Chapter Fourteen #2
That had always been enough for him. This life of his, independent of all people, of feeling, of caring about anyone besides his grandfather, had been his solace.
He had everything he needed. Sex when he wanted it had always been easy enough to obtain, and to walk away from.
So while he felt, at present, as though a part of him had been ripped out with Amelia’s departure a month earlier, he also knew it would eventually pass.
At his core, Massimiliano was heartless—he’d let his heart fade to nothing many years ago, and he told himself he was still glad.
Or he would be, when he stopped thinking of Amelia so damned much, and missing her like hell.
The call came through while he was still at his desk.
Bleary-eyed, he reached for his phone, checking the time displayed on his laptop screen with a scowl.
Nine o’clock. He’d been at his office since…
he couldn’t remember. Days? He glanced down at his suit, rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw, before swiping the call to answer.
He pinned the phone between his ear and shoulder as he extended his hand for a glass of Scotch.
‘Massimiliano,’ he said.
‘Massi, it’s me.’
His grandfather’s voice had him closing his eyes, his gut rolling with regret.
He’d barely seen the old man since Amelia had left.
He hadn’t wanted to go through the motions of faking their marriage, even when it was for the old man’s sake.
He’d hated it. Hated pretending he was fine, talking about Amelia as though…
as though what? It hadn’t all turned to shit?
As though he hadn’t broken her heart? As though her leaving hadn’t broken him?
Broken him into a thousand goddamned pieces, flooding him with a constant sense of… loss.
The worst loss he’d ever known.
She was right about him. He was a coward.
He’d lived his life in fear of having someone he cared about turn their back on him.
He’d unintentionally—at first—protected himself from ever letting that happen, and then very, very consciously.
He’d pushed everyone away, kept people at arm’s length as though his life depended on it.
He’d thought the shock of loss, the sense of betrayal, were the worst things, but it turned out it was just…
absence. Because he’d controlled this situation with Amelia.
He’d ended things with her before she could do that to him.
He’d seen the writing on the wall, known that at some point she’d likely leave him, and it would be easier if he could manage the timeline, the circumstances, removing the element of surprise from it all.
It hadn’t stung any less.
It had hurt a hell of a lot more, because he woke up with the guilt of knowing, every single day, that it was his fault. Their misery was on him.
‘What’s going on with your wife?’
He flinched, his gut rolling.
‘Excuse me?’
‘She was meant to be at this event tonight. I thought you might come, too. But she told her grandparents she wasn’t well, at the last minute. They say they hardly hear from her these days.’ He lowered his voice. ‘They think she might be pregnant.’
Massimiliano scrunched up his eyes, instantly rejecting that. Or trying to. But the simple, innocent speculation wasn’t anathema to him as it should have been. It wasn’t offensive or unwelcome.
In a split second, he saw Amelia’s stomach growing round with their baby and his whole body surged with a raw, powerful emotion. Possession. Need. Happiness.
Intense, all-consuming happiness, so forceful it took his breath away, so he could hardly speak.
‘Massi?’
‘She’s not,’ he said, the words choked out as he stood, looking around his office like a man being dragged out of a long coma. ‘She’s fine, Nonno. She’s fine.’
‘They worry, because of Aria. They don’t want to lose Amelia, too.’
He closed his eyes as those words exploded inside him. ‘They won’t lose her,’ he said, with fierce determination.
He disconnected the call without asking his grandfather a single question. He didn’t have a second to spare. In the pit of his stomach, he suspected he was already living on borrowed time. Worse? That he’d lost everything, because of his own stupidity, his own cowardice, just as she’d said.
Amelia tried to ignore the banging at the door. She tried to blot it out. She hadn’t ordered room service. She didn’t need a cleaning service. She didn’t even know what time it was.
But the banging wouldn’t stop.
Eventually, smothering a curse, she pushed out of bed and dragged herself down the corridor, feeling as if she had a cement truck weighing her down.
Uncaring that her hair was messed up and her make-up undoubtedly smudged, she wrenched in the door, prepared to give vent to all her feelings and drop a furious tirade.
But it wasn’t some naughty child playing a hotel version of Ding, Dong, Ditch.
On the other side of her door, just a few feet away, was the man she’d married. Her husband. The word breathed through her before she could block it out.
‘Thank God,’ he said, not waiting to be invited in. Instead, he pushed past her, his suited sleeve brushing her arm so she shivered at his touch. ‘You’re still here.’
She blinked at him, frowning, because she didn’t understand anything. Why he was here, what he was talking about.
‘I’m—what?’
