Chapter 12 #2
In four days, this would be all over. When Siena learned what he’d done, she would leave him.
He could forget thoughts of her staying voluntarily and becoming his partner in business as well as life.
That was never going to happen. Not now.
She might be too smart to trust him outside the bedroom, but the trust and intimacy they’d found in the bedroom meant she would still take the truth as a betrayal of her.
It had to be like this, he told himself. This wasn’t just for him but for Bruno, Elvira and Renata. This was for his parents and all the aunts, uncles, cousins and associates who’d lost their lives. For his grandmother who’d worked so hard to support and care for her orphaned grandchildren.
This was the culmination of his whole damned life.
* * *
Siena pressed the intercom at her brother’s gate.
In her mind’s eye, she imagined Gabriella looking at the security camera and her heart sinking.
Imagined her wrestling whether to ignore the buzz of the intercom or not, and if not, whether she should let one of the staff deal with the unexpected visitor.
Eventually, Gabriella’s wary voice rang out. “Tommaso isn’t here.”
“I know.” Tommaso was, at that moment, out with Elio and Mattia. “I’m here to see you.”
There was a very long pause. “Why?”
“Because we need to talk.”
Another very long pause.
“Please, Gabba,” she said softly. “I’m not here to cause trouble, I swear. I just need to talk to you, and it would be better if it were in person.”
After another very long pause, a buzz rang out, and then the gates opened.
It was the first time Siena had stepped foot in Tommaso’s home since he’d married Gabriella instead of killing her for her betrayal.
Siena had been the angriest at his actions.
She’d been incandescent. A part of her still was, but ultimately, he was her brother, just as her mother was her mother.
Family came first, even if, to Siena’s mind, Tommaso not putting a bullet in Gabriella’s head had meant him putting that bitch over his family.
At least, that’s how she’d viewed it then when she’d been a furious ball of hurt and betrayal. She saw it differently now. Tommaso loved Gabriella. For him to have killed her would have been for him to kill himself.
The truth was, Siena loved Gabriella too, and when her best friend since birth appeared in a doorway, her expression as wary as her voice had been, she knew that if Tommaso had gone through with it, it would have destroyed her even more deeply than Gabriella’s betrayal had.
Gabriella didn’t move away from the doorway. Siena understood her wariness. She’d been the most vocal and vehement in demanding that Tommaso kill her.
Siena raised her hands, palms facing her. “I mean it, Gabba. I’m not here to cause conflict. Can we sit down?”
With a short nod, Gabriella turned around. When Siena followed her through the doorway, the woman who’d always been a sister to her was at the bar.
Siena curled into a squishy armchair and watched her mix two glasses of rum and cola. Her heart twisted. That was their drink. Every night out always started with a hefty rum and cola. And ended with one too.
Instead of handing Siena her drink, Gabriella placed her glass on the table closest to her. She picked it up with a murmured thank you and took a sip. Her eyes widened at the strength of it.
Gabriella, who’d taken an armchair close enough to hear but not close enough that she couldn’t run if Siena pounced, drank half of hers in one swallow. “Go on, then,” she said tightly. “Get it over with.”
“I’m sorry for what my father did to your father.”
Gabriella blinked but didn’t speak.
“I know he did it,” Siena said, knowing it had to be acknowledged.
“He murdered your father and framed Marco Ranieri for it. I understand why you needed vengeance for that. I would have wanted it too. But you hurt me, Gabba. Not so much that you wanted to have me imprisoned, but with all the lies and pretence. I think of everything we’ve done and shared since your mother told you the truth, and it destroys me to think that you’ve only been pretending to love me.
” Gabriella had learned the truth when they were sixteen.
“That was never pretence,” Gabriella said quietly.
“Wasn’t it?”
“No. I hated you all, but I loved you all too. You and Tommaso the most. It’s why I couldn’t go through with it. Even if you hadn’t learned I’d been working to bring you down, I don’t think I could ever have gone through with it.”
“You don’t think?”
She shrugged ruefully. “Tommaso believes I wouldn’t have done, but I can’t be certain about any aspect of a future I didn’t live.”
Siena nodded, understanding what she meant. “You do love him, don’t you?”
Gabriella met her stare head-on for the first time. “Yes. And I love you, Sisi.”
Her heart swelled painfully at both the words of love and Gabriella calling her Sisi.
She was the only one who had ever called her that.
“I love you too,” she whispered. “And I don’t ever want you feeling afraid that I’m going to turn into a snarling bitch again when I’m with you.
This dinner party Elio’s hosting tomorrow night…
” She shook her head before looking back at her.
“I know things can never go back to being what they were, but I want you to feel comfortable in my home.”
Something flickered in Gabriella’s eyes. “Your home? Things are going well in the marriage?”
The ache to confide swelled. Only months ago, Siena would have confessed to Gabriella in a heartbeat that she feared she’d fallen in love with Elio, but her world had turned upside down and inside out.
Months ago Siena had still believed her father protected those he loved.
The love he’d always professed to have for Gabriella’s father and the way he’d grieved for him for all those years when he’d been the one to have pulled the trigger was something she didn’t know how her heart could ever reconcile.
So many lies. So much betrayal. So many lives lost.
The man she’d fallen for had lost even more than Gabriella had. A whole world more.
Knowing she needed to say something, she whispered, “He’s not the monster we all believed.”
“Tommaso doesn’t trust him.”
“I know. I don’t either. But he’s good to me.” Not just in the bedroom but in life. Other than those hateful early days, he made no effort to control her. No effort to impose his will on her. He listened when she spoke. Really listened, as if her thoughts and ideas were worth listening to.
Her friend’s dark eyes were troubled. “Be careful, Sisi.”
Too late, she thought even as she smiled with what she hoped was the whole of her face. “I’m always careful, Gabba.”
* * *
After embracing Gabriella goodbye, Siena got into the back of the car for the short drive home.
While her heart felt lighter for having cleared the air with her, she still grieved the severing of the bond that had always been so strong between them. She could only hope that, with time, the bond could knit itself back together.
Her heart lightened even more to find Elio’s car outside the villa. He was home.
So excited was she to see him that she didn’t even look out for the dogs as she hurried inside.
He was in the kitchen, fixing himself a coffee on the machine that was identical to her own, and she remembered how she’d vowed to bin her own version of it when she next returned to her apartment.
She hadn’t even driven past her apartment since they’d exchanged their vows. Hadn’t missed it at all.
She didn’t hesitate to walk up to him, fling her arms around his neck and kiss him. “You’re back early.”
He wrapped his arms around her, his eyes glittering. “Now this is the kind of welcome a man could get used to.”
She smiled and nuzzled her face in his neck so she could breathe his scent into her lungs. “How did it all go?”
“Very well. The first shipment is due on Tuesday. How has your day been?”
She lifted her face out of his neck and smiled again. “Mine has gone very well too.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
But instead of answering, she trailed her hand down his stomach to the button of his jeans. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
He raised his other eyebrow.
She unzipped his fly. “Later.”
The silver eyes she so adored boring into her with unrepentant sensuality, he clasped her waist and lifted her onto the nearest work surface. “Okay, then,” he murmured, bringing his mouth to hers. “Later.”