Page 38 of Awakened in Her Enemy's Palazzo

He suddenly raised clenched hands to his temples, and his laugh sounded like glass breaking. ‘Well, that makes it all right, then. Sorry...’ he ground out, clenching his jaw.

‘It’s fine,’ she said, in her best objective observer voice, seeing through his anger to the pain beneath.

‘I can’t believe this. All these years... Why the hell would he do that?’ He swung back to her once more. ‘He stood in that room when I was kid and I told him I hated him. I called him—The things I said—And he just stood there and took it.Why?’

He groaned, and the sound was almost one of animalistic pain that made her want to cover her ears.

‘Why didn’t he just say that it washeraffair...hershame? She had to have been cheating on him for years. Helivedwith her. Heknewabout her infidelity. And yet he—Why did he let me think that he—?’

He was shaking his head, and she could see him digging deep for control, gathering his considerable resources before he turned back.

‘This has nothing to do with you. I’m sorry. It’s not your problem. It’s just that you were...here...’

‘Salvatore made it my problem when for his own reasons—which we might never know—he named me in his will,’ Grace reminded him quietly. ‘So, you see, I am now involved.’

‘You had no part in the lie I have been living most of my life...hating the man. He was right you know,’ he added.

‘Right...?’

A muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘I would have hated her.’

He flung the words at her almost like a challenge.

‘You were a child, Theo.’ Her heart ached for his pain. ‘And your mother was not well.’

‘Is that what you call cheating on your husband?’

‘She was in love.’

‘Are you defending her?’

‘Parents are just people...like you and me. They’re not perfect. I’m sure your mother loved your father too, in a different way, and shedidlove you,’ she added sadly, thinking of the tragic figure in the portrait. ‘I suppose you can’t pick who you love.’

He was staring at her with an intensity that was hard to bear but she didn’t look away. Her heart twisted painfully in her chest when she tried to imagine what he must be feeling at this moment.

‘She didn’t love himorme.’

The words seemed wrenched from him against his will.

‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed stepping forward.

She hesitated a moment before reaching up to place her hand palm flat against the rigid muscles of his upper arm, letting it lie there.

She doubted he even registered it.

‘I’ve seen the photos. Sheadoredyou. And your father... Well, maybe they drifted apart, or she couldn’t love him in the way he loved her. It happens.’

Something in her voice seemed to penetrate his black mood and made him look at her sharply. ‘It’s happened to you?’

She thought about lying, or not saying anything more, but decided that if focusing on her messed-up life took his mind off his own she could live with having her privacy invaded.

She nodded. ‘I thought he loved me, but he didn’t...’ She swallowed. ‘Except as a sister,’ she added.

‘And now?’

‘We’re friends now. He married my sister.’

‘And you are all right with that?’ he asked incredulously.

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