‘At the hotel,’ he said, jamming his hands in his pockets. ‘I knew the room was still being charged, but you could have left. I wasn’t sure. I just—’
She blinked. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The fact the room is still being hired by you is no guarantee that you’re using it.’
She shook her head. ‘You are making no sense. Where did you think I was?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, dragging a hand through his hair. ‘All I could think, on the drive over here, was that for the last four weeks, I have had no idea about your days. No idea what you’ve been doing, who you’ve been seeing. No idea if you’re safe, happy, if you’re okay.’
She blinked quickly, hating the acid that burned her throat, threatening tears. ‘Why do you care?’
He stared at her long and hard, his eyes dark with feeling.
‘Because you were right. You were right.’ He walked back towards her, standing so close he could touch, but not. Not reaching for her, so her insides twisted with a desire to sway forward and feel him once more.
‘What about?’
‘This. Us. Everything. Me, and what’s holding me back.
That I’m a goddamn coward. That I’d prefer to deny myself the pleasure of you, and the life we could share, rather than risk losing you unexpectedly.
That I have been hiding my head in the sand my whole adult life, because I didn’t want to get hurt.
But I am hurt. I am hurt in here,’ he said, pushing his hands to his chest. ‘I have been hurting every second of every day since you left. Letting you go tore me apart, Amelia.’
His words were like honey on her frazzled nerves, but she shook her head, unwilling to completely trust them. Even when she knew he was finally being honest—with himself, and her.
‘What are you saying?’
‘That I love you,’ he said now, no hesitation, no holds barred.
‘And that you love me.’ He frowned quickly.
‘Or you did. It was wrong of me to question that, wrong of me to try to make you think that you didn’t know your own heart.
Not when you were wise enough to perceive what I refused to accept. ’
He reached for her hands then, but took them slowly, carefully, giving her time to pull free if she didn’t welcome the touch. She stayed right there, close to him, engulfed by him, comforted beyond words by what he was saying.
‘It’s the last thing I expected to happen, when I suggested this marriage.
But in you, my darling, I found my other half.
In you, I found my soul, my completion, my everything.
And I will walk through the fires of hell before I let anything come between us.
I will love you with all that I am, for all time, if you will come home to me. ’
‘Home,’ she whispered, on an uneven sigh. Because ‘home’ had become his penthouse almost as soon as she’d moved in.
‘I never want to stand in your way,’ he said. ‘I know you have big dreams, and I want to be by your side as you fulfil them. We can live anywhere, do anything. I just want you in my life, as my wife. My real wife, in so much more than name.’
She let out a sob, but, this time, of complete, exhaustive happiness and relief. She nodded quickly, wrapping her arms around his waist and standing on the tips of her toes, hugging him so his warmth and strength could soak into her. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, glancing up at him.
‘I know.’ He smiled then, a bright smile that told her so much.
Because he’d grappled with this. With letting someone love him, with accepting that love, and letting it become a part of him, and now, finally, he got it.
He was right there with her. They were unified in how much they loved, how much they needed each other, and they always would be.
Much, much later, when they were curled together in Amelia’s small hotel bed, Massimiliano’s fingers found her ring. ‘I’ve been thinking about this,’ he said, so she glanced down at the fake diamond. ‘Oh?’
‘You asked me to have a replica made, so I did.’
She nodded once.
‘But it’s not cut glass, darling. It’s real diamond, real gold.’
She gasped. ‘Massimiliano, I have been wearing this thing around as if…as if it didn’t matter if it got lost or taken…’
‘It’s just a ring,’ he reminded her. ‘But my point is that it’s real. That it’s been real all along. Just like us.’
Her heart turned over in her chest and she blinked up at him through watery eyes. ‘I believe I told you that, some time ago.’
‘And you’ll have the rest of our lives to hear me tell you that you were right.’
‘The rest of our lives sounds pretty good, you know.’
‘It sounds like heaven.’ And he kissed her with all the love in his heart and the hope of their future. He kissed her like a man who had found his way home, to his love, his life, his wife, and never planned on letting her go.
And he didn’t. Not for all the years of the rest of their lives, which were long, happy and blessed, in total, with four children—a son, a daughter, and twin sons to follow.
In due course, Amelia’s career aspirations took a slight twist. Rather than working as a doctor, she managed their foundation, which was exclusively for the funding of medical treatments and research.
Her work was tireless and rewarding. The same could be said of parenting.
Marriage, though, was effortless. For all she’d heard about ‘ups and downs’, with Massimiliano, it was one perfect day after the next, one sensual night after another, so that her heart was for ever and always bursting at the seams, just as she deserved. Just as they both did.
Keep reading for an excerpt from VENGEANCE TO BABY VOWS by Maya Blake.