Sam had to hurry to catch up with him as he walked. He was tall, broad shouldered, and his steps, long but measured.
“We must talk,” she said breathlessly, trying to keep up with him.
Cristiano barely turned his head to look at her. “About what?”
She nearly sputtered in surprise. “You know perfectly well what I’ve come to discuss. It’s barbaric. Inhumane. You don’t gamble with people’s lives, much less children’s lives.”
He slowed his pace as they reached the low velvet couches upholstered in royal shades of purple, red and blue. “I don’t gamble with lives. I prefer cash. Stocks. Real estate. Unfortunately your husband had just you left so he offered you up.”
“You didn’t have to be unscrupulous, Mr. Bartolo! You could have taken the higher, moral ground.”
Cristiano’s eyebrows lifted, one black eyebrow arching slightly higher than the other, and Sam thought he looked exactly the way the devil would, if the devil played cards. “And why would I want to do that, Baroness?”
Samantha’s breath caught in her throat as she stared into Cristiano’s face. He was tall, big, broad. Taut. He’d walked with a long even step, his arms loose at his sides, apparently at ease, but she was far from relaxed. His very ease unnerved her. “Because you’re a gentleman, Mr. Bartolo.”
The corner of his mouth curved, a brief mocking smile. “You shouldn’t make assumptions. They’re usually wrong.”
Then he sat down, a slow drop into the low upholstered sofa. Sam remained where she stood, her mouth open with disbelief. He was mad, she thought, nearly as mad as Johann. “And what about Gabriela? What about her?”
He shrugged, stretched a long arm out over the back of the sofa. “What about her?”
“She can’t be left with Johann. He’s not a fit parent.”
“Then surely she has another relative who could take her, someone better suited to parenting a young child?”
“She might, but I don’t know of anyone. I think her mother’s family wanted her once, there was going to be a custody trial, but that was years ago. I don’t even know where to find her mother’s family now.”
He studied her for a long moment, hazel gaze assessing. “Why didn’t her mother’s family win the custody battle?”
Sam swallowed, plagued by guilt even two and a half years later. “I married Johann. To give Gabby—and prove to the court that she had—a stable, loving family.”
“Even though you knew it was a lie?”
Sam ducked her head, didn’t answer. She knotted and unknotted her fingers before finally sitting down in a chair opposite him. “I did it for Gabby, to protect her. The court did award us custody, and Gabby trusts me, Mr. Bartolo. She depends on me. I can’t let her down.”
“She’s not even your daughter and yet you’re so very protective of her.”
“I have to be. Someone has to be.”
Cristiano’s eyes narrowed as he studied her tight expression. “You love her.”
Without a doubt. “Yes.”
“And your husband. Do you love him this much, too?”
Sam’s eyes closed and she sagged inwardly, exhausted, overwhelmed. She’d never loved Johann even though she’d tried initially. She’d thought maybe her kindness, her compassion might save him…that her love could maybe make them a family but she’d been wrong. Naïve.
Opening her eyes, the fatigue weighed even more heavily on her. She felt as if she’d been battling to save Johann for far too many years now. She didn’t know how to keep fighting for him, for the family, for security any longer. The task had become too great, the toll too much. Living with Johann had drained her. “I’ve done my best to protect him.”
“And is that the same thing as love?”
Her lips curved grimly. “It is what it is, Mr. Bartolo.”
Cristiano’s expression didn’t change, and yet Sam felt something shift—her? Him?—and when he spoke again, the mood somehow was different. “I don’t like your husband,” he said. “I have never liked your husband, but I like him even less now.”