Page 3 of ‘I Do’ for Revenge

Vito said, ‘You really didn’t know?’ He didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. Clearly she was up to something, perhaps trying to salvage what she could out of the debacle unfolding for her uncle. He would play along for now.

She held up her hands, the bouquet beginning to look very frayed. ‘Know what?’

The sense of triumph Vito had been feeling only a short time before was still palpable. ‘As of today, coinciding with the wedding—’

‘You meannon-wedding,’ Flora pointed out.

Vito inclined his head. ‘However you’d like to describe it. As of today, your uncle’s business is in free fall and I now own most of his shares, enough to take control. He thought we were doing a deal. We weren’t. I was. To crush him.’

Flora looked even more confused. She started to pace, trampling the veil under her feet, the bouquet an extension of one hand as she gesticulated. ‘So what...? You’re saying it was just a corporate takeover? Then why would you need a convenient marriage and why the theatrics?’ She stopped and looked at him.

Years of anger and grief had calcified into a hard stone in Vito’s gut. ‘Because this wasn’t just about a corporate takeover, there was more to it. A lot more.’

Flora looked at him. She stabbed the air with the bouquet. ‘Like what?’

Tension filled Vito. ‘Like the fact that your uncle was responsible for ruining my father’s business and ultimately for my father’s suicide and my mother’s subsequent death.’

Flora’s hand with the bouquet dropped and the flowers slipped out of her hand to the floor, joining the veil. She swallowed visibly. ‘I’m so sorry, that’s awful. I had no idea.’

She looked stricken. Her acting ability irritated Vito. He straightened up and looked at her. Right now she embodied the Gavia family, and he despised them.

‘Your uncle didn’t even remember me when we met. My name didn’t register. I was able to come in and decimate his business and social standing and not once did it occur to him that the name “Vitale” should mean something to him. That it should remind him of the man whose business he ruined from the inside out, causing my father to be accused of corruption, to lose his good name and standing. He almost went to jail, but at the last moment your uncle begged for mercy from the authorities, playing the saviour, when he’d been behind it all.’

He didn’t mention the way he and his parents had been ostracised overnight, by friends and neighbours. How they’d lost their home. How his very first proper girlfriend had stopped taking his calls, and had soon reappeared hand in hand with one of Vito’s best friends. The double betrayal had been immense. He’d learnt there and then that there was only one person you could rely on. Yourself.

Vito said grimly, ‘Your family name and business go back generations, my father was the first in his family to make a real success of the business and your uncle saw him as a threat, which was ridiculous. Your uncle could have bought him off a hundred times over, but he went after him, for sport, and to let him know that his ambition was to be punished. My father died of shame, by his own hand.’

Flora’s eyes were huge. ‘And your mother...’

Vito was angry he’d exposed himself to this woman. That her eyes and the manufactured emotion were affecting him. He’d never sought sympathy in his life and certainly not now from a member of the family who had destroyed his.

He said in a clipped voice, ‘She got sick and we didn’t have the money to pay for private health care. She died while waiting for treatment. Treatment that could have saved her. That’s all you need to know.’

Flora’s anger drained away. She was shocked. And yet, at the same time, she wasn’t shocked. Not any more. Not after her uncle had just cut her loose so brutally. Not after he’d so obviously used her in a business deal. ‘I had no idea.’

Vittorio made a dismissive sound. ‘Don’t make a fool out of me. You might not have known my story, but you were as invested in this marriage as your uncle. That six-month get-out clause would have ensured your wealth for life. There was no downside for you.’

Flora looked at him. His beauty mocked her now, because it was cold and cynical.

Her uncle had already told her that if she exited at the six-months mark, that money would be his. She hadn’t even cared. She’d seen it as a means to escape from a marriage in name only, if she’d needed it. The truth was that she’d agreed to the marriage primarily out of loyalty to her uncle but also for more complicated reasons. The fact that she’d found Vittorio Vitale totally fascinating. If unbelievably intimidating.

Somewhere, in a deep and shameful place, she’d known that a man like him would never choose a woman like her, and so she’d indulged in a little fantasy. Believing for a brief moment that when they married, perhaps a man who’d barely looked at her might look at her properly...see her as a woman.

The thought of anything more had felt far too audacious to even contemplate.

When he’d stood her up today, she’d been reminded in a very comprehensive and cruel way that nothing could incite a man like him to marry her. Not even a business deal. She’d even wondered if she’d been the one to ruin it all, just by not being alluring enough. Certainly her uncle had made her feel as though it had been her fault.

But it hadn’t been because this man had never intended on following through with his part of the arrangement.

She said dully, ‘I was just a pawn to try and maximise my uncle’s downfall. The marriage plan was a particularly creative and cynical touch.’

It wasn’t much comfort to know that she hadn’t necessarily been instrumental in this process. It was almost more insulting. She really was that inconsequential.

Now Vittorio was sneering. ‘Oh, please, spare me the self-pity. Your uncle was the one who suggested the marriage. He obviously saw an added bonus to going into business with me. Insurance for life. I won’t deny I saw the benefits of embarrassing him socially when he handed me the opportunity. You were in it together, why on earth else would you have agreed to a marriage of convenience with a total stranger if it wasn’t for your own benefit too?’

Flora clamped her mouth shut. She wasn’t about to articulate to this cold, judgemental and vengeful man her complicated feelings of loyalty and gratitude to her uncle, a man who patently hadn’t deserved any of it. If anyone was the fool here, it was her, the full extent of which was becoming horrifyingly clear.

No wonder her uncle had kept her inside like a hothouse flower for years, while all along planning on selling her off to the highest bidder. He’d been keeping her out of sight and away from any kind of influence. He’d even had her home-schooled!

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