‘Burns?’ She frowned. ‘What sort of burns?’
‘Cigarette burns.’
Bella’s eyes flared in shock. ‘Cigarette burns? But how did you...? Oh, dear God.’ She clapped her hands against her mouth, too horrified even to say the words out loud.
‘Clever, wasn’t it?’ Edoardo said with bitterness in each and every word. ‘He was careful to put them where no one would see. He couldn’t get away with blackening my eyes or leaving me visibly bruised. He didn’t want anyone asking tricky questions.’
Bella felt tears sprouting in her eyes. Her chest ached with the thought of him as a little boy being brutally burnt. What other horrors had he endured? Was that why he never spoke of his past? Was it just too horrible to recall? ‘Your stepfather abused you?’ she asked.
His mouth flattened to a thin line of bitterness. ‘Only physically,’ he said. ‘He did worse to my mother.’ A muscle twitched in his jaw. ‘He was an absolute bastard to her. I couldn’t do a thing to protect her. He wore her down until she finally gave up on life. She took an overdose. I found her.’
Bella swallowed as she thought of how awful it must have been for him. To find his mother dead, the one person he thought he could rely on gone for ever, leaving him under the care of a madman. How dreadful for a young child to be exposed to such violence. He must have been so terrified, so lost and alone once his mother had died. ‘I’m so sorry...’ she said, blinking back tears. ‘It must have been dreadful for you. I can’t bear to even think about it. How on earth did you survive it?’
‘Save your tears,’ he said with a brusqueness that was jarring. ‘I don’t need anyone’s pity.’
Bella’s stomach churned with anguish as the thoughts came crowding in: a small motherless child with no one but a violent stepfather to take care of him; no loving father to go to for protection; no grandparents or extended family.
No one.
No wonder he was so self-reliant. He’d had no one to rely on since he was a little boy. He trusted no one. He needed no one. He loved no one.
‘How did you finally get away from him?’ she asked.
‘The authorities stepped in when I was ten,’ he said. ‘A teacher at school noticed I was unwell. I hadn’t had food for a week. They sent a social worker around.’
Her bottom lip trembled as she struggled to control her emotions. ‘I’m so sorry...’
‘It’s in the past,’ he said. ‘I want to leave it there.’
‘But what about justice?’ she asked. ‘Did your stepfather get arrested for child abuse?’
‘He fed the authorities the line that I was a difficult kid,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t control me. I was a rebel—I had conduct disorder, or some such thing. The thing is, I didn’t know how to behave. I was uncontrollable. At times I was like a wild animal. I had so much anger stored up inside, I caused trouble and mayhem wherever I went.’
‘But it wasn’t your fault,’ Bella said. ‘The odds were stacked against you. But my father saw through all that to who you are on the inside—to who you had the potential to be.’
‘Your father saved my life,’ he said. ‘I was on the road to nowhere when he offered me a home.’
‘I think you helped him just as much as he helped you,’ Bella said. ‘You took his mind off the divorce from my mother. Before that he was sliding into a deep depression. You gave him a new focus. He really did see you as a surrogate son.’
Edoardo let out a jagged sigh. ‘I didn’t tell him about my past,’ he said. ‘I know he would have liked me to. He was very patient. He never pressured me but I just didn’t want to go there.’
‘Did he ever see the scars on your back?’ Bella asked.
‘No, but other people have.’
‘Other people, as in lovers?’
‘Yes,’ he said, placing his arms through his shirt. ‘But you’re the first who didn’t buy the chicken-pox story.’ He slowly did up the buttons, his eyes still trained on hers. ‘I hope I don’t have to tell you that I would rather this didn’t go public. I’ve spent years of my life trying to forget.’
She frowned. ‘How could you think I would even think to do such a thing?’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time a woman sought revenge when things didn’t go her way,’ he said.
‘You have an appalling view of women,’ she said.