An Inheritance of Shame

chapter EIGHT



SHE WAS DOING the right thing. Lucia repeated that to herself as she walked into the hotel on unsteady legs, everything around her a blur. She was doing the right thing. Leaving Angelo, refusing his offer, was the right choice. It had to be, because if one night had nearly felled her seven years ago, what would a week do now? A month? However long Angelo decided he wanted to be with her, all on his terms. I don’t want this to end now.

Not now, but at some point, yes. He would decide to end it at some point in the not-too-distant future, and when that moment came he would walk away just as before. Just as he always did.

She worked steadily through the morning, grateful to scrub and sweep and spray down counters, and not have to think. Wonder. Regret.

She was doing the right thing.

She kept repeating that to herself, a desperate mantra, throughout the next few days. She didn’t see or hear from Angelo, and from the sinking disappointment she felt at his absence she knew at least a part of her had been hoping to, even as she knew, bone-deep, that she never would.

Three days after she left Angelo, Maria found her at break time, sitting alone at a table, lost in her own thoughts.

‘Lucia?’ The older woman smiled uncertainly, a sheet of paper clutched to her chest.

‘Ciao, Maria.’ Lucia did her best to smile and push away the tangled thoughts about Angelo that turned everything inside her into knots of doubt. ‘Did Stefano send you another letter?’

‘Not yet, but I want to write him.’

‘Again?’ Just a few days ago she’d helped Maria write a rather gushing response to Stefano.

Maria nodded, determination glinting in her deep brown eyes. ‘Yes…He’s not so good a writer, yes? So I keep writing, because I love him.’

The simple, heartfelt statement made Lucia still, those tangled knots inside her loosening just a little. I keep writing, because I love him. Maria’s love didn’t change, no matter Stefano’s response—or lack of it. Of course, a mother’s love for a son was different from a woman’s love for a man, but…

Did she—had she—loved Angelo like that? For years she’d told herself she had, yet she’d never sent him a single letter. Not after he’d left at eighteen, and not seven years later when he’d left her bed. She’d tried, of course, when she’d found out she was pregnant. She’d written draft after labourious draft, yet she hadn’t sent a single one. She hadn’t got so far as putting any of them in an envelope. She’d never, Lucia saw now with a cringing insight, intended on writing him at all.

Why?

‘Lucia?’

‘Yes…sorry. Of course I’ll help you write him.’ She gestured to the seat next to her and Maria sat down, putting the single sheet of paper on the table and smoothing it carefully before handing Lucia a pen. ‘What would you like to say?’

Maria smiled shyly. ‘Just that I love him. I miss him. I pray for him.’ Obediently Lucia wrote this all down, with Maria gazing at her neat handwriting in a kind of incredulous admiration. ‘And also that my arthritis, it’s better. In case he worries.’

Lucia glanced up, smiling, her eyebrows raised. ‘Is it better, Maria?’

The older woman shrugged this aside. ‘It’s not so bad.’

Lucia wondered if Stefano would think about his mother’s arthritis at all. She’d never met the man, and yet she wondered. Doubted. She felt her cynicism coat her heart like a hardened shell, layers and layers built up over time and weary experience. She’d been cynical about Angelo for so long, almost right from the beginning.

She still remembered when he’d left Sicily, how he’d kissed her cheek and turned away, heading off into his far-off future. She’d been seventeen, utterly in love, and she’d told herself if he looked back just once it meant he’d come back for her. He hadn’t, and remembering now she knew she hadn’t really expected him to. Cynicism coupled with a rather desperate hope—an awful combination. Yet that’s how she’d always been with Angelo, wanting something she was quite sure he didn’t have to give.

That’s how she’d been with him now, when she’d rejected his offer. What if she’d reacted differently? Would Angelo have been able to change? Could they have a chance, if she gave them—him—one?

‘I hope he writes you back this time,’ Lucia said as she finished the letter, and Maria shrugged, lifted her chin.

‘He’s a good boy. And even if he doesn’t write, he’ll always know I love him. That’s what matters.’

Lucia felt her throat go tight. ‘Yes,’ she agreed quietly, ‘that’s what matters.’

