A Shadow of Guilt

chapter THREE



GIO LOOKED GRIM in the dim light of the corridor. ‘Yes, it’s me.’

Still too shocked to make much sense of this she just said, ‘How did you get up here?’ The front door was at ground level and there were five apartments in the ancient crumbling building which was on one of Palermo’s less salubrious streets.

‘Someone was coming in just as I arrived.’

‘How did you know where I lived?’

Gio’s mouth tightened. ‘I asked around.’

Valentina could just bet he had—and who wouldn’t give a Corretti the information they wanted? Seeing him here like this in the flesh when she’d just been feeling so vulnerable made Valentina prickly.

‘What do you want, Gio?’ She saw the flash in his eyes and realised she’d just called him Gio. Flutters erupted in her belly.

‘I’d like to come in for a minute if that’s OK?’

‘No, it’s not OK.’

Valentina started to close the door but was surprised when she felt the resistance of Gio’s hand. Suddenly he looked quite intimidating.

‘We can conduct this conversation here in the doorway and give your neighbours something to listen to or you can invite me in.’

Valentina heard the tell-tale creak of her neighbour’s door just then and very reluctantly let Gio come in. He went and stood in the middle of the small living area, which had the kitchen area just off it and a tiny bedroom and bathroom on the other side. Palatial it was not, especially when she thought about his castello.

She smiled with saccharine sweetness. ‘Well, I don’t think you’re here for tips on how to live in a small space.’

A corner of his mouth turned up and the flutters in Valentina’s belly intensified. Damn him.

‘No. That’s not why I’m here.’ He turned to face her then and she noticed that he’d changed out of his polo shirt and jeans, into a white shirt and chinos. His overlong hair curled over his collar, a lock falling near his eyes.

‘I’m here because you ran out today after saying you didn’t need me to help you. But clearly you were prepared to ask for help up until that point. You wouldn’t have driven across the island for nothing.’

Valentina cursed herself again for having gone to him at all. She lifted her chin. ‘It was a bad idea. Everything is fine.’

Gio crossed his arms. ‘I know my aunt Carmela—I’d imagine that everything is not fine at all.’

Valentina’s belly lurched. Things weren’t fine. They were awful. But she wouldn’t ask Gio for help. She couldn’t. There was too much history between them. Along with all sorts of dangerous undercurrents she didn’t want to look at. So, a small voice asked her now, so why did you go to him today?

Firmly Valentina opened her door again and stood aside. She looked at Gio but avoided his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have gone to you today. I’d like you to leave now.’

Gio looked at the woman standing so stiffly by the door and wanted to shake her. She’d come today for something. Exasperated now he said, ‘Look, Valentina, you know you can talk to me. You can tell me whatever it is, if you need something.’

She looked at him then and for the first time he noticed that she was pale and she looked tired, shadows under her eyes. Worry on her face.

‘No, you look. Pretend you never saw me today. Now for the second time, I’d like you to leave. You shouldn’t have come all the way here.’

‘Valentina, for crying out loud—’ Gio broke off when a shrill ring pierced the tense atmosphere. He looked down and could see a mobile vibrating on the small coffee table. Automatically he bent to pick it up and saw that it said, Home. His gut clenched. Valentina’s parents. He handed it to her, saying, ‘It’s your—’

But she cut him off. ‘I know who it is.’

She took the phone and turned her back to him saying, ‘Mama?’

Gio’s gaze travelled down over the glossy hair in messy waves over shoulders and slender back and then his eyes went to the rounded curve of her bottom. He wanted to walk up to her and pull her hair aside and press a kiss to the side of her neck. He wanted to encircle her waist with his arm, and feel the brush of her breasts on his skin. He wanted to pull her back into his body, moulding her to him. Instantly his body responded with a wave of heat. The sudden need was so intense he shook with it.

It was a few seconds before he noticed that Valentina had turned and was looking at him, her face pale and stricken. Immediately he was alert, eyes narrowed on her. ‘What is it?’

‘My father has collapsed.’

Gio was moving before she’d even finished speaking and they were outside and in his car a few seconds after that. Valentina rattled off the address. Luckily she didn’t live far from her parents, who had moved into Palermo after her father had retired from working at the Corretti palazzo.

