His heart clenched tight at the memory. Of Gabriella’s pretty face and the way she’d looked at him, as if the sun rose and set in his eyes. ‘It was easy. She told me everything, because she trusted me. And I betrayed her. I passed the information on to my mother.’ He’d been so oblivious. So stupid. So blinded. ‘Two days later Gabriella’s father was killed in a hit carried out by unknown assailants.’
Lucy’s eyes widened and he could see the shock in them. Now it was his turn to face judgment, and it would happen. She would soon see his own special brand of hypocrisy.
‘Gabriella knew what had happened. She knew that I’d betrayed her. But she didn’t blame me. She blamed herself instead.’
Lucy’s hand pressed hard against his chest, as if she could sense his self-loathing and wanted to ease the burn of it. But nothing would. Nothing would ever make that get any better. Only the fire of justice ever came close.
‘I was complicit in her father’s death,’ he said flatly, so there could be no mistake. ‘I’d ignored the doubts I’d had for years about my mother, too blinded by my love for her to think that everything she’d told me about our family, about myself, could be a lie. But after Gabriella’s father died I couldn’t ignore it any longer.’ He remembered the weight of his own realisation. The crushing burden of understanding that had nearly annihilated him. ‘I confronted my mother about it and she laughed. Told me it was just business. That if I wanted to remain part of the family I should get used to it. That I’d already done so much to help, after all...’
He gritted his teeth, remembering his mother’s warm, familiar smile. And the cold, cold look in her eyes. ‘It was a threat and we both knew it. A reminder that I was as guilty as she and that she had the power to do something about it if I became a problem.’ His mouth moved in a smile, though there was no humour at all in it. ‘It was common knowledge that there was only one way out of the de Santi family and that was in a box.’
Lucy’s gaze was dark and liquid, but she didn’t say anything.
‘So I made a decision.’ He could still feel the flame of that decision, burning hot and strong. It never went out. He couldn’t afford to let it. ‘I gathered all the pieces of information I could find on my mother’s activities and I forwarded them to the police. I made sure I was at her trial to give evidence and I made sure she went to prison. She didn’t look at me at all as they led her away. I was dead to her already.’
There were so many things that had scarred him in that moment. The knowledge that he’d negotiated his own immunity from prosecution by betraying his mother. An immunity he’d wanted so he could dedicate his life to pursuing his own justice.
The way she’d ignored him so completely. He didn’t blame her in the end, but it had hurt all the same. Confirmation, as if he’d needed it, that he’d never been her son to love.
There was silence afterwards, but he couldn’t hear anything above the pounding of his own heartbeat.
‘If I can’t blame myself for what happened with my mother, then you can’t blame yourself for what happened with yours, Vincenzo,’ Lucy said quietly. ‘You weren’t complicit. You were used.’
CHAPTER NINE
VINCENZO’S DARK EYES were full of fire. ‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘I do think you know that.’ The anger in his face told her that clearly. ‘But you don’t feel it, do you?’ She’d phrased it as a question, but it wasn’t meant to be one. Not when she knew the truth so intimately herself. ‘You feel responsible.’
‘Of course I feel responsible. I lured that woman to that van. And I used my friendship with Gabriella to betray her father. My actions caused his death, and I knew all along that something wasn’t right about it. I knew all along that there was doubt. But I didn’t listen to that doubt. I didn’t listen to my instinct. And if I had—’
‘If you had, what would have changed?’ She didn’t know why she was arguing with him. It was only that there was pain in his heart the way there was in hers, and that he blamed himself just as she blamed herself. They were so alike. Both children of monsters. It made her feel his agony as if it were her own. ‘You might have saved him, but someone else might have got hurt instead. And if the past doesn’t matter for me, then it can’t matter for you. We can’t be complicit when both our parents used us, and we can’t change what happened.’
His expression had become hard, like stone, but his eyes glittered, sharp as volcanic glass. ‘No, I can’t. Which is why the only thing of importance is what I do now. And that is taking down the people like my mother. Those families who have caused so much harm to so many people. Justice is the only way forward.’
And he was burning with it, that was clear.
Foreboding fluttered deep inside her, but she ignored it. She understood all too well where he was coming from and she could see how heavily guilt weighed on him. Gabriella hadn’t blamed him, but he blamed himself, and that surely had to be an impossible burden.
You know about those too.
Oh, yes, she did. She’d carried the weight of her mother’s death for a long time, after all. But this life he’d set out for himself, this crusade, had to be a lonely one. She knew better than anyone how difficult it must be, to be constantly on your guard, to never feel safe. Never to be able to trust anyone.
Her heart ached for him and there was nothing she could do. No words to make the burden he bore for the deaths of those people lighter, no way to ease it. All she could do was offer him understanding, because she carried those same burdens.
He’d told her that she wasn’t to blame and that she was worth saving, but the feeling in her heart was still the same, the doubt and the fear.
He felt those things too.
Maybe, though, there was some help she could offer him...
She shifted in his lap. ‘Wait here. I’ll be a couple of minutes.’ Before he could stop her or ask what she was doing, she’d slipped off him, going quickly into the house and to her bedroom. Her laptop was still sitting in her bag on the armchair near the bed, so she got it out and went back to the terrace.
Vincenzo had risen to his feet, that dark menace gathering around him again, staring at her fiercely. But she ignored him. She opened up the laptop and typed in her password, then opened up the files she’d encrypted only a week ago.
Then she held out the laptop to him. ‘Here. All the information you need about my father is in this file. It’s yours, Vincenzo.’
He didn’t look at it or make any move to take it. ‘You were going to give me that at the end of the week. That was the deal.’
‘I know. But justice is important to you, and I don’t want to cower in fear any more. I want to do something. I want to help.’