From the shock that had blazed across Angelo’s face, she knew he hadn’t ever realised she loved him. She’d loved him for years, decades, and yet he’d never known. She’d never told him before, and when she finally had, it had been in anger and exasperation, just another means to push him away.

Yet she had to push him away—because if she didn’t, he’d surely break her heart.

‘It’s painfully clear that the Corretti empire is falling apart.’ Angelo gazed steadily at each shareholder in turn, watched them fidget and squirm, their uneasy gazes sliding away from his. ‘The Correttis simply aren’t capable any longer, and the world is noticing.’

More squirming. None of the shareholders at this meeting were related to the Correttis, yet they’d always been loyal. Angelo knew he was taking a risk asking them to switch their loyalty to him, a Corretti of a different kind. He’d called this meeting of shareholders of Corretti Designs in Palermo, knowing that Luca was out of the country. He didn’t think it would take too much to nudge the rest of the shareholders into a vote removing Luca as CEO and putting him in his place. They were like dominoes, waiting to fall. And another piece of the Corretti pie would be his. ‘The price of Corretti Designs’ shares have fallen three per cent in the past week alone,’ he continued, knowing that hard facts might sway them more than sly innuendo. ‘And it will continue to fall while the Correttis scramble, mired as they are in their own scandal.’

One of the shareholders, a banker from Milan, met his gaze. ‘What do you propose?’

‘You make me CEO on a trial basis,’ Angelo answered swiftly. ‘If the share prices improve—’

‘The shares have gone down because of the cancelled wedding,’ a sharp-looking woman objected. ‘It’s been all the talk. They’ll bounce back in time.’

‘Scandal usually boosts share prices of glamour industries,’ Angelo replied coolly. ‘Yet Corretti Designs’ shares have fallen.’

He saw the doubt enter the woman’s eyes, felt the mood in the room shift. They might be loyal to Luca Corretti, but all that mattered was the bottom line. ‘Six weeks,’ he said firmly. ‘Give me six weeks and I’ll turn this company around.’ He held each person’s gaze, saw doubts turn into certainties, and triumph surged through him. ‘Shall we call a vote?’

‘Am I interrupting something?’

Angelo stiffened, then turned his head to see Luca Corretti standing in the doorway of the boardroom, his steely gaze arrowing in on him. He smiled and lounged back in his chair. ‘So good of you to join us,’ he drawled, and saw a flicker of something almost like admiration in Luca’s eyes at his sheer audacity.

‘So good of you to invite me,’ Luca answered dryly, and came into the room. Angelo felt an answering flare of respect for a man he knew he should hate. Luca Corretti was his cousin, the second son of Benito, his own father’s brother. He’d lived in a palace, had grown up with every privilege and luxury. Angelo had hated him on principle for most of his life, yet now he couldn’t help but respect the man’s steely authority.

He might have been able to buy up the flagship hotel in Matteo’s absence, but it appeared taking over Luca’s fashion enterprise was going to be a little bit more difficult.

Luca set his briefcase on the table, his gaze moving slowly around the room, pinning every uneasy shareholder in his or her place. ‘Now,’ he said pleasantly, and Angelo heard the unmistakable undercurrent of authority in his voice, ‘where were we?’

Twenty minutes later the meeting had ended and Luca was still in charge. Angelo slid his papers back into his attaché, affected an insouciance he didn’t really feel.

Luca glanced at him coolly from across the table. ‘Foiled this time, Angelo.’

Angelo gave him a hard smile. ‘I don’t think we’ve actually ever been introduced.’

‘And yet you seem determined on snatching as much of the Corretti empire as you can.’

‘Snatching?’ Angelo raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s business, Luca. It always has been.’

Luca closed his briefcase with a decisive snap. ‘Business?’ he repeated with a shake of his head. ‘I don’t think so. Not for you.’

Angelo felt everything in him tense as that familiar rage flashed through him. He hated the other man’s mocking tone, that superior sneer. ‘Trust me,’ he answered evenly, ‘it’s business.’ Without another word he stalked from the boardroom, felt the adrenalin course through him as he took the lift down to the street. Once outside he decided to walk off his anger. He headed towards Pretoria Square, his mind racing along with his heart.

