Why, instead, had he mocked her, then told her the truth—that he didn’t have the ability to love her or anyone? Was it pride?
Or had he just wanted one person on earth to really, truly know who he was deep inside? A man so flawed that he didn’t know what love was, or home?
But he did know one thing.
He looked at Luigi Bennato’s spectacular villa, clinging to the cliffs above the bright blue sea.
He was done with this place. He would put it on the market at once.
An hour later, after the staff had packed his clothes, he was on the way to a private airport twenty minutes inland.
Cristiano stared out of the sedan’s back seat window, not noticing the palm trees or tiny stone churches or lush groves of lemon trees.
He wondered how Hallie was enjoying New York. Was she happy? How was the baby?
Was Hallie already looking for a new home? A new love?
His stomach twisted.
He’d heard she’d signed some kind of record deal with a top executive at an independent label in New York, the man who’d casually given her that card in Rome. Life could be like that. One chance meeting could change your life.
Like coming home early to find a beautiful maid singing in his penthouse while she changed the sheets of his bed.
Clarence Loggia, the manager of the Campania New York, had called Cristiano last night to tell him that Hallie’s agent had arranged for her to make her big debut tonight at the Blue Hour, the hotel’s jazz club.
“I assume you approve,” Clarence had said delicately.
His wife? Appearing on stage, singing for strangers, while Cristiano was on the other side of the ocean? No way. He wanted her to sing only for him, like a songbird in a cage.
Closing her eyes, he’d thought of Hallie’s sweet, haunting voice. Her songs of longing and heartbreak. Love. Home. Family.
“No...” Cristiano had started, but he forced himself to finish, “No problem. Tell the club’s manager to give her everything she needs. The best time slot, good lighting, advertising. Everything.”
“Of course, Signor Moretti.” He’d paused. “You will be there, no?”
“No,” Cristiano had replied, and he’d hung up.
He wondered how Hallie was feeling right before her New York debut. Was she scared? Would the audience appreciate her, as she deserved? Would they realize what a gift she was to them?
Staring out the window, he saw they were passing an old
shack he knew, even though he’d never been there.
There was only one way to put the past behind him. Only one way to truly triumph over it, once and for all. And it had nothing to do with money.
You’ll never talk to him, will you? You hate him beyond all reason. You’ll never be free.
“Stop,” he said.
His driver looked confused but obligingly pulled over into a gravel drive on the side of the road.
“Wait here,” he told Marco and Salvatore.
Outside, as he shut the sedan door behind him, he could hear the roar of the sea beneath the cliff, hear the soft sway of palm trees in the hot summer wind, scented with sea salt and spices from across the Mediterranean.
His heart was pounding as he slowly went to the front door. I’m afraid of nothing, he told himself. He pounded on the door with his fist. He heard footsteps. Then it opened.
And Cristiano saw Luigi Bennato for the first time in fifteen years.