They pulled up outside the modest house and Valentina was out of the car and through the front door when Gio got out of the car. He followed her in, an awful hollow feeling in his belly. If anything happened to her father … Just then he saw the man on the floor, his face white. Valentina’s mother was sobbing over the body and he could see Valentina starting to shake violently.

Gio came in and gently moved Valentina aside and then in cool authoritative tones instructed her to call an ambulance. While she was on the phone he knelt down beside Emilio Ferranti and listened for a heartbeat and heard nothing.

Expertly Gio opened the man’s shirt and started CPR. He felt someone pulling his arm and saw Valentina’s face, white with worry and shock. ‘What are you doing?’

Gio shrugged her off gently but firmly. ‘I’m giving him CPR.’ And then he bent to his task and didn’t look up until the paramedics arrived and pulled him to one side. He was breathing fast and sweating as he watched them hook Emilio up to various things. Then they put him on a gurney and wheeled him into the ambulance, with Valentina’s mother getting into the back. One of the paramedics was talking to Valentina, and then they were gone with the ambulance lights flashing and the siren wailing intermittently.

Gio went up to Valentina. She looked at him, dazed. His heart turned over in his chest. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to the hospital.’

He led her to the car and put her in, fastening the safety belt around her when she made no move to do so.

When they were on the road with the lights of the ambulance just visible in the far distance he felt her turn to him. ‘The paramedic told me you probably saved his life. I … I didn’t know what you were doing.’

Gio shrugged minutely. ‘Don’t worry about it, it can look scary.’

‘Where did you learn to do that?’

A bleakness entered Gio and he didn’t say, I learnt how to do it after Mario died, when I couldn’t save him, or help him. Instead he just said lightly, ‘I run a business—I insist that all my staff have basic first aid training, including myself.’ Gio’s experience was a bit more than just in first aid, he’d actually done a paramedic training course. The way he’d felt so helpless next to Mario’s inert body had forged within him a strong desire never to feel that helpless again. The awful thing was that Mario had been alive for a while, but Gio hadn’t known how to keep him alive. And he’d died in Gio’s arms before the medics had arrived.

‘I … thank you.’

Gio winced. ‘You don’t have to say anything.’

The rest of the journey was made in silence and when they got to the hospital Gio pushed down the awful sense of déjà vu. The night of Mario’s accident, he’d hoped against hope that somehow miraculously they’d brought Mario back to life but when he’d got there he’d seen the small huddle of Valentina with her parents, crying. Valentina had rushed at him with her fists flying. ‘I knew something would happen. You shouldn’t have taken him out. He wouldn’t have gone if you’d not asked him….’

The memory faded, to be replaced now by the frantic chaos of the emergency room. Valentina went and asked at the desk and then, with a quick glance at Gio, who just nodded at her, she disappeared with a nurse.

Gio made a phone call like an automaton to one of his staff to come and switch his impractical sports car for something more practical. It was shortly after that had been delivered when he saw the bowed figure of Valentina’s mother, with Valentina all but holding her up. Please God, he prayed silently.

But when they got close Valentina looked at him and smiled tiredly. ‘He’s stable. It was a massive heart attack and the doctor said if he hadn’t been given CPR he wouldn’t have made it.’

Gio felt uncomfortable and just said, ‘I have a car outside, let me take you home.’

Valentina’s mother acknowledged Gio but to his relief she didn’t seem too upset to see him there, or surprised. He solicitously helped them into the jeep that had been delivered and then Valentina said, ‘You can take us to my mother’s. I’ll stay with her tonight.’

When Gio pulled up outside the house again he jumped out to help Valentina’s mother. At the door she stopped and looked up at him. ‘Thank you, Gio.’

He looked into her lined and careworn face and couldn’t see anything but tired gratitude. She patted his hand and then went inside the house. When Valentina was about to pass him he stopped her with a hand on her arm. She looked at him and he had to curb his response to her.

‘If you need anything. anything at all, you know where to find me. I mean it, Valentina.’

She started to say, ‘I …’ and then she stopped and said, ‘OK.’ And then she went inside and closed the door.

A week after he’d left Valentina at her mother’s house, Gio was trying not to think of her and was looking at a picture in the local newspaper. A huge headline was proclaiming: Scandals in the Corretti Family! There was a salacious rumour that the runaway bride had actually run away with his older brother Matteo after the non-wedding. And it had been revealed that his cousin, Rosa, was not actually his cousin but another half-sister, thanks to an affair between his aunt Carmela and his father.