He could certainly do without Luca’s fashion house. Buying out the Correttis’ flagship hotel had been far more a significant coup and he wasn’t going to concern himself with a few dresses. And yet he couldn’t keep the resentment from lodging inside him like a stone, heavy and hot, burning through him. Snatching indeed.

How he hated the Correttis, with their smug superiority and their complete indifference to a blood relation, simply because he’d been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Not one of them had ever concerned themselves with him or his welfare. Not one of them had ever cared or considered him at all.

As a boy he’d had the most pathetic, useless fantasies about how they’d notice him. His father would find out about his existence and welcome him into the palazzo. His half-brothers and cousins would become his friends. He had, once upon a time, imagined how they’d become his family, his real family. He’d dreamt of how they’d all love him.

But of course no one ever had.

Except Lucia. Lucia loved you.

He stumbled in his stride and righted himself, tried to push that unhelpful thought away. In the past three days, since he’d left Lucia in front of the hotel, she’d never been far from his thoughts. He’d determined to think of it—her—with cold logic; she said she loved him, so either she was lying or she believed she loved him even though she didn’t. Couldn’t. There were no other possibilities.

Angelo didn’t think she had been lying; she had no reason to lie about such a thing. So she must have somehow convinced herself that she loved him, perhaps as some kind of moral justification for their one-night stand.

And if he disabused her of the ridiculous notion? Convinced her that she couldn’t actually love him, that such an idea was mere fantasy? Angelo had at first found himself strangely reluctant to consider such an idea. Yet now as he strode towards Pretoria Square and gazed up at the huge marble fountain—the fountain of shame, it had once been called—he thought again.

Why not? Why not convince Lucia she couldn’t love him? Once she let go of such ridiculous, romantic notions she might be more willing to embark on what he wanted: a mutually pleasurable affair. He could still get what he wanted. What she wanted…He just had to convince her that she did.

Lucia was just reaching for another stack of linens when she heard a voice behind her.

‘There you are.’

She turned and felt her heart stop right in her chest at the sight of Angelo in the doorway of one of the hotel’s supply closets.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Here? People will talk, Angelo.’

‘Let them.’

‘Easy for you to say.’

‘You never used to care what people thought, Lucia. Remember?’ His voice was a rough caress and he stepped into the little room, seeming to take up all the space and air. ‘You told me not to care what people thought. What they said to me.’

She focused on counting pillowcases, but in her mind’s eye she could see Angelo at ten, eleven years old, bloody and defiant, angry and proud. She remembered trying to tease him out of his hurt, coming up with ridiculous taunts for the ignorant schoolchildren who refused to think of him as anything but the Corretti bastard, the son of a woman they’d said was no better than a whore. More often than not Angelo had just shrugged her off, but once in a while she’d succeeded in making him smile, even laugh. He’d meet her gaze and they’d grin at each other, both of them hurting and yet happy in that moment, united in their understanding of how harsh and unfair the world really was.

‘That was a long time ago, Angelo.’ Her voice sounded clogged and she cleared her throat, kept her gaze firmly on the sheets and not on the man who seemed intent on breaking her. Again.

‘Not so long.’ Angelo put one hand on her wrist, stilling her, his touch sure and strong and yet also gentle. ‘You don’t love me, Lucia.’

She turned to him, surprise temporarily wiping away every other emotion. ‘You came here to tell me that?’

‘You think you do, but you don’t.’ He gazed at her steadily, his eyes dark and serious, his tone so very certain.

Lucia shook her head slowly. ‘How on earth could you know a thing like that, Angelo?’

‘Because.’ He frowned, as if he hadn’t ever considered the question before. ‘Because you can’t.’

‘I can’t,’ Lucia repeated. She searched the harsh lines of his face, tried to find some clue as to why he felt the need to tell her this now. ‘Does it ease your conscience somehow, to think I didn’t love you?’

‘It’s not about my conscience.’

‘What, then?’

The sound of someone pushing a cart came from the corridor, squeaky wheels and a heavy tread. Angelo’s breath released in an impatient hiss. ‘We can’t have this conversation here.’

‘I’m working…’

He opened his mouth and she knew he wanted to order her to stop; it was certainly within his rights as her employer. ‘When do you get off your shift?’ he asked instead, the words coming reluctantly.

