What wasn’t normal, though, was being left alone with his sister. What was horribly awkward was pretending nothing untoward had taken place and offering her a smile and rather forced congratulations as she turned to leave. But Antonia’s strangled sob as Caitlyn reached the door was utterly heartbreaking, and whether she was Lazzaro’s PA or not, whether she was nothing more than a convenience, she was still a woman, and few women could have ignored another in such obvious distress.
‘I’m sorry…’ Antonia sobbed as Caitlyn came over, her tears spilling onto the screaming baby, his mother’s distress making him wail all the louder. ‘I’m upsetting Luca…’
‘Here…!’
Peeling tissues out of the box on the bedside table, she handed them to the upset woman. When it was clear more than paper was required, Caitlyn relieved Antonia of the screaming baby, rocking him in her arms, trying to hush him as Antonia sobbed on.
‘It’s all just falling apart…’ Antonia was inconsolable. ‘I thought with a new baby, if we were all together, then maybe we could move on…’ The tears were stilling now, but her distress was just as raw. ‘It’s never going to get better, is it?’
‘Of course it will,’ Caitlyn offered helplessly. ‘These things take time.’
‘It’s been more than two years!’ Antonia choked. ‘Two years of grieving for one brother and watching the other disappear. There was a row, a terrible row, before Luca died. Lazzaro confronted him. Luca was in debt to the eyeballs, spending money like water, completely out of control…’
‘I know…’ Caitlyn nodded—because she did know, and not just from Roxanne. Like everyone else, she had read the newspapers at the time, watched the journalists deliver the court’s findings on the evening news. ‘But Lazzaro couldn’t have known what was to come…’ And he couldn’t have, Caitlyn reasoned. He couldn’t have known Luca would walk out of the argument and into a bar—would get behind the wheel so loaded that the second he turned the key in the ignition the outcome was inevitable.
‘It was Lazzaro’s fault.’ Antonia’s sobbed the words out. ‘Why? Why would he do that?’ Antonia stopped as quickly as she had started, pleading eyes looking to Caitlyn’s.
‘You said yourself, he had to…’ Caitlyn attempted. But as Antonia placed her shaking hand over her mouth, closed her eyes in horror, she knew Antonia had said more than she had intended—knew that what she had just heard was something she shouldn’t have. ‘What happened, Antonia?’
‘I can’t say…’
She was a pitiful sight. A woman who seemingly had everything—money, looks, a doting husband, beautiful children—only Caitlyn’s heart went out to her. Whether Antonia knew it or not, her world really was falling apart. ‘I am scared for my brother—scared he is heading down the same path as Luca.’
‘Lazzaro doesn’t gamble,’ Caitlyn soothed, ‘and he hardly drinks. Lazzaro—’
‘Is in hell…’ Antonia finished. ‘Just look out for him…You are working with him, closer to him at the moment than his own family.’ Antonia’s eyes met hers as Caitlyn handed her back little Luca. ‘I’m just asking that you look out for him.’
‘I somehow don’t think Lazzaro would appreciate it.’ Caitlyn gave a wobbly smile. The lines were suddenly blurring. He was her boss, nothing else. It was something she had to remind herself of constantly—to remain professional and aloof at all times, and even when he kissed her to somehow remember a kiss was all it was—that even if he had held her last night he had dismissed her in the morning.
Could she do it? Caitlyn wondered as she farewelled Antonia and walked along the hospital corridor. Could she really put her life on hold for him? Fall more and more in love with him? Only to walk away at the end? Because somehow, even when he was loathsome, the more she saw of him, the more she wanted him, and the more he allowed her to have the more she gratefully received—but then what?