Gio’s mouth twisted in disgust. He wanted nothing to do with the sordid details of these stories. He did feel a twinge of sympathy for Rosa, who had always been quite sweet to him on the rare occasions they’d met. He could imagine that this must be devastating news to deal with….

Gio’s phone rang at that moment and it was a number he didn’t recognise. Unconsciously his insides tensed. He threw down the paper and picked the phone up. ‘Pronto?’

There was nothing for a few seconds and then her voice came down the line. ‘It’s me.’

Gio’s belly tightened. Carefully he said, ‘How is your father?’

Valentina sounded weary. ‘He’s doing OK, still in hospital, but it looks like he needs a major bypass operation.’

There was another long silence and then, ‘Gio … I …’

Gio clutched the phone, suddenly feeling panicky. If she hangs up … ‘Go on, Valentina, what is it?’

He heard her sigh audibly and then she said, ‘I need you to give me a job.’

‘I don’t have any formal training—I’ll work in the kitchen … I’ll work wherever you want.’

Gio schooled his expression, but his chest tightened at the pride in Valentina’s voice. She’d come to him today, the day after she’d phoned, dressed in black slacks and a white shirt. Hair tied back in a low ponytail. Face pale. Avoiding his eyes. She must hate this.

Something piqued his curiosity. ‘Where did you train?’

Valentina looked at him then and he had to keep an even more rigid control on his control.

‘You remember my nonna?’

Gio nodded. He had a vague memory of their grandmother, a small woman with sparkling brown eyes. She’d been at the grave that day too, a wizened matriarch who should never have had to see her grandson buried before her. Gio fought down the predictable tightness in his chest, and Valentina continued. ‘She was a cook for a local trattoria, and she was my first teacher. From when I was tiny she taught me all the basics and her secrets. When I left school I went to work with her, and then when she passed away, I worked for Marcel Picheron as a com-mis-chef.’

Her mouth twisted minutely. ‘My parents had pooled all their resources into—’ She stopped abruptly and the name hung silently in the air like an accusation—Mario. Then she looked away for a moment before continuing through the thick tension in the air. ‘They had no more money to send me to college, but I heard about Marcel’s open days when he would audition unknowns so I auditioned and got in.’

Gio remembered well how Mario’s parents had put every cent into his education. And yet Valentina had never shown any signs of being bitter about her own education being neglected. She’d been as proud as they had.

He could only imagine how good Valentina must have been to impress the cantankerous old French chef who had more Michelin stars than any other chef in Italy and who ran the most exclusive restaurant on the island. It had a waiting list of six months.

Valentina glanced at Gio again. ‘I worked my way up to sous-chef but I found that my forte was in devising menus and creating hors d’oeuvres.’

Dryly he remarked now, ‘You probably have had a better training than most people out of a cordon bleu school in Paris.’

Valentina shrugged, her cheeks going pink. ‘I set up my own catering company with two friends a year ago. We come up with menus for events, and then we hire outside chefs to come in and cook. I make all the canapés. In general I supervise everything, and step in to chef if I need to.’

Gio recalled the small part of the reception he’d seen a few weeks ago. He could remember the intricately delicate canapés, how appetising and original they’d looked even though he’d had no appetite for them, his gut too churned up to be there in the first place.

He got up from behind his desk and stood at the huge window with hands in his pockets, observing but not really seeing the hive of activity out on the racecourse. He turned back to face Valentina, who was sitting in a chair. She looked as delicate and brittle as spun glass.

‘The annual Corretti Cup race meeting is coming up in three weeks. It runs for three days with the Corretti Cup race on the last day. We provide a full entertainment package here, including a set menu for lunch every day. I’d like you to come up with the menu for that main luncheon each day, and also look after catering for the evening champagne receptions.’

His words took a minute to sink in. Valentina stood up, feeling a little shaky and disbelieving. She’d imagined Gio telling her she could work on the lowest rung of the ladder in his kitchen. Not that she could be handed the entire catering job for the Corretti Cup! Suspicious now she said testily, ‘I’m not a charity case.’

His eyes flashed and his jaw tightened. ‘I don’t hire people out of the goodness of my heart. I hire them because they’re good. I’ve got a new chef that I’m not sure about so I want you to devise a menu for him to work to. I saw what you did at the wedding reception—your work is good, very good. Quite apart from the recommendation that my aunt hired you in the first place when she’s a notorious stickler for perfection.’