‘At six.’

‘Let me pick you up—’

‘And take me back to your villa?’ Lucia finished. She felt herself flush and she knew from the answering heat in Angelo’s gaze that they were both remembering what had happened the last time they’d done that.

‘Then we’ll go somewhere else,’ Angelo said. ‘Out to dinner.’

‘A date?’ she mocked, even though it hurt. ‘Why bother, Angelo? We have nothing more to say to each other.’

‘I have something to say to you.’

She stared at the steely glint in his grey-green eyes, and suddenly she remembered her conversation with Maria earlier in the day. He knows I love him. That’s what matters.

She’d spent so much time and effort pushing Angelo away. What if she stopped? Instead of bearing her love for him like a burden, she’d wear it as a badge.

You’ll only get more hurt.

She’d already experienced so much heartache, and yet she’d survived. She was strong; just as Angelo had said. Tragedy had made her stronger.

Yet strong enough for this? To risk her heart one more time, and this more than ever?

She swallowed, made herself nod. ‘All right, then.’ She turned back to the stacks of sheets. ‘You can meet me at the Borgo Vecchio.’ She wondered if he’d remember the last time they’d gone to one of Palermo’s outdoor markets.

‘The Borgo Vecchio? It’s no more than a street fair.’

She turned back to him, eyebrows raised. ‘Are you too good for a street fair?’

‘No, of course not.’ Annoyance flashed across his features. ‘I just don’t see why.’

Obviously he didn’t remember. It hadn’t been important, at least not important to him. ‘I don’t belong in fancy restaurants,’ she told him. ‘And I won’t be paraded about Palermo as your whore.’

He recoiled. ‘Is that how you see it, Lucia?’

‘It’s how others see it,’ she answered flatly. She saw the surprise in his eyes and knew he hadn’t known, had never realised. Never thought for one moment how her pregnancy and his abandonment would have affected her standing in a tiny place like Caltarione.

God help her, what was she doing? How could she risk this—her heart, her life—with a man who had so little consideration or concern for her?

‘I didn’t realise,’ he said quietly. He pressed his lips together, his gaze averted. ‘I think there are most likely a lot of things I haven’t realised.’

Surprise silenced her. Already he was changing, just a little, but for now she would let it be enough. ‘The market?’ she prompted, and he nodded.

‘I’ll meet you at the Borgo Vecchio, a little after six.’

Lucia nodded back, her heart pounding with both dread and anticipation. Yet in the midst of those turbulent emotions she felt a fragile seed sprout to tremulous, trembling life: hope. She hadn’t felt it in a long time, perhaps ever. And yet with one quiet word from Angelo she began to believe…and finally hope that things might change between them.

Angelo paced the narrow street of the Borgo Vecchio where he’d agreed to meet Lucia. Stalls heaped with lemons and oranges as well as cheap clothing and electronics jostled for space with the many pedestrians thronging the side street. The smell of fried fruit wafted on the hot air, competing with the stink of unwashed humanity and the diesel fumes from the cars and mopeds speeding by.

Why the hell had he agreed to meet Lucia here? He could have had a reservation at one of the city’s best restaurants, champagne chilling in a bucket, caviar and pâté and whatever else they desired immediately on hand. Seated amidst such luxury would have been a much better setting for a seduction.

Yet was that what he intended on doing? Seducing Lucia? No. He was just convincing her of the truth. Making her see the benefits of a loveless affair.

Still he felt uneasy. Unsure. And he didn’t like it. He’d lived his life on clear certainties, hard truths, yet Lucia made him doubt. Wonder. Want.

‘Hello, Angelo.’

He turned and saw her standing before him, her dark hair pulled back in a neat plait, her eyes clear and somehow sad. She’d exchanged her grey maid’s uniform for a cheap cotton sundress in pale pink, and Angelo found his gaze helplessly drawn to the smooth olive skin of her shoulders, the swell of her breasts underneath the snug cotton. He yanked his gaze upwards.

‘Thank you for meeting me.’

She nodded, hitched her canvas bag higher up on her shoulder. ‘Shall we eat?’

‘Eat?’ He couldn’t keep from sounding rather revolted. ‘Here?’

She laughed softly. ‘You used to like the pizza here.’

