Chapter Eight #2
His relationship with Mia had become increasingly difficult ever since they had left Capri and their once carefree childhoods behind.
He knew part of that distance was his fault.
He’d tried to look out for Mia. She’d been so young and much more vulnerable than him when their lives had been torn apart.
And her passionate nature, her stubborn pride, her generous heart and her foolish lack of caution had left her open to exploitation.
Her blank refusal to accept his financial help had only made matters worse—frustrating him and forcing her to seek employment with men like Trovato, who would exploit their connection.
But something about the way they stood so close together, the wary look in Trovato’s eyes, pricked his memory.
He sealed off the thought and gripped Tallulah’s hand to walk towards them.
Tallulah’s telltale shiver of response to his touch felt strangely vindicating.
Despite the frustrations their fake relationship had caused, he was grateful in that moment to have her by his side, because facing this bastard and his sister alone would somehow be harder.
‘Dario…’ Mia whispered, then left Trovato’s side to rush to them both. ‘Grazie mille, Dario, tu venuto!’ He could see the genuine pleasure to see him in her bright smile and the affection in her eyes as she greeted him.
‘I said I would come,’ he murmured, switching to English.
The unguarded happiness in her expression dimmed.
And he had a sudden recollection of the puppy she’d once brought to Westwick Hall, on one of the rare occasions they’d spent the summer there.
It was the summer he had brought Trovato home with him from boarding school because his friend had had nowhere else to go.
Mia had adored that puppy and been desperate to keep the pet, but their father—when he arrived—had been furious to see the mongrel dog.
Mia had been devastated when their father had the puppy taken from her and returned to the nearby farm where she’d found it.
Of course, Dario was the cause of her sadness today.
But he forced himself not to acknowledge the prickle of guilt.
Sentimentality would not help this situation.
And he had always had Mia’s best interests at heart, unlike their father, who had only ever cared about appearances.
And unlike Trovato, who had shown his true colours by abandoning Dario to his fate after that accident.
Trovato had taken their father’s blood money after the crash and used it to build an empire.
And now he intended to take Dario’s sister from him, too.
To hell with that.
‘This must be your fiancée,’ Mia declared, the too bright smile back as she turned to Tallulah, no doubt desperate to break the tension between Dario and her fiancé.
Reaching out, she grasped Tallulah’s free hand, the warmth in her expression making Tallulah’s blush brighten.
‘It’s so wonderful to meet you, Tallulah.
I read all about your whirlwind affair with my brother this morning in Ragazza magazine.
About how you are the beauty who has tamed the playboy…
This is indeed a feat.’ His sister’s delighted laugh pricked at Dario’s conscience.
He would have mentioned to his sister his marriage was a stunt to gain ownership of their mother’s palazzo, but given she was now firmly under Trovato’s spell, he could no longer trust her.
‘Thank you, I think,’ Tallulah said with an uncomfortable laugh, her surprise at Mia’s enthusiasm visible when she glanced at Dario.
He cleared his throat, determined to ignore that look, which seemed to be questioning why he had not told Mia the truth.
He had explained to his fake bride why he needed this marriage—against his better judgement.
His relationship with his sister, and what he chose to confide in her, was certainly no concern of Tallulah’s.
‘When is your wedding going to be?’ Mia asked, apparently oblivious to the subtext. ‘I hope Sante and I will be able to attend,’ she offered, the olive branch hard to ignore.
But the mention of his ex-friend’s first name—a name he had not used to refer to the man, even in his own head, since that summer—had Dario’s fury and frustration returning.
‘I am not here to discuss my wedding, Mia. But yours. We must speak, alone.’
Mia flinched at his harsh tone, her face falling. He saw the hurt in her eyes, so like their mother’s, but when she spoke, he could also hear steel.
‘If you’ve come here to browbeat me into calling off my wedding to the man I love, Dario,’ his sister said, switching into Italian, he suspected to save Tallulah any more discomfort, ‘you’ve made a wasted journey.’
It occurred to him in that moment that while he’d always felt his sister had the same flaws as their mother, he could see in her stubborn expression she had an emotional strength their mother had lacked.