A warm flush of pleasure took Valentina by surprise and she realised what an opportunity she was being presented with. The annual Corretti Cup was a very prestigious international fixture. Whatever the kudos of doing a Corretti wedding, this was on another level. Suddenly she felt giddy at the thought.

She bit her lip. ‘I had two full-time staff working for me. I trust them.’

Gio waved a hand. ‘Hire them back. Whatever you need.’

He came back around his desk and sat down and looked up at her, completely business-like. ‘Let’s discuss your fees.’

An hour later Valentina’s head was whirling. She’d been despatched with one of Gio’s assistants and given a thorough tour of the kitchens and dining areas. It was all state of the art and luxurious without being ostentatious. There were VIP corporate boxes that overlooked the stadium, with their own balconies. There was even a couple of royal suite boxes.

When they emerged back out onto the main track area her guide pointed behind the huge stand and said, ‘That’s where the stables and practice gallops are situated, and the staff living quarters. Signor Corretti keeps the rest of his horses at his castello nearby where his stud is based.’

Valentina pushed down the lancing pain when she thought of the castello grounds where Mario had died and asked, ‘What’s it like to work here?’

The assistant answered enthusiastically, ‘Signor Corretti is a tough boss but fair. He always knows exactly what’s going on, and we get better paid than at any of the other racetracks in Italy.’

Valentina told him she was fine to wander on her own after that. The truth was, Gio had been more than fair with her pay. He’d been positively generous. When she’d balked at the amount, he’d said, ‘I pay all my staff well, Valentina. I’m not interested in having people working for me who are grumbling about pay or overtime. I can do this, and so I do.’

Valentina surmised now that the vast wealth he’d built up from his horses came in handy when you wanted to keep your employees loyal. But for some reason that churlish thought didn’t sit entirely right. Gio hadn’t struck her as the type of person to buy his staff’s favour. They all seemed to genuinely like him.

She saw his tall form now in the distance and it made her heart kick in a very betraying manner. He’d spotted her and was striding towards her. Valentina had the abrupt urge to turn and run away fast but she didn’t. When he stopped before her he asked her how she’d got on and she told him. Dark glasses hid his eyes and Valentina had the perverse urge to take them off so she could read those changeable green depths.

She curled her hands to fists at her sides.

‘So you’ll start tomorrow then? There’s a lot to do in three weeks.’

Valentina nodded and looked away. ‘Yes, I’ll start tomorrow.’ She looked back to Gio and said haltingly, ‘I … just wanted to say thank you. You didn’t have to do this.’

Mario. Of course he had to do this.

The name hung in the air between them again, even though neither of them had said it. Gio shrugged lightly. ‘I’m always on the lookout for good staff and I think you’ll add an edge to this year’s Corretti Cup.’

He was perfectly solicitous and polite, much as Valentina would imagine him being with anyone else, and she suddenly hated that. She didn’t want to be just another employee. So what did she want to be then? The dangerous revelation of that thought made her step back hurriedly. ‘OK, well, I’d better get going.’

‘You know you can move into the staff quarters here if you like?’

Valentina shook her head. ‘No, with my father in hospital I’d like to see him every day. And my mother needs me.’

‘That’s going to be a killer of a commute. I don’t need you falling asleep in your canapés.’

Valentina glanced quickly at him and away again when she saw his rigid jaw. ‘It’ll be fine. I won’t let you down.’

She moved to leave and Gio put his hand on her arm. She stopped in her tracks, breathless.

‘I didn’t mean that you would let me down. I’m concerned it’ll be too much.’

Valentina forced down the tender feeling rising up and looked directly at Gio’s dark glasses where she was reflected as a tiny figure. She pulled her arm free and said coolly, ‘I’m not your concern.’

Gio’s jaw clenched tighter. ‘You are if you’re my employee.’

Valentina faced him directly, something dark goading her to say, ‘Since when have you cared so much for others or their safety?’

