He walked into his study, sitting himself down at his mahogany desk, ready to catch up on work after several days of entertaining Francesca and her family. His eyes flickered. He had made his choice—Francesca had made hers. But Carla—Carla had not made a choice, had she?
For a moment—just a brief, flashing moment before that guillotine cut down again across his mind—he saw her that final morning.
Naked, stripped bare of everything that she’d thought she had—everything she had presumed.
The guillotine sliced down. Harsh thoughts sliced down with it. It was a harshness that was necessary. Essential. And not just for Carla.
Well, she should not have presumed! He had given her no cause to do so—none! He could acquit himself of that! He had never—not once—given her to think otherwise! And she hadn’t needed any such reminder from him! She’d said she’d always known, always accepted the necessary limitations of their time together. That it would be...could only be...for a fixed duration.
To our time together.
That had been his very first toast to her. Right from the outset. And their time together had now ended. That was all there was to it.
Impatiently, ruthlessly, he switched on his computer. It fired up and he flicked to the Internet to check his emails. The home page of a leading financial newspaper sprang up, and there, in lead story position, was a headlin
e that stilled him totally.
He had made his choice, Francesca had made her choice, and now it seemed that Carla Charteris, after all, was making hers...
Marriage merger keeps Viscari Hotels in the family—Falcone’s ambitions thwarted!
He stared, seeing the headline. Seeing the photo that went with it.
Feeling the jagged emotion, like a serrated blade, knifing into him.
* * *
The sonorous music swelled, lifting upwards to one last crescendo before falling silent. The hushed murmurings of the congregation stilled as the priest raised his hands and began to speak the words of the ancient sacrament in the age-old ceremony.
Inside her breast Carla could feel her heart beating like a hammer. Crushing all compunction about what she was doing—what she was making Vito do so bitterly against his will.
Emotion filled her and she felt a low, fine tremble go through her, as if her whole being were about to shatter as she stood there, gowned in white, her face veiled. Stood beside the man who was her bridegroom. Waiting for him to say the words that would unite them in marriage.
That would free her, finally, from the hell in which she lived.
But there were no words. There was only silence.
At her side, Vito stood immobile. He had not touched her since she’d walked stiffly down the aisle, her back aching with tension—tension that had kept her in hell for weeks now. A hell she had dragged Vito into as well.
But she didn’t care—could not care. Could only keep going with the desperate remedy her mother had offered her—a remedy that was, she knew with the last fragment of her sane mind, poisoning her.
She would not let Vito go. She could not—dared not. If she let him go she would plunge down into the abyss. She had to marry him—she just had to! She would not be safe until she did. Safe from everything that was devouring her.
When I’m married to him I can be safe! I can be Signora Viscari and have a role to play, a person to be. Being his wife will give me protection.
Her mother thought it was only protection from the sneers of the world, the gossip and the jibes, that she wanted, but that was not the protection that she so desperately sought. She needed protection from herself.
Without Vito’s ring keeping me safe, keeping me here in Rome, keeping my days spent organising my wedding, without all that I’d be terrified...terrified...
Cold snaked down her back. It was terror—the absolute terror that possessed her.
That she’d go to Cesare and beg him...beg him...
Beg him to take her back on any terms—any terms at all!
In her vision she saw again that damnable triptych—the lordly Conte flanked by his pure, perfect wife...and his lowly mistress.
Her stomach hollowed. Once she had thought herself far above comparing herself to the Caradino beauty. In this day and age there could be no such role for any woman. None.