She was still beautiful, still slender and just as beguiling.
He wanted her.
Not just again. Matteo wanted Bella in his life.
No matter the others.
But, no, it wasn’t just his ego and male pride that held him back.
She didn’t want scrutiny and yet the press would make mincemeat of her, Matteo well knew.
They had a strange fascination with the dark, good-looking Italian who dated London’s elite. It didn’t quite sit right with them so they did their best to expose his past in any way they could.
They would expose hers, that much Matteo knew.
She would be named and shamed at every turn, her picture plastered everywhere, her mother’s past played out, and there would not be a thing that Matteo could do about it.
Bella had struggled just to get through breakfast today. Imagine dropping her right into his world and the poison that would await.
He had to forget her, yet that one night stretched for a lifetime. One night with so many fragments, so many pieces, like little stars dropped into thoughts and dreams.
He could not fight it.
Yes, he had dreamt about it, recalled it in his sleep.
Now, awake, finally he allowed himself to fully remember. To recall in detail a time that, though long buried, refused to be laid to rest.
What he could not know was now, on the night before they returned to the town they had grown up in, Bella, who was making her friend’s wedding gown, had put the garment down in her lap and stared unseeing as she recalled the beautiful and painful memories too.
CHAPTER SIX
Five years ago
THE PACKED COURTROOM smelt of wood oil, anticipation and fear.
The trial was over and the verdicts were about to come in and Bella looked down at her hand, which was holding Sophie’s.
She had nails now.
Not long nails but they looked like tiny new moons on the ends of her fingers and that was what hope looked like, Bella thought.
With Malvolio behind bars, Matteo was in charge of the hotel, and under new management it had thrived.
Oh, she still worked long hours but there were two meal breaks now for the staff, with food provided. Hot chocolate and rolls for breakfast and usually pasta and sauce for lunch or supper, depending on the shift you were working. Louanna, the chef, would save a serving for Bella, which she would take home to her mother.
And so, instead of arriving home drained, hungry and exhausted, Bella would come home tired but, having warmed her mother’s meal, there was still enough left in her tank to take out her sewing.
Matteo had said that the maids could keep their tips, which meant that the maids worked harder.
That was hope.
Bella could now buy fabric and she’d had her scissors sharpened.
She was starting to see a way out of the life she had been born into but, as she sat in the courtroom, Bella knew all that could end today.
‘It will be okay,’ she said to her friend as Luka stood to hear his fate.
It had to be okay. Luka had only returned to Bordo Del Cielo to break off his engagement with Sophie—the woman that he had been promised to since childhood.
Yet a police raid that evening, six months ago, had seen Luka, Malvolio and Paulo arrested.
Now he stood on trial for the sins of his father.
Surely, Bella thought, the judge would have seen that Luka had had nothing to do with Malvolio’s dealings.
Bella let out a breath as Luka stood. As nervous as she was about the result, her eyes flicked, as they did all too often, to Matteo Santini.
His beautiful face was expressionless.
Matteo’s suit was, as always, immaculate. Despite the heat in the courtroom his jacket was on and his tie beautifully knotted—not even the top button of his shirt was undone.
He looked as relaxed and vaguely bored as he might if he were waiting for a movie to start, Bella thought. One could never guess, if they didn’t know, that he was waiting for the verdict about to be delivered on his closest friend.
Then again, Bella thought, was Matteo really close to anyone?
His dark eyes drifted around the room and came to rest on Sophie but then they moved to Bella and for a small second their gazes locked.
She blushed as she always did whenever Matteo was near, or when at work he had rare occasion to speak with her.
Not that he noticed, for already his eyes had left hers and had moved back to watch the verdict.
* * *
‘Luka Romano Cavaliere—non colpevole.’
Matteo refused to blink but he could not help the sharp exhalation of breath as his best friend was found not guilty.
Thank God.
Luka was more a brother to him than Dino had ever been.
Matteo’s father had died when he was young—old age was a rare treat in Bordo Del Cielo. By all accounts he had been a nice man but his mother had not chosen so well the next time.
Luka had never questioned the bruises on Matteo.
Just as Matteo had never questioned his.
Life was tough, even if, like Luka, your father owned the town.
