“Maximo, go away!” she said over the lump in her throat. “It’s for your own good!”
Growling and muttering in Italian, he left.
When she was sure he was gone, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and went to the nursery. Waking up Chloe from her morning nap, she bundled her against the cold, and grabbed a coat for herself.
She tiptoed them both past the enormous kitchen, where Ermanno was tucking into a plate of late-morning pasta. Over her objections, Maximo had recently assigned him to be her bodyguard. With his three hundred pounds of muscle and bulk, he’d be eating his lunch for an hour. And Georgiana Stewart, her British wedding planner, had ordered Lucy to take a refreshing nap (“just forty-five minutes to restore your skin’s youthful glow, Princess”), warning the servants to leave both Lucy and her baby to sleep in peace.
Now all Lucy could do was cross her fingers and pray she was successful. And able to finish her mis
sion before anyone, especially Maximo, caught her.
It was dangerous. For her to even talk to Giuseppe was a breach of the prenuptial agreement. If Maximo decided to nullify their marriage contract, Lucy and her daughter would be left destitute.
But she had to risk it. She couldn’t choose between her husband and her grandfather. She couldn’t live happily with her baby, knowing that a mile away the poor old man was suffering alone. And she couldn’t bear for Maximo to live his whole life suffering as well, choking on the vengeful guilt in his soul.
Not when she could fix everything.
She would protect all the people she loved. She would save them, even from themselves.
Maximo had good in his heart. She’d seen it. All the times he’d been good to her and Chloe without benefit to himself proved it.
Tucking Chloe into a stroller, she hurried through the villa’s elaborate gardens. She waited until the security guard was distracted, flirting with a pretty reporter, then escaped behind the bushes near the back gate.
So far, so good. Lucy reached the edge of the village. The snow had long melted, the sun was warm and the days were already growing longer. Spring was just around the corner, lifting her spirits. Now if she could just find her grandfather’s old villa without anyone noticing…
A foolish hope. Even if she weren’t the principessa, the new darling of the whole village, the street was packed full of people trying to see her. The village was filled with florist and catering trucks, reporters covering the “single mother rags-to-riches” story and international paparazzi stalking the illustrious guests scheduled to arrive from the Villa d’Este, opened out-of-season especially for the event.
“La principessa!” she heard a voice shout down the street. Heart pounding, she ducked back into an alleyway between two old houses.
A kind-eyed, white-haired woman was at the end of the alley, sweeping with a broom. “Bambina?”
Lucy knew this woman. She struggled to remember the Italian word. “Bambinaia?”
The woman dropped the broom with a clatter. She burst into excited chatter in Italian, embracing first Lucy and then Chloe. She pulled them both into her tiny kitchen. Lucy knew that her old nanny didn’t speak English, but the request she had to make didn’t need translation.
Lucy pleaded, “Giuseppe Ferrazzi?”
For a long moment, the old woman stared at her. Then, with a reluctant sigh, she nodded.
Leaving the stroller behind, Lucy carried Chloe in her arms as she followed her old nanny through a web of alleyways in the back streets of the village. Beckoning her with a trembling hand, Annunziata suddenly pointed up. Her grandfather’s villa.
“Grazie,” she said, kissing the woman’s cheek. She turned toward the door of the half-ruined villa, her heart singing with optimism and hope. She’d made it! She would speak to her grandfather, and hear his side of the story. Surely two proud men who had both lost so much could come to some peace.
“You’re going to meet your great-grandfather,” she told Chloe happily as she knocked on the door. “You’ll see—it’s all going to work out!”
But an hour later, Chloe was wailing unheeded in her arms as Lucy looked at the old man in shock. Cold tea had been left untasted on the table as she tried to comprehend what he’d just told her.
“No,” she whispered. “Maximo didn’t do that. He wouldn’t.”
Her grandfather gripped the faded gold-painted arms of his antique chair. His raspy voice had a heavy accent. “So you see why you must help me destroy him.”
“Destroy him?” she repeated numbly. She thought of the times Maximo had been kind to her. He’d saved her from Darryl in Chicago. Comforted her after she saw Alex in Rome. He’d carried her across the field of flowers, kissing her beneath the hot Sicilian sun.
The images stabbed at her like a knife.
He hadn’t done it out of some hidden spark of good in his soul. He’d done it out of guilt. Bone-crushing, hellish guilt.
Abruptly the sound of her daughter’s crying cut through her thoughts, focusing her. “Shh, baby, shh.” She held Chloe close, snuggling her, breathing in her baby scent. Her daughter was soon comforted, but who would ever comfort Lucy…ever again?