Page 12 of Forbidden Until Midnight

But it wasn’t just his vow to Pietro that kept him bound to this group of people, that kept him bound to Eleanor.

‘Because while I gained an empire on his death, I am also shackled to it.’

She stared back at him, thoughts crossing her features like the turning of pages.

‘What was he like, your father?’

‘Violent, ugly and mean,’ he replied, refusing to sugar-coat it for her when clearly so much of her life had been cushioned and softened.

‘Is that where you got the scar?’ she asked, her hand lifting almost to touch the mark that cut through his eyebrow.

He leaned away from her touch, the sudden shocking memory of how it had happened taking him by surprise when his defences were down. He clenched his teeth together until his jaw ached.

‘Yes,’ he said, turning away from her, not wanting to see her reaction.

The puff of exhaled air was barely audible over the crackle of the fire taking hold, but he heard it.

‘I... I’m sorry.’

He huffed out a bitter laugh. ‘What for? The man was a bastard—that’s not your fault.’

Her silence filled the small room, pressing against him in ways he’d not experienced before. Finally, he looked up, only for the sympathy in her gaze to cut him off at the knees.

‘Your father shouldn’t have done such a thing.’

Her words turned over something in his chest that he didn’t want to see. He never talked to anyone about his father. Not his mother, not even Pietro. And yet here Eleanor was, smashing through all the barriers he tried to put around the subject.

‘Fathers are just men, Eleanor, nothing more,’ he said with a weight she wouldn’t understand yet. ‘Sometimes they make mistakes,’ he said, thinking not of his own, but hers.

‘Was that what your father did? Make a mistake?’ she asked, taking a step forward.

‘No. He knew what he was doing,’ Santo said with an honesty that he’d never revealed to anyone other than Pietro.

Anger and tension swirled headily in his chest, reaching for the back of his neck in an aching hold. But Eleanor held his gaze and her nod to herself as much as him, her gentle acceptance of the violence that had shaped his life, rather than shock at it or refusal of it, calmed him in a way he’d not experienced before, in a way that shouldn’t have been possible from the spoiled daughter of one of England’s richest families.

All along she had been a contradiction. From managing to replace the shirt she’d spilled her drink on, so smoothly and seamlessly, to her ability to empathise so easily. Santo had written her off as a spoilt heiress, but she was steadily proving herself to be a puzzle. One he wanted to understand much more than he should.

‘What will you do now?’ he asked, moving the conversation onto the kind of small talk he usually loathed.

Eleanor smiled, recognising his diversionary tactic. But it was probably for the best. They had skated too close to topics that were intimate in a way she wasn’t ready for. He made her feel things that were too familiar, yet utterly alien.

She knew enough to both recognise her attraction to him but to be wary of it too. It was probably some silly infatuation because he’d been there to rescue her when she’d needed it. And it was something she sensed he wouldn’t welcome.

‘I started my degree in September. I’ll continue on with that,’ she said, thinking of the arguments she’d had with her father, who had wanted her to stay here at the house, rather than move into the halls of residence at her university.

‘What are you studying?’

‘Business,’ she replied, bracing herself against the derision he seemed to assume so quickly around her, but it never came.

‘It’s a good degree, with a lot of fundamentals that can be built on with experience. I found it useful.’

‘You did a degree?’ she asked, shocked.

His brow raised, eyes wry. ‘That surprises you?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But only in so much as not knowing where you found the time for it.’ She knew that he’d inherited the Sabatini Group upon his father’s death, and that it had been held in trust for the sixteen months it took for him to reach eighteen. But she’d always assumed that he hadn’t had time for something like a degree.

‘I studied at night,’ he admitted. ‘But if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it,’ he vowed with mock seriousness.

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