That showstopping lie in front of all the world to halt the wedding ceremony, to give Mia the chance she needed to escape her fate, to let her cousin faint dramatically to make it stop. Just make itstop.
And the other desperate lie—the one she had hurled at Luca Farnese, inverting the truth, desperate that he should believe it. Believe that Mia, who had been unable to face telling him she didn’t want to marry him, would denounce him for having slept with her cousin...
She gave a choking sob. Only one person would be doing any denouncing. Her grandfather. And it would not be Luca Farnese he denounced.
She would take the fall for what she had done. She and she alone. For ruining Mia’s wedding...for halting it in its tracks...for making it impossible for it to take place.
Well, she had succeeded in that—outrageous and drastic as her method had been. Had had to be.
And now... She shut her eyes, weary beyond anything in the aftermath of what she had done. Now there was just her life to get on with.
Her ordeal was finally over, and that, at least, was something to be grateful for.
Her grandfather would never speak to her again—but then how great a loss would that be? She had been condemned in his eyes long ago, by the very fact of her birth. This was only the finish of it.
As for Mia—well, she was free. And if she could find some way to elope with her beloved Matt...if she could somehow find the courage to do so...
I’ll help her financially—I can afford it.
Wearily, she climbed into bed. She could sleep for a week after all the horrors of the day. So long as she did not dream.
Did not dream of the fury in Luca’s eyes. The hatred in them. The loathing.
She gave another sob, pulling the bedclothes over her damp, tangled hair. Seeking the blessed oblivion of sleep...
CHAPTER SIX
LUCAREPLACEDTHEphone on his desk, a look of grim satisfaction on his face at what his lawyer had told him. Never had his features appeared so aquiline—he looked like a bird of prey, circling silently above its intended victim grazing unaware below.
Ariana Killane would pay for what she had done in that hideous, ugly scene at the wedding. And not just done to himself. To a victim completely innocent of anything. Mia—the sweet, gentle bride he’d longed for all his life—had donenothingto deserve what had been done to her that nightmare day. She’d even fainted with the shock, the horror of it all, on her very wedding day...
Done to her by her own cousin.
The fact that Ariana Killane was the cousin of the woman he’d wanted to marry was still unbearable to him. It had been thrown at him with such vicious spite, utterly destroying any chance of winning back his bride. How he could possibly marry Mia now, having taken her cousin to bed first?
She would hold me in revulsion—and rightly so!
He felt his guts hollow with self-loathing at what he had done that disastrous night in New York. That night he should never have indulged in, which had reached its tentacles across an entire ocean to entangle him here. Meshing him tight. Destroying the marriage he could now never make.
Impossible to try and redeem the situation.
Only to level retribution upon the woman who had done this to him.
Destroy her life as she had destroyed his.
Ariana was in the office that opened off the stylish showroom she rented to show off selected pieces of furniture and artfully draped fabrics, as well as lamps, rugs and assortedobjets d’artwhich might tempt potential clients to come in and book her services. She was going through her post, doggedly letting herself focus only on the usual mix of invoices and supplier notes, fabric samples, cheques and business correspondence, blocking her mind to anything else.
It was the only way to keep going—not thinking, not remembering, not replaying on an endless loop that nightmare day of Mia’s wedding two endless, punishing weeks ago. It was over. It was done. That was what she had to keep saying to herself.
As for Luca Farnese...
She felt a chill inside her—and something more. Something that was like a cry of pain. The hatred in his face, the rage—the loathing... The memory was like knives stabbing her. Agonising.
Why? Why should it hurt that he hates me so much for what I did at his wedding? The wedding he deserted me for in New York...the wedding that he had intended to go through with even before he laid eyes on me! A man so despicable—to take another woman to bed with a bride waiting for him in Italy! But didn’t I know what he was that morning I woke up without him? Didn’t I know from that very moment what he was capable of?
She stared blindly at the next envelope in her in tray. It was marked ‘Private and Confidential’ and addressed to her personally, not to her business. She reached for her paper knife, sliced open the envelope, took out the typed letter within. It was from a firm of lawyers she had never heard of.
And as her eyes scanned the page she realised, with a sickening clench of her guts, just what Luca Farnese was indeed capable of...