But right now, he was finding it impossible to appreciate the revelation—because this foolhardy decision was so misguided.
But then Trovato stepped forward and placed that damn possessive hand back on his sister’s shoulder. And it took every ounce of Dario’s control not to punch the bastard.
‘We need to talk, Dario, all three of us,’ he said, also in Italian.
‘Because there are many things I should have told you a long time ago. I let my pride get in the way—I refused to defend myself when you believed the worst of me. But I can see now my silence was as much to blame as your gullibility. I should never have let your father’s lies about me fester between us all these years. ’
Dario’s temper sharpened, the words like a slap. The old anger, that miserable sense of betrayal, of being used and then discarded, had the old pain tearing through his insides.
‘My gullibility?’ he snapped. ‘You left me on the side of the road to rot and took my father’s money.
Bastardo.’ He released Tallulah’s hand to pull his clenched fist back.
But as he drove it forward, Trovato leaned back, making him punch air.
His bad leg buckled, and he stumbled to the ground.
Agonising pain shot through his knee and thigh, but the humiliation was worse.
He could hear Tallulah’s shocked cry, hear his sister’s agonised attempts to calm him down.
But it was Sante who grabbed him and helped him back onto his feet.
The fury engulfed him, but Sante’s arms closed around his shoulders from behind, making it impossible to wrestle free of the bastard and land the punch.
The pain in his injured leg spread to his lungs, making it hurt to draw breath, as something brutal rose up his chest, more agonising even than the cramping pain firing across his kneecap.
It was as if he were suffocating again, pinned down as he had been for so long that day in the wreckage, terrified and alone and broken.
‘Listen to me, Dario,’ Sante huffed against his neck, his arms banded tight around Dario’s chest, holding him up, holding him close.
‘I love your sister with all my heart. This isn’t a trick.
She is everything I am not. You must let go of the hate.
He did this to us, because he could. Don’t let him win. Not again.’
Dario continued the struggle, but Sante was stronger, not having to battle the pain. His certainty, his compassion were somehow weakening Dario even more than his useless leg.
Suddenly he couldn’t hold on to the hurt, the fury anymore, when all he felt was hollowed out. Exhausted.
‘I didn’t take his money, Dario. Not a cent. And I did not leave you, I went to get help.’
His sister stood before him then, her trembling hands pressing against his cheeks, robbing him of breath, making his throat tighten, his ribs hurt.
‘It’s true Dario, I saw the terrible wounds on his feet that day.
He walked for miles but couldn’t flag down a single car.
He went to the hospital that night. He was desperate to see you.
But our father had told the hospital staff not to let him in.
’ Tears welled in her eyes, and he felt them leaking into his heart like acid.
‘Our father wanted to destroy your friendship. Can’t you see, Dario?
He wanted you to hate Sante, because he hated him, a poor Sicilian, a bad influence on his son and heir.
He isolated you deliberately that summer. ’
The last of his energy seemed to leach away, the words jumbling in his head, but making a horrible, hideous kind of sense as he recalled how his father had referred to Sante as ‘the Sicilian guttersnipe.’
The cruel memories of his father’s scorn for the boy he’d made his friend came flooding back. Memories he’d pushed to one side during the long, endless days in pain that summer with only the housekeeper’s pity and her young daughter—and his own misery—to keep him company.
It felt as if everything were collapsing around him and reshaping itself into something he didn’t recognise.
Dio, were they telling him the truth? How could they not be, when he had always known his father hated his Italian heritage, and the bastard had never made any secret of the fact he despised Dario’s friendship with Sante, the poor scholarship kid.
He felt his shoulders droop, the exhaustion consuming him, destroying him all over again.
‘Let me go,’ he murmured.
Sante released him immediately. But when Dario turned, he saw the earnestness, the emotion in his friend’s gaze.
And all the things he had once loved about that boy—his intelligence, his ambition, his bravery, his fierce loyalty to his country, to his roots, to Dario—came back in a rush of memory so brutal it left him breathless.
Dario stared at the silk rug at his feet, the pain in his leg now nothing compared to the agony in his heart.