Pia shrugged, uncomfortable with his scrutiny. “I just… I can imagine what your father must have felt. What Frank did to me is minuscule by comparison, and yet I have days where I can’t trust my own judgment. Days when I can’t believe that everything he did was with a motive—pulling me from the dark cloud of Nonni’s death, persuading me to step out of the house for an evening.
“Gio didn’t help by doing what he did either. I can’t trust anyone—man or woman—when they say something nice to me. I can’t help but search for deeper motives. Perversely, it’s what makes me trust you.”
His frown only deepened. “What about me?”
“Your animosity, your suspicions. I can count on you to be brutally honest, even if I don’t like your assumptions. The reason why I…” like you. She cut herself off at the flare in his eyes. Words solidified the feeling in her chest. The last thing he needed was to learn that he was beginning to grow on her. “I don’t understand why your mother doesn’t like me still.”
“She lives in a permanently terrified state that I will take the same risks with my money that my father did and doom them all. She made sure I allocated lifelong separate funds for my sisters, for Alyssa and her.”
“Funds you cannot invest in your business?” Pia asked, shocked by the implications. It not only showed a distinct lack of faith in Raphael’s abilities as a businessman but also a callous obsession with wealth over her son’s feelings.
“Si. Over the last few years, she got used to hearing Gio’s continual claims that he will leave everything to me—which he did to annoy his ex-wives and their constant bickering for more settlements. It has turned into her insurance against my possible failure and downfall. Now you are a threat to that insurance.”
Was it any wonder he assumed she was out to fleece Gio with the mindset he already had?
To believe that one’s own mother saw one as nothing but a source of her income… Could Raphael see himself as anything but a provider? Had he even been allowed to grieve for his father before he’d had to take on the mantle of his family?
Because, despite everything, it was clear he cared about his family. She had called him ruthless, but not enough to stop shouldering the responsibility of his sisters and their families.
And he adored his daughter.
Suddenly, Pia saw Raphael more clearly than she ever wanted to. She didn’t want to see any depth to his hardness, any soft edges beyond his cynicism. She didn’t want to see Raphael as anything but an impossible fantasy and a reluctant ally.
She didn’t, couldn’t afford to see him as a man worth knowing.
CHAPTER SIX
WIDE EYES DRESSED with the longest lashes searched and studied his face unblinkingly as Raphael waited. Dappled in the sunlight, she looked exquisitely innocent. Desire was a permanent drumbeat in his blood anytime he was near Pia. But it wasn’t just that anymore.
She had a way of looking at him that made him feel bare. Of making him speak of things he’d never mentioned to anyone. Of looking deep beneath his words and showing him a side of himself he’d never seen before.
The shame of his father’s suicide was a wound that had festered for too long. And yet, beneath it, he recognized the pain of betrayal he hadn’t seen until now.
He had worshipped his father and overnight, his hero had both abandoned and betrayed him. But in memory, his father had lingered on in what he had felt then was the epitome of weakness.
“Take care, Pia,” he whispered. Until now, he’d let Gio coerce him. But the feeling of losing control made him snarly. “Is it any wonder Giovanni wants you tied up to some man as protection? You stare at me as if you mean to gobble me up.”
“Not any man, just you,” she replied, and then blushed furiously. “It’s good to know that you care about your daughter.”
Instead of mollifying him, her apparent approval riled him. Damn it, the woman turned him inside out. “Because you assume I’m an uncaring monster?”
Another step forward by him and another backward by her. “All indications said so.”
“Stop backing away.” The comment hissed out of him in a low growl.