And just for a second the walls around his city looked as if they might shatter as shock flickered through his black eyes. The defenders putting down their swords, the battle inside him pausing.
But only for a moment.
‘I don’t care,’ he said in a voice made of ice.
The crack through her heart became a chasm. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t understand. Because he didn’t want to.
Vincenzo de Santi was a man with an iron will and he’d made a decision and nothing was going to sway him, still less the woman who loved him with everything she was.
He was happy in his cage. He didn’t want to see that she was handing him a key.
Anger and pain would accomplish nothing. Only love could scale those walls. Only love would help him overcome his fear. But it was something he would have to come to in his own time. He would have to open the gates of his heart himself—she couldn’t force him.
It hurt. It hurt so much. But her pain wasn’t for herself, it was for him. This beautiful, powerful, passionate panther, stuck in a cage of his own making. Too afraid of the open door standing before him to take a step through it.
All she could do was give him what she always gave him: the truth. And hope that somehow it would stay with him. It would be her last gift to him.
‘If that’s what you choose to believe, then fine,’ she said quietly. ‘But know this. All the justice in the world won’t change the feeling inside you. It won’t do anything for the guilt or the grief. But you can allow yourself to have something good. You can let yourself be happy. You deserve it, Vincenzo. And so do I.’
He said nothing, cold radiating from him so fiercely he might as well have been made of ice, but she went on anyway.
‘I think you do care. I think you love me as much as I love you. But you’re afraid and I think I understand why. You were betrayed by the one person who shouldn’t have betrayed you and now you’re protecting yourself.’ She wanted to touch him again, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, not when she knew it wouldn’t help. ‘But I need you to know right now that you can trust me. I won’t betray you. I love you and you don’t have to be worthy of that love. You don’t have to be pure. You don’t have to be just. You don’t have to prove yourself, not to me. The only thing you have to be is you.’
The silence that fell was deafening.
Vincenzo’s gaze had turned flat and black and depthless. ‘Are you done?’
‘Yes,’ she said and her voice didn’t shake, even though her heart had cracked into pieces in her chest.
This time he said nothing.
He simply turned on his heel and left.
He didn’t want to see her pack up her meagre belongings. Didn’t want to see her tears or hear her husky, sweet voice telling him things he didn’t want to hear. Telling him that he was afraid. That she loved him.
So he left her standing there, going down to his office and slamming the door.
Rage burned in his heart. At himself for what he couldn’t let himself have and at her for all those things she’d said. Because he wasn’t afraid. And he really didn’t care. And as for worthiness...
Vincenzo strode to his desk and sat down, preparing to focus on some work, trying to shove all those thoughts from his head.
But it was impossible.
‘You don’t have to be worthy,’ she’d said, as if he’d been trying to make himself worthy all this time. Which wasn’t true. He knew he wasn’t worthy. What he was doing was trying to atone. For himself and for his family. Pursuing justice was the only way he could make up for what he’d done, for the weight of guilt that crushed him.
‘All the justice in the world won’t change the feeling inside you...’
Ah, but she was wrong about that too. He’d wait until she’d vanished to the States and was safely ensconced in the new life he’d made for her, letting her father believe she was still with him on Capri. And only once she was settled would he make his move.
And that would make him feel better. Delivering justice to the man who’d hurt her.
You, you mean?
Vincenzo gritted his teeth. Yes, sending her away had hurt her, but he’d had to do it. And it wasn’t because of fear. He’d told her the truth; he couldn’t allow her to distract him from his true purpose, because what else would he be without it?
A liar. A murderer. A traitor. A tool to be used, not a son to be loved.
‘You were betrayed by the one person who was supposed to love you...’
His civetta. She knew exactly what to say to appeal to his traitorous emotions. And they were traitorous. He couldn’t trust them.
But she loves you. She won’t betray you.
A spear of ice caught him in the chest, the pain so sharp he could hardly breathe, along with a raw, desperate feeling that made him want to run from his office and find her. Hold on to her. Cup her white face between his palms and kiss away the tears on her cheeks and the pain in her eyes. Give her those moments she wanted, give her the happiness she deserved.
But he’d told her he didn’t care that she loved him, and he’d told himself. And he believed it. He had to believe it.
So he stayed where he was, his hands clenched in fists on his desk.
In the gardens outside, he could hear the sound of the helicopter’s rotors. His security staff would be leading her to the helicopter that would take her to Naples. From there, she’d take the jet to New York. Everything had been organised for her. He wasn’t going to leave her in the middle of a foreign city with nothing.
There was a heavy, aching sensation in the centre of his chest. It hurt. He’d never been shot in all the years he’d spent destroying organised crime, but perhaps it felt something a little like this, a bright, pure agony reaching every part of him.
He ignored it. Because she was wrong. Justice would cure this pain. He just had to be more focused, concentrate solely on his mission. He had to work harder.
There could not be any more distractions.
He could hear the rotors spinning faster now, faster and faster, and his whole body tightened with the urge to go to the windows and watch the helicopter take off, watch her fly away from him. But he didn’t move. Because he didn’t care. He wanted her, yes. Needed her, maybe. Love her? No.
She’d told him she loved him as if love was a truth, but she was wrong.
Love was the greatest lie of all.
Love had controlled and manipulated him. Love had blinded him. Duped him. Love had betrayed him.
He would never allow love to have that kind of dominion over him again.