Gio seemed to blanch before her eyes and Valentina wished the words unsaid but it was too late. She stepped back before she said anything else. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

Gio watched Valentina hurry away in her black slacks and white shirt with her hair pulled back and he wanted to throttle her. Well, he wanted to kiss her, and then throttle her. He was glad of his glasses because he’d been staring at her mouth for the past few minutes, until she’d let that little barb slide out: Since when have you cared so much for others …

Gio swung away abruptly from following Valentina’s progress to the car park and paced angrily towards his own jeep which was nearby. He gunned the engine and made the fifteen-minute journey to his castello with his hands clenched tight around the wheel.

When he saw the familiar lines and ramparts of his home he breathed out and turned into the impressive driveway lined by tall cypress trees. As the castello came into view he had to concede as he often did that it was entirely too huge for just him, but he’d bought it more for the surrounding land which contained his small farm and more importantly his stud and stables.

It had used to also contain a small training ground and gallops but after Mario’s death he’d got rid of them, unable to look out his window and not see the prone figure of his best friend lying on the ground.

It was one of the reasons he’d taken off for Europe after Mario’s death and had spent the best part of two years in a blurry haze. Anything to avoid coming home and dealing with his demons. But he had eventually found his way back out of that black hole to come home. Now, he still trained horses but he was fanatical about safety and hadn’t been on a horse’s back in seven years.

Cursing this uncharacteristic introspection Gio swung out of his jeep and instead of going into the house, took a detour around it and made directly for the stables where he found Misfit, who whinnied in acknowledgement as soon as Gio drew near. Just being near his prize stallion made a level of peace flow through Gio, even though having met Valentina again he realised peace was bound to be elusive.

He caressed the sleek thoroughbred’s neck and face and chuckled softly before taking an apple out of his pocket, which the horse gratefully received. ‘You’re a rogue,’ Gio chastised easily. ‘You only love me for my apples.’ Familiar emotion welled up when he thought of how far he’d come with this thoroughbred.

His father, who had fancied himself as a bit of a horseman on the side, had installed state-of-the-art stables and training grounds at the family palazzo. It had quickly become a sanctuary for Gio, who’d had an innate affinity for the horses from the first moment he’d seen one.

Benito Corretti had bought Misfit as a yearling, unbroken, from a stud in Ireland. The colt had had a good pedigree but after several failed attempts to break him in by the head trainer, his father had declared curtly, ‘Send him to the meat factory. He was a waste of money.’

Gio had gone to his father. He’d been sixteen years old and hadn’t stuttered in a couple of years but in front of his father he could feel his vocal chords closing up the way they always had, but he’d swallowed hard and concentrated. ‘Father, give me a week—if I can’t break him by then you can do what you want.’

His father had been drunk and had taunted Gio cruelly, ‘Are you s-s-s-s-sure, G-G-G-Gio?’

His father couldn’t resist the chance to goad him. Gio wanted to punch him in the face but held his fists by his side. How many times had Mario counselled him that it wasn’t worth it to show emotion to his old man? As soon as he could he’d be gone from his family palazzo to set up his own business. Somewhere far, far away.

His opportunity to do just that had come much sooner than he’d thought. Gio had confounded everyone by taming the horse within a week and his father had said grudgingly, ‘You can have him then, seeing as how you put so much work into him—perhaps you’re not a complete loss to the Corretti name after all.’

Gio had seized his opportunity. He’d never excelled at school anyway, so he’d left his house that night and with the help of Mario had taken his horse to a stables nearby. In the following weeks Gio had searched for and found work at another stables near Syracuse, and had made a deal with the owner so that he could work for food and board while stabling his horse there for free. He’d trained his horse in his free time, honing him into a champion.

His boss had seen something in Gio and the horse—when he’d been transporting his own horses to race in England, Ireland and France, he’d offered to include Gio’s horse, Misfit. Gio had never looked back after that. Misfit had become a champion racer almost overnight and Gio had paid back his mentor and boss many times over.

He’d been winning millions at the biggest racetracks in Europe by the time he was nineteen, making a name for himself as a prodigiously natural trainer and then breeder.

Misfit had been retired for a long time now, but with his stellar track record, horse breeders from as far away as the Middle East and Ireland sent their mares to Sicily to be covered by the renowned stallion for astronomical fees. He’d already sired at least another dozen champions.

Gio ran a cursory but expert eye over his horse now and, satisfied that he was in good condition and comfortable, gave him a last affectionate pat on the neck. As he was walking back out of the stables all he could think about though was how the hell he was going to get through the foreseeable future with Valentina Ferranti around every corner….

