw it. The tic in his jaw, the tension. The hurt.
‘I didn’t want to make things worse between you and your grandfather,’ she admitted.
He took off his sunglasses and a part of her wished he hadn’t.
Confusion, hurt and frustration were quickly masked, as if the strength of his feelings was finally enough to make cracks in his usually unbreakable mask.
The grip he had on the top of the car door was white-knuckled and she wanted to go to him.
But she couldn’t move. Not if she had any dignity left. Because if she did go to him, she might actually beg, plead with him to lift that mask. To let her see the real Antonio beneath it, because the glimpses she was beginning to see here and there were enough for her to half fall in love with him.
‘What did Micha say? When he approached you.’
‘Why do you need to know?’ she asked.
‘I just do,’ he demanded belligerently.