And then a memory flashed through his mind, slotted into place. They’d once taken the bus into Palermo, wandered through this market. They must have been fourteen or so; all Angelo had remembered about that day was the burning anger he’d felt at seeing his half-brothers, Alessandro and Santo, out with their father. A happy family, father and sons, strolling through the narrow streets of Caltarione. They hadn’t looked his way once.

Lucia, he remembered now, had suggested the trip into the city, probably as a way to distract him from the Correttis. They’d eaten pizza and gelato, and she’d made silly jokes all the while, betting him she could eat more pizza than he could, and he, of course, had proved her wrong. But she’d succeeded in making him laugh, which had surely been her object all along.

Dio, he missed that. Laughing with someone, being stupid and silly and real. Lucia, he acknowledged with sudden, flashing insight, was the only person in the entire world with whom he’d ever been remotely real.

‘I remember,’ he said now, quietly, and he saw her mouth curve in the slightest of smiles.

She turned away, and the end of her plait brushed his shoulder. ‘So, pizza?’ she asked, and he fell in step beside her.

‘Pizza, it is.’

They settled for squares of sfincione, the doughy Sicilian pizza scattered with bread crumbs, cheese and anchovies. Angelo eyed his sauce-covered square somewhat dubiously. ‘We could be eating fresh flounder at one of the city’s best restaurants,’ he told her, not even half joking, and she shook her head.

‘I wouldn’t even know what fork to use.’

It wasn’t the first time she’d made a remark alluding to the difference in their stations now, and he wondered at it. ‘I’m sure you’d figure it out pretty quickly. And in any case, when you’re eating in a restaurant, use whatever the hell fork you want.’

She gave a little laugh. ‘That would be your attitude.’

‘It would.’

She eyed him over her pizza, her eyes wide and so very blue. ‘Why do you think I don’t love you, Angelo?’ she asked quietly.

Angelo felt something in him shift, lurch. He had the strangest, strongest impulse to deny it, to convince her of the opposite, that she did love him. He swallowed a bite of pizza and shifted his gaze a few inches to the right of her face. ‘Because you don’t.’

‘That’s not an answer and you know it.’ He just shrugged. He hadn’t thought through this very well, he realised. He had no arguments to make beyond what to him was the appallingly obvious: she couldn’t love him. All on its own it wasn’t very compelling. ‘How can you say what I feel, or if I really feel it?’ she pressed.

‘How do you know you love me?’ Angelo challenged. ‘How can you be sure?’

He shifted his gaze back to her face, saw how still she’d gone, trapped by truth. She wasn’t sure. Damn it if he didn’t feel disappointed. She swallowed, licked her lips, causing a shaft of pure desire to streak through him. Even now, amidst a painfully awkward conversation about emotions, he wanted her. Forget talking. Forget love or lack of it. He’d just haul her into his arms and kiss her until they were both senseless.

‘I know I love you,’ she said slowly, quietly, ‘because whenever I’m with you I feel complete and whole. And when you’re gone, I don’t.’

Angelo felt his jaw go slack, everything inside him seeming to shut down. He had no words; he had no thoughts. ‘You’ve been living without me for fifteen years,’ he finally managed, his voice hoarse, and she smiled sadly.

‘I know.’ He shook his head, his instinct, his need, to deny. ‘Tell me this, Angelo,’ she cut off whatever unformed reply he’d been going to make. ‘Why don’t you want me to love you? I’m not asking for anything back. I’m not making demands or a scene. I’m not doing or expecting anything.’ She smiled, the corners of her soft mouth curving up tremulously. ‘So what scares you about my loving you? About love?’

Everything. He didn’t answer, just shook his head. Again. ‘You can’t love me, Lucia,’ he said. He sounded like a broken record, but hell, he didn’t have anything else.

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘That is the answer.’

‘All right,’ she said evenly, ‘I’ll ask a different question. Why do you think I can’t love you? And I want something more than “because.”’ He heard a slight quaver in her voice, and knew, despite her quiet, utter sincerity, this was hard for her. Maybe as hard for her as it was for him. And he knew then if she could be honest enough to admit that she loved him, then he could be honest enough to admit why he didn’t think she could.