By the end of the first week Valentina could hardly see straight she was so tired. She was driving almost two hours each way every day in her clapped-out car and after calling in to see her father in hospital it was usually after midnight before she got to bed, before getting up again at 5:00 a.m.

Her father’s condition was not good. He was on a waiting list for a major heart operation but it could take months for him to be next in line. The very real fear that he could have another heart attack, and this time a worse one before the operation, was constantly on Valentina’s mind. Not to mention her mother, who was beside herself with worry.

She was in the act of turning with a plate of pastries in her hands when the door to the kitchen opened, startling her. When Valentina saw who it was, the plate slipped out of her fingers, smashing all over the floor.

Even the sound couldn’t really jar her out of her exhaustion as she bent to start picking up the pieces.

‘Wait, let me do that.’

Valentina stood reluctantly and watched as Gio bent down at her feet and started picking up the biggest pieces. One of the evening cleaners came in then and Gio instructed him to clean up the mess. He took Valentina by the arm and led her out, protesting, ‘I should clean it up—it’s my mess.’

‘Leave it,’ growled Gio before letting her arm go and turning to face her outside the kitchen door. Nearly everyone else had already left for the evening.

Gio looked at his watch and asked, ‘What on earth are you doing here at 8:30 p.m.?’

Valentina flushed, far too aware of Gio’s earthy smell—musky and masculine. He must have been working with the horses. He seemed very tall and imposing right then, his broad shoulders blocking everything out behind him, making a curious ache form in Valentina’s belly. She hadn’t seen him much during the week and she only realised now as some tension ebbed away that she’d been unconsciously waiting for him. It made her angry and she glared up at him, hands on hips. ‘I’m working late because it’s the only quiet time in the kitchen when I can experiment with new recipes.’

‘Working late isn’t a problem, as long as you start work late, but you’ve been in every morning this week at 7:00 a.m., well before most other people.’

‘How do you know?’ Valentina asked suspiciously.

‘Because it’s my business to know these things.’

Valentina bit her lip when she could feel a retort springing up. She remembered the last time and how her cruel words had rang in her head for days afterwards.

‘Fine,’ she said grudgingly, ‘I won’t work so late from now on.’

Gio sounded grim. ‘You look exhausted, and I don’t believe you.’

Valentina looked up at him and was actually too tired at that moment to argue. All she could do was wearily pull her apron over her head and say, ‘Well, then you won’t stop me going home.’

Gio took her arm and all but frog-marched her out to where his jeep was waiting. ‘I’m driving you—you’re a liability.’

Valentina started to protest but he all but lifted her into the passenger seat and secured the seat belt around her. Her mouth was open to say something but when the hard muscles of his arm brushed her breast she shut it abruptly, heat flashing up through her body.

As grim-faced as Gio, Valentina crossed her arms and once they were on the main road to Palermo she managed to get out a strangled, ‘How am I supposed to get to work in the morning or are you providing a personal chauffeur service to your staff now?’

Gio sent her a quelling look. ‘It’s Saturday tomorrow so you shouldn’t be working anyway, but I’ll have someone drop your car home for you.’

When they were reaching the outskirts of Palermo, in about half the time it would have taken Valentina, she said, ‘I need to stop at the hospital first.’

Gio obliged and took the road to the hospital and when he got out of the jeep and met her at the front she stopped and said, ‘What are you doing? I can get a taxi home from here.’

‘I’d like to pay my respects to your mother if I may, and your father if he doesn’t mind.’

Valentina couldn’t speak. Guilt flooded her and she avoided Gio’s eyes. Under his questioning look she blurted out, ‘The truth is that my parents don’t know about … my job. That I lost it, or that I’m working for you.’

Gio folded his arms; his belly felt leaden. ‘And you think they’d be upset if they knew?’

She looked up at him. ‘Well, what do you think?’

A bleak feeling rushed through Gio. How could he have forgotten for a moment the intense and awful grief of that day by the graveside. He ran a hand through his hair and stepped back. ‘You’re probably right … it’s not a good idea.’

‘What’s not a good idea? Gio, I’m glad you came—Emilio has been asking for you.’

They both turned at the same time to see Valentina’s mother on the steps of the hospital where she’d clearly been getting air and had heard their last exchange. With no choice now, Gio followed a stony-faced Valentina and her mother into the hospital, his stomach churning at the thought of what lay ahead.