She closed her eyes, a single tear trailing down her cheek. “That wasn’t the farce. This is.”
“Gabriella,” he said, his voice hardened, harsh. “I told you the sort of man I am. I deal in business. In exchanges. We exchanged pleasure. That’s all there is for me. Beyond that? I kept my own brother a secret to try and protect the reputation of my father. A man who was debauched beyond reason. That’s the sort of thing I stand in defense of.”
“No. You say that. You’re determined to make sure that I and everyone else think you’re a monster. Why? What are you hiding?” She opened her eyes, meeting his gaze directly, and anger was replacing the sadness that had been there only a moment ago.
“That,” he said, “is my deepest, darkest secret, cara mia. I am hiding nothing. The water is just as shallow as it appears from the surface. Nothing is running deep here.”
“I understand that you need to believe that, Alex. I understand that it’s what you need everyone else to believe. What I don’t understand is why.”
He spread his hands. “There is nothing to understand. That is the simple, tragic truth of me. My legend is far more interesting than I will ever be. Stories of me being a monster. Of being heartless, and cruel. The simple fact is I’m self-serving. There is nothing intricate to figure out. I do what makes me money. I do what brings me pleasure. Those are my motivations. Those are my actions. Women, the media, they like to pretend that there is something else beneath all of that. I am no more interesting than my father and mother ever were.”
“No,” she said, her voice a whisper. “You said you didn’t want to be like him.”
“I said a lot of things. Don’t believe them. I believe this. It’s over, Gabriella. The painting is delivered, our grandparents are reunited. They can keep their true love. I will keep my money, my varied sex life and my freedom. You can go back to your books.”
“Alex,” she said, her voice broken, a plea.
It stabbed him, made him feel like he was being scraped raw from the inside out. This was for the best. He had to end it. He had to end it with the kind of finality his grandfather had ended things with Lucia. But he would leave no painting behind. He would le
ave no trail of bread crumbs for Gabriella to find her way back to him eventually.
What he did, he did for her best interests. For her future. She really would find a man who was better than him. She thought, right now, that he was more exciting than the intellectual, nice man that she would ultimately end up with, but in the future she would see that she was wrong. She would understand that she needed someone companionable, someone stable, someone who would give her everything that she deserved and more.
She was emotionally scarred by parents who had been so much like his own. And he would do nothing to continue that scarring. To continue that pain. Removing himself now was the kindest thing, even though it didn’t seem like it now.
“You were right,” he said, knowing that the death knell to all of this was on his lips even now. “The rake never ends up with the wallflower. He crosses the room for her, Gabby, every time. Because she’s needy. Because she’s vulnerable. Because she’s a challenge, a change in flavor to a jaded palate. But he doesn’t end up with her. He doesn’t end up with anyone.”
And then he turned, leaving her standing in the garden, leaving her breaking to pieces behind him, while his own chest did the same.
It was so very like Giovanni and Lucia. But with one major difference. There would never be a time in Alex’s life when he stood in a roomful of his grandchildren and told this story. Because there would be no grandchildren for him. There would be no other woman, no wife.
It would be up to his brothers and sisters to carry on the bloodline, because he would not.
He would leave nothing behind. Not his tainted blood, not any Lost Mistresses.
Without him, Gabriella would be free to have love in her life. She would not hold on to him.
He wasn’t worth it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GABRIELLA WAS IN a daze. She had been ever since Alex had left her sitting out in the garden at his grandfather’s estate. Now, she was staying at the estate. She had stumbled into the house some two hours later and found her grandmother, who was of course planning on staying and reacquainting herself with Giovanni, and spending as much time with him as possible with the remaining time he had.
She should feel happy for them. Part of her did feel happy for them. But so much of her was broken, smashed into tiny pieces. Tiny, aching pieces. That made it difficult to feel wholly happy for anyone or anything.
She wasn’t entirely certain she would ever take a full breath again, much less crack a full smile.
It was seriously dramatic, but she felt seriously dramatic.
She would like to think of Alex as her first love. Her first heartbreak. But with each and every beat of her heart the word wasn’t first, it was only. Her only love. Her only lover. The only man she would ever want, the only man she could ever possibly need.
She was hurt. But she was also angry at him. Because no matter what he said she knew that there was more to him than this. She knew that he hadn’t seduced her, tricked her, just for a little bit of sport. He felt something for her, and she knew that. The fact that he was so cruel when he’d abandoned her earlier today was proof enough of that.
He talked about being like his father, but she knew that people like their parents were not intentionally cruel. They were simply self-seeking. When he had been confronted with his half brother he had preferred to ignore the situation.
This was different. His reaction was different. Yes, she knew he had a reputation for being a monster, but she had also never seen it in action.
Still, even knowing that something deeper was going on inside of Alex, it didn’t mean this didn’t hurt. Because while she had confidence that he had feelings for her that went beyond the physical, she had no confidence that they would be able to resolve it.