‘I couldn’t tell you,’ he said with muted anger in his words. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Why couldn’t you?’ She spun around to face him, her eyes accusing.
‘He made me promise and I owed it to him to keep that promise.’
‘Even knowing how it would hurt me?’
‘I didn’t want to do that,’ he said thickly. ‘You must believe this is true. I was in an impossible situation...’
‘Damn it, Pietro.’ The words reverberated around their room. ‘Don’t you dare talk to me about impossible situations! This wasn’t impossible. It should have been easy.’
‘Your father—’
‘Yes, yes...’ She waved a hand in the air, cutting him off. ‘You’ve told me. He didn’t want me to know. But what did you think?’
He froze, the question so direct that he hadn’t expected it.
‘You must have thought about it. Did you think I wouldn’t care? Did you think I’d be able to forgive you this?’ She zipped her suitcase with such ferocity that her nail snagged in its closure and she swore under her breath. ‘You’ve been sitting on a time bomb.’ She dashed a hand over her eyes, wiping away her tears.
He made a visible effort to pull himself together, straightening his shoulders and wiping his expression clean. ‘You want to go to him?’
Her eyes bore into his. ‘Of course I do. I would have gone to him weeks ago if anyone had told me what the hell was going on.’
‘Good...fine,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll organise my plane...’
‘No.’ She reached for her phone with fingers that shook. ‘I’ll book myself on the next available flight.’
Her meaning was clear. She didn’t want his help.
‘I have a jet at the airport. It will take hardly any time to fuel...’
‘I don’t want your stupid jet,’ she snapped. ‘I just want to get to him.’
‘This is the fastest way,’ he promised. ‘I know you’re angry, but let me do this.’
Emmeline looked away, panic and worry making her uncertain.
Pietro’s voice came to her as if from a long way away. He spoke into his phone in his own language, ordering the flight preparations to begin. In some part of her mind she was glad. She was furious with him—furious in a way she doubted she’d ever forgive—but she wasn’t sure she could face this completely alone.
He disconnected the call and she spoke without meeting his eyes. ‘When?’
‘Now. Come. I’ll drive.’
She kept her eyes averted as he lifted her suitcase easily, carrying it down the stairs and past the car he’d given her only hours earlier. She ignored the anguish that churned her gut.
Mrs M. What a joke. She’d been nothing to him. Was this why he’d married her? To keep this lie? To deceive her?
All her ideas that their marriage had begun to mean something real were obviously just stupid, childish fantasies. There was no way that he loved her as she loved him. If he’d cared for her at all he would have found a way to break the truth to her sooner.
She stared out of the window as he took the car to Fiumuncino, the countryside passing in a blur that eventually gave way to the built-up cityscape and then more industrial outlying buildings. Finally, it pulled up at a small air terminal.
‘Here.’ He nodded towards a hangar that was guarded by a single soldier.
It wasn’t Emmeline’s first time flying in a private jet—her father’s was permanently stationed in the States—so it was no surprise for her to be ushered through a private building and customs area before being whisked across the deserted Tarmac to a jet bearing a golden ‘M’ on its tail.
He handed her suitcase to an attendant, but it wasn’t until he climbed the stairs with her that it occurred to Emmeline he might be coming along for the trip. That she might have given herself a rather long flight with a man she never wanted to speak to again.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, her words as cold as ice as she paused at the top of the plane’s steps.
‘What do you think?’ He walked deeper into the plane, pausing at an armchair and waiting for her to follow.
She shot him a pointed look, but moved towards him. Fine. If he wanted to join her—to sit with her—then she’d make him sing for his supper. He could damned well give her some answers to the questions that were crashing around inside her.
‘So he told you before you and I had even agreed to the marriage?’ she said, sitting down in the armchair and buckling her seatbelt in place.
Her fingers were trembling so she clasped them firmly in her lap. Shock was a wave that was spreading around her, swallowing her in its depths.