Page 37 of Awakened in Her Enemy's Palazzo

She heaved a big sigh, as if recognising the inevitable, and as she looked at him with big compassionate eyes, bright with unshed tears, she nodded to the big French doors that opened onto the lawn.

‘I’ll wait outside for you. I’ll be just there.’

He didn’t respond beyond flinging her a frigid look of seething contempt. He had already taken his father’s chair at the desk.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THENIGHTWASWARM, but Grace was shivering as she stared out at the distant gleam of the sea, her nerves too strung out to find the soft murmur of the wind in the pine trees soothing.

The ratcheting tension made her unable to keep still. She moved with restless energy across the grass, back and forth, starting at the slightest sound, turning intermittently to look at the illuminated fairy tale facade of the palazzo with the starlit sky backdrop that gave it its name.

She almost leapt out of her skin when she heard a loud crashing sound from inside the room. She took an impulsive step and then hesitated, before deciding to stay where she was. He would probably tell her to go away—probably not in polite terms, she reflected with a rueful half-smile.

But he was making a life-changing discovery, and no one should be alone at such a moment—even a man like Theo, who came across as someone so self-contained. Which, considering the number of women’s names that had come up when she had typed his name into a search engine, might seem an odd description, but it was one that fitted.

Well, now she knew the closely guarded secret—she knew what had caused the rift between father and son, and it was a tragic story.

She now knew, from reading the diary entries, that she was not the only person at the palazzo who was aware of the full story. But they had been sworn to silence by Salvatore. It was a measure of their loyalty and respect for the man that no one had breathed a word after his death.

They had protected Salvatore’s secret.

His pain had leapt off the page as he’d described the moment when he’d decided to conceal the truth. They were words that Grace knew she would never forget.

Theo is hurting. I could see the hate in his eyes. I opened my mouth to defend myself, to tell him I would never cheat on his mother,and then I realised what that would mean.

Better he hates me than his mother. I couldn’t protect her in life, but I can protect her in death. A child can never understand that a parent is human, has weaknesses.

If only I had realised what was in her mind...

I cannot risk the suicide note being discovered. I will burn it.

I have asked Marta never to mention it. I know she won’t.

It broke Grace’s heart to think of father and son both hurting.

Salvatore’s instinct to protect his wife’s memory and the love his young son had meant that he had lied when the young Theo—traumatised after his mother had taken her life—had put his own interpretation on the snatches of a conversation he’d overheard.

‘She just couldn’t live with the shame of the affair.’

It had never crossed his mind that his mother was living with the shame of herownaffair.

The diary entry had explained that being unable even to go to the funeral of her married lover had sent the emotionally fragile woman into a deep spiral of depression that she had never pulled out of.

Salvatore could have told the truth when confronted by his young son. Instead he had taken on the burden of guilt as his own.

She couldn’t begin to imagine what Theo would be feeling as he read his father’s thoughts, found the tenets he had built his adult life upon being deconstructed. It had to leave a person who dealt in certainties—indeedanyperson—feel adrift.

She walked some more, back and forth, wearing a groove in the neatly trimmed grass, and then the French doors opened. His hands on the double doors, he stood for a moment in the white light, curtains blowing behind him, a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette.

Then he saw her...paused before surging forward. It seemed at first as if he’d walk straight past her, but then at the last moment he stopped and turned to face her.

His face, normally lit by a vibrant glow, was tinged with grey, strain written into every line. At a moment like this she knew that he needed someone not involved...someone objective... Sadly Grace didn’t feel objective at all. Her heart was aching for him.

‘Did you know?’ he asked abruptly, his voice a low growl as he stepped back.

Grace saw that since she had left the room he had discarded his jacket. His dark, normally sleek hair stood in spiky disarray around his face, as though he had run his fingers through it multiple times, and several of the buttons on his shirt had come adrift, enough to reveal a section of his muscled chest.

‘No, not until just now, when I read what your father had written. But, Theo...’ His head turned from his brooding contemplation of the starlit sky. ‘I did know how much your father loved you.’

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