‘Because,’ he said, his gaze averted, each word drawn slowly, painfully, from him. ‘No one’s ever loved me.’ He set his jaw, wished the words right back. Could he sound more pathetic, whining about how nobody liked him?

Lucia didn’t answer, and he forced himself to meet her gaze, to see the pity that was surely reflected there. He didn’t see pity, only sorrow and a surprising determination. ‘Then,’ she answered, ‘I’m lucky to be the first.’

He blinked back the sudden sting of tears. God help him, he was practically crying. ‘No,’ he said, and that was all he could manage. He forced back all that awful emotion and met her gaze once more. ‘What is this really, Lucia? When I first saw you in the hotel—when I brought you up to my office—you didn’t tell me you loved me then. You wouldn’t even admit to being angry at me. You acted like you didn’t care about me at all.’ And he’d believed her then. Even now, with everything she’d said, he still believed.

‘Loving you,’ Lucia said, ‘isn’t the same as wanting to love you.’

‘Ah.’ Well, maybe that made sense. Of course she wouldn’t want to love him.

She sighed and shook her head. ‘Angelo, I didn’t want to love you because I knew—I know—you don’t love me back. Who wants that?’

He shrugged, hating this conversation. ‘Nobody, I suppose.’

‘Exactly.’ She hesitated, and he felt the heaviness of the words she wasn’t saying. He just didn’t know what they were. ‘I said, I didn’t want to love you,’ she said quietly. ‘But then, in just the past few days, I started thinking…’ She trailed off, biting her lip, and Angelo suddenly, desperately, wanted to know what she’d started thinking about. He needed to know.

‘You started thinking what?’ he asked brusquely.

Her teeth sank in deeper to her lip and he saw cloud-coloured shadows in her eyes, hiding the true emotion underneath. ‘I started thinking that maybe I never gave you a chance,’ she whispered.

‘A chance? A chance for what?’

‘To love me.’

The words seemed to hang in the air between them, a hope, a challenge. A chance to love her.

What the hell was he supposed to do with that? ‘Lucia…’

‘I’m not asking you to love me,’ she said quickly. ‘Not just like that. But…but if you do actually want to be with me, then I won’t take some affair, some kind of sordid arrangement. If you want to be with me, then you be with me. You get to know me again, you ask me out on a date.’

‘I did ask you on a date,’ he objected, nettled. ‘I asked you out to dinner at a proper restaurant.’

‘In order to convince me that I don’t love you! What was behind that, Angelo? Did you think if I decided I didn’t love you, I’d think desire was enough and I’d hop into bed with you? Is that how your twisted mind works?’ She spoke with an edge but also with humour, and he actually blushed.

Yes, it appeared that was how his twisted mind worked.

‘Love complicates things,’ he said defensively. ‘It’s messy.’ And scary. And awful. And loving people usually meant they didn’t love you back. They didn’t love you at all.

‘You think I don’t know that?’ she answered, still with the edge and the humour. ‘My life would have been a whole lot simpler, a lot cleaner, if I’d never loved you.’

He bristled instinctively. ‘So don’t.’

‘I’ve tried.’ She met his gaze squarely, her eyes blazing truth. ‘But I can’t stop, because I love you too much.’

Her words made him breathless, as if he’d been punched in the gut. He was quite literally winded. ‘So why are you telling me this now?’ he asked after a moment, when he trusted his voice. ‘When you’ve been denying it all along?’

‘Because I decided you should know. I want you to know. I’m tired of pretending I’ve never cared about you, when I do. So very much.’ She drew a deep breath and he heard how it shuddered through her. She’d laid everything out there for him, and God help him but he had no idea what to do with it. What to say. What he wanted.

Her.

‘So now it’s your turn,’ she said, and gazed at him with a fragile pride, a tremulous determination. ‘You have to decide what you want, Angelo. If you just want sex, find someone else. If you want a fling or an affair, don’t look at me.’ She let out another breath, threw her shoulders back. Angelo felt a surge of admiration for this woman who was so strong, so proud, so brave. She’d endured so much already, and yet she remained unbowed. ‘But if you want something more, something real…if you want to give me—us—a chance, then…’ She smiled, barely. ‘You know where to find me.’