Chapter Eight #3
‘She defied them and married him anyway. She loved him. And she let that love—’ His voice took the word and distorted it—so that when it left his lips it sounded like something dark and savage.
‘She let it blind her to everything. His infidelity. His habitual absences. The fact that he was probably more in love with her inheritance, than with her. They took the boat to Italy when my mother was pregnant with me and we lived in some style in Rome—while my father flew to casinos all over the world and spent her money. My mother used to talk to me all the time about Sicily and I guess I became a typical immigrant child. I knew far more about the place of my birth than I did about my adopted homeland.’
Alannah leaned forward to throw another log on the fire as his words tailed off. ‘Go on,’ she said.
He watched the flames leap into life. ‘When I was old enough, she used to leave me in charge of Michela so she could go travelling with him. She used to sit in casinos, just watching him—though I suspect it was mainly to keep the other women at bay. But he liked the attention—the idea that this rich and wealthy woman had given up everything to be with him. He used to tell her that she was his lucky charm. And I guess for a while that was okay—I mean, the situation certainly wasn’t perfect, but it was bearable.
Just that beneath the surface everything was crumbling and there was nothing I could do to stop it. ’
She heard the sudden darkness in his voice. ‘How?’
Leaning his head back against the chair, he half closed his eyes.
‘My mother’s inheritance was almost gone.
The rent on our fancy apartment in Parioli was due and the creditors were circling like vultures.
I remember her mounting sense of panic when she confided the bitter truth to me.
I was eighteen and working towards going to college, though something told me that was never going to happen.
My father found out about a big tournament in Monaco and they drove to France so that he could take part in it.
’ There was a pause. ‘It was supposed to be the solution to all their problems.’
She heard the sudden break in his voice. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, he won,’ he said. ‘In fact, he cleaned up big time. Enough to clear all his debts and guarantee them the kind of future my mother had prayed for.’
‘But?’ She sensed there was a but coming. It hung in the air like a heavy weight about to topple. He lowered his head to look at her and Alannah almost recoiled from the sudden bleakness in his eyes.
‘That night they celebrated with too much champagne and decided to set off for Rome, instead of waiting until the morning. They were driving through the Italian alps when they took a bend too fast. They hit the side of the mountain and the car was destroyed.’ He didn’t speak for a moment and when he did, his words sounded as if they had been carved from stone.
‘Neither of them would have known anything about it. At least, that’s what the doctors told me. ’
‘Oh, Niccolò,’ she breathed. ‘I’m so sorry. Michela told me they’d died in a car crash, but I didn’t know the background to the story.’
‘Because I kept as much from her as I could. The post-mortem was inconclusive.’ His voice hardened.
‘Determining the level of alcohol in a…cadaver is always difficult. And no child should have the shame of knowing her father killed her mother because he was on a drunken high after winning at cards.’
She thought how cold he sounded—and how ruthless. But that was his default position, wasn’t it—and wasn’t it somehow understandable in the circumstances? Wasn’t much of his behaviour explained by his dreadful legacy? ‘You still must have been devastated?’ she ventured.
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Do you want the truth? The real and shocking truth? My overriding emotion was one of relief that my father had won so big and that somehow the money got to me intact. It meant that I could pay the rent and clear the debts. It meant that I could send Michela away to school—at thirteen she was getting too much for me to handle. And it meant that I could live my own life. That I could capitalise on his win and make it even bigger. And that’s what I did.
I bought my first property with that money and by the end of that first year, I had acquired three. ’
Alannah nodded. It was funny how when you joined up the dots the bigger picture emerged.
Suddenly, she realised why he’d always been so strict with his sister.
She saw now that his own controlling nature must have developed as an antidote to his father’s recklessness.
Financial insecurity had led him to go on and make himself a colossal fortune which nobody could ever bleed away.
His wealth was protected, but in protecting it he had set himself in a world apart from other men.
‘And did this all happen at Christmas?’ she questioned suddenly. ‘Is that why you hate the holidays so much?’
‘No. That would have been neat, wouldn’t it?
’ He gave a wry smile. ‘It’s just that Christmas came to symbolise the bleak epicentre of our family life.
For me, it was always such an empty festival.
My mother would spend vast amounts of money decking out the rooms of our apartment, but she was never there.
Even on Christmas Eve she would be sitting like some passive fool on the sidelines while my father played cards.
Supposedly bringing him luck, but in reality—checking out that some buxom hostess wasn’t coming onto him. ’
She winced at the phrase, but suddenly she could understand some of his prejudice towards her, too.
For him, buxom women in skimpy clothes were the ones who threatened his parents’ relationship.
Yet in the end, his puritanical disapproval of her chosen career had done nothing to destroy his powerful lust for her, which must have confused him.
And Niccolò didn’t do confusion. She’d always known that.
Black and white, with nothing in between.
‘To me, Christmas always felt as if I’d walked onto a stage set,’ he said. ‘As if all the props were in place, but nobody knew which lines to say.’
And Alannah realised that she’d done exactly the same. She had tried to create the perfect Christmas. She’d bought the tree and hung the holly and the mistletoe—but what she had created had been no more real than the empty Christmases of his past.
‘Oh, Niccolò—I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I had no idea.’
He looked at her and some of the harshness left his face. ‘How would you have done? I’ve never talked about it. Not to anyone.’
‘Maybe some time, it might be good to sit down and discuss it with Michela?’ she ventured.
‘And destroy her memories?’
‘False memories are dangerous. And so are secrets. My mother waited until she was dying to tell me that her drink had been spiked and she didn’t even know my father’s name. I wish she’d shared it with me sooner. I would have liked to have let her know how much I admired her for keeping me.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘She sounds an amazing woman.’
‘She was.’ His words pleased her but she felt vulnerable with his black eyes looking at her in that curiously assessing way. In an effort to distract herself, she got up and went to look out of the window. ‘I’m afraid the snow shows no sign of melting?’
‘No.’
She turned round. ‘I suppose on a practical level we could take down all the decorations if that would make you feel better—and then we could watch that programme on TV which has been generating so much publicity. Have you heard about it? It’s called “Stuff Christmas”.’
Without warning, he rose from the chair and walked over to her, his shadow enveloping her and suddenly making her feel very small. His ebony gaze flickered over her and she saw that the bitterness in his eyes had been replaced by the much more familiar flicker of desire.
‘Or we could do something else, mia fata,’ he said softly. ‘Something much more appealing. Something which I have been aching to do since I walked back in here. I could take you upstairs to bed and make love to you.’
His features were soft with lust and Alannah thought she’d never seen him looking quite so gorgeous.
She wanted him just as she always wanted him, but this time her desire was underpinned with something else—something powerful and inexplicable.
A need to hold him and comfort him, after everything he’d told her.
A need to want to reach out and protect him.
But he’d only told her because of the situation in which they found themselves and she needed to face the truth. He wanted her for sex—that was all—and she needed to protect her own vulnerable heart. Maybe it was time to distance herself from him for a while. Give them both a little space.
But by then he was kissing her and it was too late to say anything. Because when he kissed her like that, she was lost.