Even if, like Matteo, you were the one who carried out Malvolio’s wishes.
He glanced over to Sophie to see her reaction to the verdict. She and Luka had been caught in bed together and Luka had later stood in court and shamed her, had said that, despite his ending things, she had offered herself to him.
Sophie’s eyes did not lift.
He glanced to the young woman beside her again, Bella Gatti.
Matteo knew who she was and not just from the times he had gone to her house to collect Maria’s money. He had seen her at Brezza Oceana, of course, and he knew Sophie and Bella were friends, just like he and Luka were.
He looked at Bella more closely now and saw that her eyes were wide with fear, her skin was paler than usual, and she kept tucking her long black hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture as they now awaited Malvolio’s verdict.
She looked petrified, Matteo realised, but, then, so too were most in the courtroom. Malvolio, if he was found not guilty, would be released and his reign of terror would start again.
Perhaps Bella was nervous for her mother.
Matteo knew that she was no longer working. She was racked with debt and soaked in alcohol, thanks to the man who was about to meet his fate.
Yes, that would account for Bella’s nervousness, Matteo decided.
If Malvolio was released there would be debts to collect.
He did not relish the prospect in the least but surely Malvolio would not get off?
There was a hush in the courtroom and a moment of long-awaited jubilation was about to be born as the brute was finally brought to justice.
Malvolio stood.
Fat and sweaty, he dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief and though Matteo silently prayed that he would be put away for life, he knew even that sentence could never atone for all the lives he had ruined.
How he hated that man, Matteo thought, saving the smile that wanted to spread on his lips for a moment from now.
‘Malvolio Cavaliere—non colpevole.’
The courtroom was silent for just a few seconds too long at the shocking verdict, but it was as if everyone, in the next second, suddenly realised that Malvolio was back in charge of Bordo Del Cielo and frantic applause ensued.
Matteo did not join in, he just watched as Malvolio smirked.
He was back.
Matteo looked to where Malvolio’s greedy gaze drifted and now he better understood Bella’s look of fear.
No!
There was a moment of brief recall for Matteo—when he had first taken over management of the hotel he had checked the bar rosters and seen Bella’s name.
He had scratched it out.
‘No,’ Matteo had said, because his intention was to clean up the bar. ‘She is to keep working as a chambermaid.’
He would have no say now. Malvolio was free, and there was not a single thing he could do other than watch Bella sit and quietly weep.
And then Paulo stood.
He was Sophie’s father and a weak, frail man. His wife, Rosa, had died when Sophie had been small.
By Malvolio’s hand, Matteo was quite sure.
Matteo had worked alongside Paulo and had done some jobs that Paulo had either been too weak to do or could not bring himself to.
Though Matteo might appear to be Malvolio’s yes-man, he quietly worked things his way.
As the court stood Matteo remembered a night a few years ago. Paulo had been told to burn down a house where a family slept and Matteo, returning from the bar, sent to check on him, had found Paulo sitting on a wall, holding a bottle of accelerant, his head in his hands.
‘Talia was a friend of Rosa’s,’ Paulo wept. ‘I cannot do this.’
‘Then you are dead by tomorrow,’ Matteo had said without emotion.
‘Damn Malvolio.’ Paulo for once had been strong. ‘There are babies asleep in the house. I would rather be dead myself than do that.’
‘Perhaps,’ Matteo answered calmly. ‘But what will happen to Sophie if you are not here to protect her? What will happen to your daughter if you are gone? Maybe Malvolio will find work for her. How old is she now?’ Paulo’s face bleached white and Matteo sat down on the wall beside him, a few steps away from where a family slept.
‘Give it to me,’ Matteo said, and took the bottle containing the accelerant. ‘I’ll take care of things. You go home, Paulo.’
‘Matteo,’ Paulo protested. ‘I can’t ask you to do my work for me.’
‘Just go home,’ Matteo said. ‘I don’t have anyone that I need to take care of. No one worries about me and I have no one I need to worry for...’
It proved a blessing that night.
With Paulo gone, Matteo walked up to the small fisherman’s cottage. Through the open window he could hear a baby crying and her mother singing, trying to get the infant back to sleep.