For a moment she only looked at him. The shock was lifting from her face, and something else was taking its place.
Closure. Complete closure. As if there were no longer a person behind the mask of her face.
She stepped forward, got into the passenger seat, did up her seatbelt as he took his own place behind the wheel and started the engine. He could still feel emotion running within him like an underground river, deep beneath the rock. Eating away at it from the inside.
She did not speak as he nosed the car forward. He did not care. Her response was not necessary. Her wishes did not matter.
Nor do mine.
The buried emotion jack-knifed in him like a stiletto thrust into his lungs. He thrust it back, down into his guts, where it must stay, its sharp edges like a razor embedded in his flesh. He would get used to its presence eventually. He would have to.
‘Why are you doing this?’
Her abrupt question made his hands tighten over the steering wheel. He did not bother to ask what she meant by ‘this’.
‘The future has changed for both of us. It is necessary for us to accept the consequences of that change.’
He could see her head twisting towards him. In her lap, her hands were folded over her handbag. Only the white of her knuckles showed the tension she was under.
‘It isn’t a future that need concern you,’ she replied.
Luca felt his jaw tighten—a sign of the self-control he was exerting. The self-control he always had to exert around her.
Except when it fails—catastrophically. And thus brings me to this point, now, where my life has been hijacked.
He wanted to laugh...a savage humourless laugh. Instead, halting at red lights, he simply glanced at her, his eyes flickering.
‘Does the irony of it not strike you, Ariana? That the lie you told the world at my wedding has now become the truth?’
Her head turned away, dipped. ‘Irony isn’t the only word for it.’
‘No,’ he agreed, his voice low and tight.
The lights changed and he had to look ahead again. They were gaining the outskirts of the city. The autostrada awaited them, and then the long drive to Milan. And the even longer journey into a future that he had never wanted. That he had spent his life not wanting.
His grip on the steering wheel increased...the razor in his guts twisted.
She was speaking again, but not looking at him this time, her voice still low. Intense.
‘Let me go, Luca. I will sign whatever disclaimers you require. Make no demands on you—financial or otherwise. Make no mention of you on the birth certificate. I will sever all contact with you, have nothing more to do with you. Leave you entirely free of me. Free of—’
She got no further.
‘That will not happen.’ His voice was hard. ‘Because whatwillhappen is this. We shall marry.’
Ariana heard him say it, but she did not believe it. It was impossible to believe. Impossible because it was...impossible.
Her eyes flew to him. There was only his profile, aquiline, carved from granite. Unyielding.
She shut her eyes, turning her head away from him, subsiding into silence. A profound weariness swept over her. These last weeks had been punishing—working non-stop, making what preparations she could, dismantling of her old life, ready for the construction of her new one. She felt....drained.
The smoothness of the car ride started to lull her to sleep, the sun streaming in warming her. Her thoughts wandered, become random, a blur. Her breathing slowed...
Her eyes were too heavy to open again. She wanted only to shut the world away.
Escape the only way she could.
Into sleep.