Chapter Eight
Leo must have just been looking at her stupidly for a long moment because as he watched she went and fished her phone out of her bag and then she was holding it out to him. He looked down and saw an elegant middle-aged woman with dark hair going a little grey, and a young man, tall and skinny.
They were unmistakably related to Angelica. They all shared the dark hair, amazing bone structure and unusual eyes. They were smiling and the young man had his arm around his mother.
‘I haven’t seen them in four years.’
Leo looked at Angelica, still reeling. He handed back her phone. ‘Why did you never tell me about them?’
‘I couldn’t. I was told to tell no one.’
‘By who?’
‘The charity who helped me get them out.’ She put down her phone and paced away from Leo. He wanted to grab her arm and pull her back. There was a tightness building inside him.
She turned around. ‘After my father was killed—’
‘I just assumed you had no other family.’
She nodded. ‘I know, and I didn’t correct you.
’ She went on, ‘After he was killed, Paolo was young, vulnerable, angry with the Mafia. And there was always a chance they could come and kill him and my mother too even though my father had been very peripheral to the gangs. It hadn’t stopped them killing him.
I was afraid Paolo would do something reckless to demonstrate his anger. ’
‘Where were you?’
‘I was already gone, modelling. I was eighteen. I was terrified that Paolo would get caught up in the violence. Mama was, too. Then I read about the charity that does work getting people out…most people don’t have the money to leave Italy and so they’re still in danger, but I had enough to send them further.
Mama changed their name to her grandmother’s maiden name.
Paolo found it difficult to adapt at first, understandably…
but now he’s graduating from university with a degree in law and they’ve both built new lives for themselves, away from the grief and violence. ’
Leo could hear the pride and emotion in her voice. But this was…huge. Acting on instinct and needing a moment to get his wits together, he went over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a slug of whiskey.
Remembering himself at the last moment, he looked back at Angelica. She was pale, eyes huge, and it caught at him deep inside. He tensed against it. ‘Would you like anything?’
She shook her head. ‘No, thank you… Leo… I—’
He held up the glass, stopping her. ‘Just give me a second…’
He put the glass down and ran a hand through his hair. He felt as if he were coming undone. He also felt…a kind of gut-punch sensation to acknowledge that she hadn’t told him before.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Before?’
Her throat moved as she swallowed. ‘Because I was told to trust no one for at least the first year of their relocation. I wasn’t allowed to see them.
You know the world we came from. You know how anyone affiliated with people they’ve killed are at risk.
It was dangerous. Paolo was just starting to settle down… I couldn’t jeopardise their safety…’
‘You didn’t trust me.’
‘I was going to tell you. The day…the day that we broke up.’
The day she’d said: I love you, Leo. He recalled all too easily the terror that had entered his veins at the thought of what those words meant. Destruction. Devastation. He’d wondered how had he let it get that far?
But, if he was being entirely honest, those words hadn’t just evoked terror, they’d evoked something even worse. Hope. The very tiny fledgling seed of something he hadn’t ever dared to imagine because it could never happen. In case it was taken away from him again.
But she hadn’t meant it. Or, had she? Leo didn’t know any more. He couldn’t think of that now.
‘Did Aldo know?’
She nodded slowly. Leo’s jaw tightened and fire filled his veins. He hadn’t known but that snake had. Of course, just more evidence of her collusion.
‘But not like you think.’
Leo almost didn’t hear her through the roaring in his head. He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I never told him. He found out…he must have done some digging… Not long after you and I broke up, he came to my apartment in Rome.’
Now Angelica looked green. She said, ‘Actually, maybe I will have a small drink.’
Leo poured her a measure of whiskey and brought it over. She took it and threw it back, wincing. It took some of the green from her expression though. She handed it back to him and he put the glass down, and took a step back, folding his arms. ‘Go on.’
She started to pace again and Leo had to force his gaze up and not let it move down over her body. Even now she had the power to distract him.
‘He came and I couldn’t understand why he was there because I barely knew him…only through meeting him at events with you.’ She stopped and looked at Leo and her eyes were very green. ‘You have to believe me, there was nothing going on.’
Leo said nothing. She went on, ‘He told me that he had information about me, and he showed me pictures of my mother and brother going about their business. I couldn’t believe it…’ She was shaking her head, and Leo could see the memory of that terror on her face.
If she was acting then she deserved an Oscar, and, uncomfortably, he had to admit that he didn’t think she was acting. After everything that had happened, he could fully accept Aldo was capable of such a thing.
‘Aldo told me that unless I did as he asked, he would instruct people to hurt…and do possibly worse, to my mother and brother.’
Leo had always known that Aldo had kept ties with some of the people from his past connected with the Mafia but he’d never appreciated how much until everything had blown up.
‘What did he ask?’ But he knew. And now Leo felt sick. Because if what Angelica was about to say—
‘He told me I had to marry him.’
Just as he’d told her she had to marry him. For a moment Leo thought he would be sick but it passed. He felt clammy. Made her say it again. ‘He, what?’
‘Told me I had to marry him, or he would go after my mother and brother.’
‘So you…him…’
She shook her head and he saw her eyes burn. ‘I despised that man. He was odious.’
An awful image sprang into Leo’s head. ‘Did he force you—?’
Angelica put up a hand. ‘No.’ She stopped, swallowed.
‘He wanted to…he tried—’ She shuddered visibly before continuing, ‘But he couldn’t…
do it. I think it was the guilt at what he was doing to you, and me.
He obviously looked at me and saw you. Then because I’d witnessed him not being able to…
perform, he didn’t come near me again in any kind of intimate way.
He got angry, blamed you. He blamed you for everything.
He hated you so much. He was so envious of your success because he knew it wasn’t really down to him.
Throughout the marriage he slept with multitudes of women, and some men.
He wasn’t above paying for their services. ’
Leo obeyed an instinct too strong to ignore—he closed the distance between him and Angelica and put his hands on her arms. ‘But he didn’t touch you… Did he ever strike you? Take his anger out on you?’
She shook her head. Her hair had been tied back but it was loose now, falling over her shoulders.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I think once he couldn’t…
perform, every time he looked at me I was like a symbol of his guilty conscience or something.
He just used me for public appearances and I made sure to work as much as possible.
But he didn’t mind that because he loved being married to a model, someone in the public eye. ’
The relief rushing through Leo to know that Aldo hadn’t touched her made him almost feel weak. He took his hands down. Angelica wrapped her arms around herself. Leo went and closed the French doors, and pulled a throw from the back of a chair and put it around Angelica’s shoulders. ‘You’re cold.’
‘I’m OK, really.’ But she sat down. Leo got another small slug of whiskey and brought one over for her and one for him. She held it in her hands. This was huge…what she was telling him. Almost too huge for him to interpret because, frankly, it was horrific.
But one thing was clear and he had to address it. He put down his glass and sat down on a chair opposite her. ‘Angelica…’
She looked at him and suddenly he could see the toll of the last four, three, years on her face. In a weariness. He saw it because he felt it too.
I love you, Leo. He pushed the memory down because if everything she was saying now was true…then that also…had been true.
‘If you had never met me, you wouldn’t have met Aldo and he wouldn’t have come into your life like a poison, threatening your family, forcing you into an impossible situation.’
She looked at him. ‘You believe me.’
‘Yes,’ he said simply. It was all too awfully believable. But he couldn’t untangle everything now. There were more important concerns. ‘Where are your mother and brother now?’
Angelica’s eyes shimmered. ‘They’re here, in Madrid, that’s why I jumped at the opportunity to come here for work. They’re in a suburb just outside the city. Now that Aldo is dead, they’re finally safe.’
Anger surged inside Leo. ‘They should have always been safe.’
‘That wasn’t your fault. Aldo was toxic, more toxic than you ever could have imagined. There’s no point looking back.’
Leo felt cold inside. ‘We were both in a prison of Aldo’s making. I’m so sorry.’
He thought back to the day of the funeral, all but dragging her to a church to force her to marry him. He shook his head, ‘How could you let me treat you the way I did?’
She shrugged a little. ‘I didn’t know who you were any more, who you’d become.
The Leo I knew would never have threatened another person but you’d been in prison.
I had no idea how that might have affected you.
I knew you must believe I’d betrayed you.
And after Aldo using my family to blackmail me, I was hardly going to trust someone who clearly hated me. ’